Detective Chief Inspector Leanne Pook clearly remembers when she was first seized with an absolute determination to help stop the scourge of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Britain.

After dedicating much of her career to child protection in Avon and Somerset, she’d been tasked with leading work in the region not only to prevent British women and girls being cut - but also to bring the perpetrators to justice.

She’d attended an event at Bristol University, along with 400 other people - when a 15 year old boy, Mukhtar Hassan, stood up and addressed the audience passionately. Why, he asked, was he, as a boy, concerned about FGM? His answer, DCI Pook recalls, was simple: “He said, ‘I may be a man, but I’m somebody’s son, I’m somebody’s brother, I’m somebody’s friend, and one day I will be somebody’s father.’”

For this seasoned police officer, it was a life-changing moment. Six years later, she says it moved her to tears: “It blew my mind.” If 15 year-old Mukhtar had the guts to stand up in front of an audience of hundreds and tell them FGM needed to end, DCI Pook felt she owed it to him - and all the thousands of women and girls mutilated up and down the country – to do everything she possibly could to put a halt to the practice.