Highly intrusive virginity tests at an ‘all time high’ in the UK

There has been an alarming increase in the number of young women in the UK who are being subjected to intrusive so-called “virginity tests”.

These tests, which are based on pseudoscientific ideas about virginity, often have doctors performing an intrusive examination which looks at whether a woman’s hymen is intact.

Human rights organisations have universally condemned such tests, not only because they are inherently invasive, but also because they are linked to an increase in domestic and other forms of abuse of women.

Additionally, there is a medical consensus that an examination of the hymen is not an accurate or reliable test of previous sexual activity, including sexual assault.  

One 20-year-old Bangladeshi woman was forced by her family to attend a clinical exam in London ahead of an arranged marriage.

Despite begging the doctor not to go through with the examination, and to lie to her family, the doctor followed through.

"I went inside and I pleaded to the other doctor there. I told him I don't want to do it, can he lie to the family and say he had carried out the test? He said no, he can't do that because he has been paid," she told Sky News.

"He asked me to sit on the couch and put my legs up. It was a two finger test and obviously I was a virgin. I was traumatised. It felt like you were not human anymore.

"You wouldn't treat an animal like that. He could see I was terrified. I was tearful, crying - I was pleading with him."

The young woman, who went by the name ‘Zara’ reported the examination to the police, who told her that no UK laws had been broken.

"We are getting an increasing number of desperate calls from young girls being forced to have the most horrific tests performed on them against their will. Because their families demand that," Aneeta Prem, the founder of the Freedom Charity, told Sky News.

"You pay £300 to £400, you can produce a letter or certificate for the potential groom's family as a 'badge of honour' to say, 'look you are going to marry a virgin, this girl is pure' and this is becoming more of a trend.

"Families are now forcing their daughters, their future daughters-in-laws, to have a test to prove that they have had no sexual relations in the past."

There are also doctors in the UK who are also performing hymenoplasty – the surgical reconstruction of a woman’s hymen.

Campaigners are fighting for the government to outlaw such surgery, dubbed “virginity repair”.