For honor-affected girls, not bleeding on the wedding night, in order to prove one's virginity, can be associated with a life-threatening situation.

According to the clinics, a so-called "virginity operation" can be done in different ways;

but the most common is so-called "hymen reconstruction".

Although the procedures are legal, they are usually carried out in secret.

To find out which procedures the clinics offer and how the women are treated, SVT's 25-year-old reporter from Lebanon books consultations at three clinics and films the visit with a hidden camera.

The reporter says that she is being forced into marriage by her family and that it is important for her to bleed on the wedding night to prove her virginity, otherwise it could be dangerous for her life. 

"Is it honor then or not?"

asks plastic surgeon Christian Ramirez at Diamond plastic surgery in Örebro and explains that different operations have different healing times.

To create a bleeding, they cut open the mucous membranes in the abdomen and sew them together three weeks before the wedding.  

- You won't feel anything, because you are under anesthesia, he says.

Don't want to stand up at first

When SVT openly contacts Diamond, who has operations in both Stockholm and Örebro, the clinic manager denies that they have received requests for "virginity operations".

This despite the fact that our reporter received both an agreement and an invoice of 44,000.

The plastic surgeon caught on hidden camera does not want to be interviewed at first, but changes his mind and wants to tell why he does the operations.

- It is a patient group that needs help and cannot get help anywhere else.

- If you meet these patients, it rarely helps to talk about the scientific foundation behind it, to explain that there is no hymen, there is no hymen.

This is something that is culturally and emotionally charged, says Christian Ramirez in an open interview with SVT.

"Don't lie around again" 

- No, who said I do such operations?

asks a doctor at the Women's Counseling Clinic in Landskrona when we call from SVT.

But when we visit the clinic as an honorary patient, she explains in detail both the procedure and how women can cause bleeding before the wedding night.

At the end of the visit, she tells our reporter "not to lie around again".

When SVT confronts the doctor afterwards, she says that it does not help to tip social services or the police: 

- I do it to help women.

Secretly.

Can the police protect you from no one wanting to talk to you?

Or that you are not accepted?

To save the women 

According to the experts in honor-related violence and oppression that SVT spoke to, the interventions that the clinics offer are misguided help that supports myths and oppression.

((Link the experts)).

All doctors who offer "virginity operations", whether small clinics or large ones, say that they do the procedures to save the women.

- The alternative for these young girls is that they have to completely break with their families and live under a protected identity, states the surgeon at the Aesthetic Institute in Stockholm when SVT calls and asks why he offered our reporter an operation.

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Hear the reporter tell the doctor about the threat - the plastic surgeon then claims he calls the police in such cases.

Photo: SVT

Are you saying there is other help to get, like going to the police?  

- Yes.

Yes, I do, replies the surgeon at the Aesthetic Institute.

We've had a reporter talk to you and then you didn't give that information.

- But I probably usually do that.

Do you know more clinics or have a story of your own?

Here you can tip SVT's investigative reporters.