Introduction

Abstract

The practice of virginity testing at Britain’s national and international borders first received national attention through a story published by The Guardian newspaper on 1 February 1979. This case involved a 35-year-old Indian woman who had arrived at Heathrow Airport on 24 January 1979, wishing to enter Britain to marry her fiancé, a British resident of Indian descent. The British legal regime at the time stipulated that people entering Britain to marry their fiancées/fiancés did not require an entry clearance or visa in those cases in which the marriage would take place within three months of their arrival. This woman, however, was subjected to an extensive investigation, which included a rudimentary gynaecological examination. Internal Home Office documents, disclosed only recently, state that the Immigration Officer in this case acted on the belief that her purported engagement status was not in line with her age group and that, in fact, she had already been married. Based on this view, the Immigration Officer ‘asked the doctor to determine whether she had had children’.¹ A male doctor performed the examination and certified that the woman’s hymen was intact. This outcome meant that the woman’s story was deemed to be reliable and she was given conditional leave to enter Britain.