I apologise in advance, because this is not going to be very nice.

In 2015-2016, 5.700 girls in Britain had their private parts mutilated by or with the willing approval of their parents.

Most of the victims are of African or Middle Eastern origin and the mutilators claim that the practice is part of their culture and religion.

Medical professionals, the trades unions and rights organisations estimate that there are presently 66,000 girls in Britain who have suffered this injury.

The figures are certainly an underestimate, for they are only the cases we have heard about.

This vicious abuse – often carried out by non-medical “cutters” and involving scissors, knives, razor blades or shards of glass, without anaesthetic or antiseptic, is sometimes referred to as “female circumcision.”

The legal definition is “female genital mutilation - FGM” and it has been a crime since 1983.

A recent report in The Guardian gave further details: “Sometimes families form a sort of co-operative to raise the funding to pay for a cutter to come from overseas. The family will bring all the girls together and it is done. Those who are wealthy are using nurses or doctors or private clinics That is why London especially has been accused of being the FGM capital of Europe because many people are coming from the continent on Eurostar and having their daughters mutilated.”

Since 2014, 2000 girls in London alone have sought hospital treatment for the consequences of mutilation which, according to the NHS’ website, include bladder infections, septicaemia, abscesses, infertility and trauma. FGM makes child-bearing a life-threatening event. Girls have bled to death.

Here is part of one victim’s report: “The woman was cutting me. She kept asking my mother why I was screaming so much, and asked if I was a coward. She said none of the others cried like this, and asked my mother to tell me to shut up. My mother told me to keep quiet or else the neighbours would hear my screaming.”

You would expect me to report that our jails are full to bursting with the perpetrators of this savagery.

The unbelievable truth, the outrageous scandal, is that, although FGM has been classed as a crime for 33 years, not one case has been successfully prosecuted in a UK court.

Do we still think we’re living in a civilised society?

There are thousands of mutilators, so why has no one been convicted?

For the same reason that for years the authorities turned a blind eye to the wholesale rape and sexual abuse of white girls by Muslim men in Rotherham, Rochdale, Manchester and a dozen more British towns and cities: the police were terrified that they would be accused of “racism” or “Islamophobia.”

Indeed, those two words were the first on the lips of perpetrators when accused.

Something is rotten in the state of Britain. There is one law for one section of society and a different law for others; or rather the law is administered to one group and not to another.

Just imagine: if a rural, white Englishman in a tweed jacket – and worst of all voting Tory – were seen clubbing a badger to death, there would be a hue and cry, general outage and his name would be mud ever after.

The rural, white badger killer would be widely regarded as a near-murderer but, when tens of thousands of young girls are mutilated and maimed by or at the behest of their parents, it’s excused as “cultural differences.”

This must stop – or else. Where vicious barbarity goes unprosecuted, that society is in terminal trouble.