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" The\u00A0horrific practice of\u00A0beating young girls&amp;#039; breasts with a hot iron or stone to burn or compress the tissue\u00A0has been described as widespread\u00A0in some communities of the UK. &amp;#039;Breast ironing&amp;#039; can cause tissue damage, infection, cancer\u00A0and in extreme cases\u00A0the breasts can disappear. Abusers do it to delay\u00A0puberty, with the intention of making women less attractive to men.\u00A0 Tory\u00A0MP Jake Berry today called for the government to make it\u00A0a criminal offence, calling it a\u00A0hidden form of abuse often\u00A0committed by some of the closest family\u00A0members.\u00A0Shockingly,\u00A0UN research\u00A0showed that in 58 percent of cases it was done by the\u00A0victim&amp;#039;s own mother.  Home Office minister Karen Bradley said the government was &amp;quot;absolutely committed&amp;quot; to stopping the practice yet accepted that\u00A0&amp;quot;certain professionals&amp;quot; were hesitant about tackling it\u00A0due to\u00A0&amp;quot;cultural sensitivities&amp;quot;. It was agreed they\u00A0needed to be given the confidence to take action. The\u00A0UN estimates 3.8 million young women are affected by breast ironing in Central and West Africa. Thousands more girls in the UK, from Cameroon, South Africa, Nigeria, the Republic of Guinea, Togo and\u00A0C\u00F4te d&amp;#039;Ivoire may also be at risk. Jake Berry, the MP for Rossendale and Darwen, said in an interview last month: &amp;quot;The nearest thing I can compare it to is female genital mutilation (FGM), which we believed wasn&amp;#039;t happening in this country until people started to talk about it and raise awareness of it. &amp;quot;People gained more confidence to come forward and say &amp;#039;I was a victim of this form of abuse&amp;#039; \u2013 and I believe breast ironing is similar.&amp;#039; Berry\u00A0said he&amp;#039;d spoken to a women&amp;#039;s\u00A0charity who had worked with\u00A0victims of breast ironing. He\u00A0discovered that a\u00A0woman in Birmingham was arrested on suspicion of carrying out breast ironing on her own daughter, but was released because &amp;#039;that was her culture&amp;#039;.  The MP now wants\u00A0it to be made a criminal offence so police can crack down on it. According to research, 15 per cent of police forces are unaware of the practice and\u00A038 per cent said\u00A0they required more guidance to stop it. Anti-FGM campaigner and psychotherapist\u00A0Leyla Hussein told us: &amp;quot;The words &amp;#039;culture,&amp;#039; &amp;#039;tradition&amp;#039; or &amp;#039;religion&amp;#039; might come up when trying to explain this absurdly harmful practice, but as in the case of FGM, these words are only thinly veiled excuses. &amp;quot;Breasts become a dangerous body part that must be removed in case they attract male attention, as if removing all signs of femininity from a girl&amp;#039;s body could protect her from being raped.&amp;quot; Leyla is supporting\u00A0the\u00A0Ealing-based charity\u00A0\u00A0Women&amp;#039;s and Girl&amp;#039;s Development Organisation\u00A0(Cawogido), who\u00A0work with the police, social services, health and schools to raise awareness of breast ironing. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/reports/news/a42191/breast-ironing-is-a-brutal-practice-thats-becoming-endemic-in-the-uk/>