Woman who was 'routinely beaten and raped' for decades unlawfully detained by Home Office (Independent) (19 October 2018)

The Independent have reported on the case of a Namibian national who was a victim of trafficking, who was unlawfully detained by the Home Office when she arrived in the UK. The extent of the failures are stark, in that the Home Office did not put her through the medical assessment when she was first detained, and after she disclosed that she had been a victim of slavery, they did not put her through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). When she first arrived in the UK, she was granted a visitor’s visa. She was taken by enforcement officers to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) when she was discovered to have taken up work, which is not permitted on that type of visa. The nurse at the centre, during her initial screening, did make notes that she may have been a victim of torture; however this was not followed up by a formal Rule 35 medical assessment for a number of weeks. UK immigration detention policy dictates that this should be done within 24 hours of arrival at an IRC. The woman is represented by Krisha Prathepan, of Duncan Lewis’ public law department, who continues to be instructed to assist with her trafficking and asylum claims. She states: “As the High Court judge said, it should be ‘very rare’ to refuse to refer a potential survivor of trafficking to the National Referral Mechanism ‘where an allegation of trafficking is made’…But the Home Office consistently refused to refer our client. Their refusals were based on what was deemed to be ‘irrelevant considerations’…The safeguards supposedly put in place by parliament and government policy-makers quite simply failed. I hope Home Office decision-makers will listen to the judge’s clear advice, that they should always be ‘alive’ to signs that someone may be a survivor of trafficking.” The Home Office have been ordered by the High Court to pay damages for this unlawful period of detention.