On Tuesday, the 1st October, at 3pm, victims of rape and sexual assault including testimonies from women who experienced and/or witnessed sexual abuse whilst held in detention at Yarl’s Wood Immigration and Removal Centre will speak out at the Crossroads Women’s Centre.
The Black Women’s Rape Action Project says:
“Sexual and racist abuse and other violence by guards have prompted regular protests, even hunger strikes, by women detained in Yarl’s Wood. The same names of guards having sex with women in their care come up over and again. It appears to be so widespread that it is impossible for the authorities, including the Home Office, not to have known about it until it was publicly exposed. Women have been deported without the alleged rape being investigated – a cover up?
All complaints of abuse must be fully investigated and victims being released given protection so there can be no reprisals from guards who are in a position of power over them. Guards found guilty of perpetrating abuse or of enabling the abuse to go on, must be held to account and prosecuted.”
Accounts in the media from the All African Women’s Group and other women:
“Some of the women are succumbing to whatever they are being propositioned to do. Some of the guards are touching the women; the girls are being promised that they are going to get their freedom. They say things like: ‘You better be nice to me if you want to get out of here.’ They make funny gestures: one puts his finger in his mouth and winks at me.“
“I said I was scared and said I did not want to . . . there were two occasions when I was made to do ‘blow-jobs’.
“They give these ladies the impression that if you sleep with them they can help by putting in a word for you to be released or help with your case.”
“You find them coming in during the middle of the night when you are sleeping. I have been in bed lying down and someone has come into my room and I wake up and I am frightened. Why would a man be in my room at 2am?”
After she made a complaint, Tanja alleges that there was an attempted cover-up . . . she was “bullied” by guards inside the centre. “Some of the officers said I was lying, they started giving me the cold shoulder. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my room for weeks. I felt very isolated and started self-harming,” she says . . .
Mark Townsend, home affairs editor The Observer, 14 and 21 September 2013
Also read http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/21/sexual-abuse-yarls-wood-immigration
All African Women’s Group, Black Women’s Rape Action Project & Women Against Rape
SPEAK OUT:
RAPE & SEXUAL ASSAULT IN
YARL’S WOOD IMMIGRATION & REMOVAL CENTRE
3pm Tuesday 1 October 2013
Crossroads Women’s Centre
25 Wolsey Mews, London NW5 2DX
For more information: All African Women’s Group (aawg02@gmail.com, Black Women’s Rape Action Project (bwrap@rapeaction.net), Women Against Rape (asylumfromrape@womenagainstrape.net). Tel: 020 7482 2496.
