Forgiveness: Stories from the Front Line

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Forgiveness: Stories from the Frontline

Gripping stories from people who've had to struggle with forgiveness in order to be free.

How do you survive and restore your life when something truly appalling is done to you? Journalist Marina Cantacuzino hears five gripping stories.

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Forgiveness: Stories from the Front Line: Salimata

Salimata

BBC Radio 4 - Forgiveness: Stories from the Front Line, Salimata

Salimata Badji Knight is a survivor of female genital mutilation.

Marina Cantacuzino talks to Salimata Badji Knight, a survivor of female genital mutilation.

Salimata Badji Knight is a survivor of FGM, female genital mutilation, which is the cultural practice of removing part of the genitals of a girl or woman for non-medical reasons. Salimata was raised in a Muslim community in Senegal and later in Paris. Her story is about forgiving her parents and indeed her whole culture for the violence that was done to her when she was just four years old. For a long time, she was filled with rage and blamed all the people who had allowed her to be cut. But out of rage came compassion, and the realisation that this was not her mother’s fault, nor the fault of the women who had carried it out. 

“I was able to talk to my father. I explained the physical and mental damage caused by FGM. He cried, and said that no woman had ever explained the suffering to him. Then he apologised and asked for forgiveness. The next day he called my relatives in Senegal and, as a result, dozens of girls were saved from FGM.” 

Marina Cantacuzino is an award-winning journalist who became interested in forgiveness at the time of the Iraq War. It’s a subject she’s explored now for many years, in books and through founding a charity, ‘The Forgiveness Project’. A common theme running through these stories is that forgiveness is difficult, messy, and complex, but it brings with it the power to transform lives. 

Producer: Kim Normanton
Executive Producer: Elizabeth Burke
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