Real Housewives of Dubai star Chanel Ayan hopes to spread awareness about genital mutilation by opening up about her own traumatic experience with the horrific practice.
Ayan, who is of Somali and Ethiopian descent, revealed during the Wednesday, Aug. 17, episode that she was forced to undergo female circumcision when she was just 5 years old to keep her a virgin until marriage.
During a hypnotherapy session, Chanel tearfully revealed that she and her older sister were circumcised as young children without their family’s knowledge.
“At five years old, my aunt and my grandma came to pick us up to take us to another town,” Chanel told the therapist as she held co-star Dr. Sara Al-Madani’s hand. “And then the next morning at six a.m. I didn’t know where I was going whatsoever, and then they took us to this man’s house, and they just tied us on the bed, and we were circumcised.”
She dove deeper into her injuries, telling the women, “We were tied in the legs.” She continued, “Couldn’t pee. Couldn’t move. When we needed to pee, they would carry us and put us on the grass. I just didn’t understand what the hell was going on whatsoever, and my mom didn’t know that that was happening to us.”
The 44-year-old Bravo star could not be physically intimate and ultimately needed to have circumcision medically fixed. “I couldn’t have sex,” she added. “And then I had to wait until I healed.”
In her confessional scene, Ayan said that she tried to understand everything that happened to her, stating, “The reason that I’m talking about it is to bring awareness to it, and I want people to understand this happens every single day, and if that’s my mission, maybe that’s what I should be doing.”
In an interview with E! News following the candid admission, the reality star declared, “I’m a survivor.” She added, “I felt that I was utterly betrayed by my culture and my family. This is just a barbaric practice, and it shouldn’t be happening to young girls. Still, Ayan admitted, “It happened to me 35 years ago, and I’ve never gotten over it.”
