School nurses in Västerås began asking mandatory questions about FGM, leading to the identification of 87 new suspected cases in girls. This approach has addressed the problem of girls not daring to speak up, thereby not receiving care or legal redress. However, despite the identification of these cases, no reports of FGM involving schoolchildren have been filed with the police.
The Västerås school nurses' organization states that all detected cases are said to have occurred abroad, before the girls came to Sweden, which is said to be the reason why no police reports have been made so far. In contrast, only two suspected crimes related to FGM have been reported to the police in Västerås in the last three years, and none of these reported cases involve schoolchildren. FGM involves various types of procedures on girls' and women's external genitalia without medical reason, causing injury or permanent change.
It is primarily concentrated in about thirty countries in Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, such as Somalia, Eritrea, Egypt, and Sudan, where over 75% of women have undergone FGM. FGM has been illegal in Sweden since 1982, with a penalty scale of imprisonment for at least two and up to six years, or between five and ten years for severe crimes. Perpetrators can be convicted for FGM even if it occurred abroad, if the children had a connection to Sweden at the time of the crimes.
It remains unclear why no police reports have been filed for the 87 suspected cases, despite the legal obligation to report such crimes.