The Summer holidays are usually one of the happiest times in any child's life. No school for six weeks, the chance to play every day with your friends and more often than not an actual bit of sunshine make it a time even now, over 14 years since I left school i still look back on with fondness. However for some girls here in the UK this Summer will involve a painful operation to remove their genitalia which will leave nearly all scarred for life and mean they spend their holidays recovering rather than enjoying themselves.

Female circumcision was something I read about several years ago at college when reading a piece online about how some African adolescent girls- or even children have their clitoris removed as part of certain religious or cultural beliefs that date back to the Egyptian times. Reading the article made me feel queasy and a deep sense of sympathy for these poor children that have to undergo such a horrendous ordeal, as the operations are often painful and many performed by non-medical people.

It was a subject to my shame, I quickly tried to forget about, merely reverting to the old British archaic attitude of 'thank god that sort of thing doesn't happen over here.' Well it appears in my uninformed typically narrow-minded British attitude I'd failed to read between the lines or dig a little deeper on a subject which did not sit well with me. Far from merely being an 'African problem' female circumcision or 'genital mutilation' is something that affects thousands of girls in the UK.

As the operation can take around five weeks to recover from - although arguably many girls never truly recover, in the Summer break it is far easier for parents to take their children away for circumcision without arrousing the suspicions of the school authorities. Following the operation the girl is then stitched up leaving only a small hole for urine and blood, her legs are tied together to prevent her walking and splitting the stitches.

Female circumcision is banned in the UK, but many families will fly abroad to parts of Africa or the Middle East where the procedure can be performed. However, the plot thickens, with the current recession we are now seeing some families saving money by flying in circumcision doctors who perform 'job lots' of up to twenty in one day!

This practice may be illegal but it is very difficult to apprehend or prosecute people for as it is al very clandestine and secretive and the evidence is never too obvious from a police point of view. In France however a woman was recently sentenced to eight years imprisonment for performing illegal circumcision operations.

The operation can be very dangerous with a 12 year-old in Egypt in 2007 dying not long after a  circumcision while one British woman told of how she was taken to hospital critically ill because her period had been unable to leave her sewn up vagina causing cysts to build up.

At an insight to journalism day at the Guardian I was shown a video which was as harrowing as any I've seen detailing female circumcision in the UK, although it is blood and gore free it is still stomach churning stuff. While it can be difficult to view it is well worth a look.