Calls for action over the plight of refugee women who try to flee violent homes

The call comes as a UK-wide investigation into the plight of abused women with insecure immigration status – by news platform the Ferret – has uncovered evidence that refugee and asylum-seeking women are being told by some legal advisors that they should consider staying with their abusive partners rather than risk losing their right to remain the UK.

Lawyers, psychologists and campaigners in Scotland claim that due to Home Office guidelines which mean women have to prove they have been abused, they are often forced to stay in dangerous situations because they are scared of being sent home.

Asylum seekers, along with those who have a legal right to remain but no recourse to public funds such as women joining refugee husbands through family reunion, are also unable to access refuge accommodation because of their immigration status.

Nina Murray, women’s policy officer at the Scottish Refugee Council, said that although there is a will at a UK policy level to improve the system, not enough is being done in practice.

“Though there are very good lawyers out there, some people are getting very poor legal advice. Research shows that the point at which women are most at risk is when they have tried to leave. So the fact that women are being told by lawyers to stay at this point is horrifying.”

Sarah Crawford, a lawyer with the Legal Services Agency’s Women’s Project, has worked on many cases that give her cause for concern. The service has worked with 45 refugee and migrant women reporting domestic abuse in the last year. It often finds that because support services are hard to access, it is forced to help women find accommodation before even starting the legal work.

She is particularly concerned about the refugee women who join their husbands through the family reunion system. Although those joining

British husbands can apply for leave to remain if they flee domestic violence, these refugee women cannot.

Now the Legal Services Agency, supported by an intervention by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is making a legal challenge to immigration rules, claiming that refugee women currently face discrimination.

Crawford said: “The amount of evidence that is required is overwhelming, particularly for a vulnerable woman who has been abused. This puts some women in a position where they have to decide if they are going to stay in an abusive relationship and have the right to remain, or try to make an asylum claim that may very well be unsuccessful.”

Refugee Council’s women’s advocacy manager Anna Musgrave said: “The Home Office pays little attention to women’s safety in its policies and practices. If a woman seeking asylum is suffering from domestic abuse, she will struggle to find ways to escape. The Home Secretary urgently needs to acknowledge this hidden crisis and ensure the UK Government’s immigration policies never inadvertently jeopardise women’s safety.”

Dr Marsha Scott, chief executive of Scottish Women’s Aid as well as the UK’s expert on the European Observatory on Violence against Women agrees: “This is a bureaucratic form of torture. It re-victimises women and puts them in great danger.”

The investigation also found that women in England and Northern

Ireland who had been granted leave to remain but without recourse to public funds were being routinely denied access to refuge accommodation or domestic abuse services.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “All victims of domestic violence are entitled to the protection of the civil and criminal law while in the UK – regardless of immigration status.

“Under the Destitution Domestic Violence concession, migrant spouses of permanent UK residents who are fleeing domestic violence are granted three months leave while they make an application for indefinite leave under the Immigration Rules.

“These individuals are able to access benefits and other services to ensure they are not forced to remain in violent relationships.

“Applicants who can prove they are destitute are also exempt from paying the application fee for indefinite leave to remain as a victim of domestic violence.

“Migrant spouses who are in the UK on a different basis, for example as the partner of a temporary migrant, are not eligible to apply under the specific domestic violence provisions, but may be eligible to apply for a different form of leave or request help to leave the UK.”

Read the full investigation: www.theferret.scot

CASE STUDY

Zinia* lives in a tired low-rise block of flats in Glasgow, former council housing where the balconies are piled up with children’s bikes and have views on to dull, rain-sodden suburban streets.

But when she answers the door wearing a shimmering blue-green salwar kameez from her native Bangladesh, her smile lights up the room. Inside she pours tea as though all is well with the world. But things are not what they seem.

Zinia, a refused asylum seeker, has lived in this sparsely furnished temporary flat with her three children for almost a year, since leaving the husband she claims she was forced to marry aged 14 – a man she says beat and raped her for 18 years. The “torture” started from day one, when after having sex with her on their wedding night, he got up and left his underage bride – alone and scared – for a two-month business trip. When he came back, the verbal abuse started and beatings soon followed. “Everybody in my family knew how he was treating me,” Zinia explains. “But in my culture once you are married you just have to be quiet and take it all.”

In 2014, due to political problems that affected his business, her husband fled to the UK to claim asylum, bringing his wife and children with him. His asylum claim was refused. The violence continued. “I would say all this time in an average month he was hitting me about 20 days of it,” she says.

“Every time it [sex] happened I would say it was forced. It was very difficult for me and my history is so hard sometimes I don’t want to remember it.”

Her GP noticed something was amiss and suggested her husband allow her to go to English classes. The couple started attending Govan and Craigton Integration Network (GCIN) in the south of the city, where a volunteer helped Zinia join the women’s group.

There the volunteer gently questioned her. “I just told her my story and showed her some pictures of when my husband hit me, “ says Zinia. “And from then onwards people started to help me.” The memory of relief makes her cry.

Staff at GCIN didn’t mess around. They made contact with Lyndsay Docherty, who specialises in refugee issues at Glasgow East Women’s Aid (GEWA), liaised with the police, lawyers and the Home Office and in the end helped her to escape.

Development worker Owen Fenn set up an interview with her husband in the office, keeping the coast clear for Petra Hardie, woman’s group co-ordinator, to help Zinia load her belongings and children into a van and get to GEWA.

When it turned out refuge accommodation was denied due to her insecure immigration status – an issue that often stops women from leaving abusive situations – they got on the phone and made sure a flat for her was found.

“I didn’t know I could survive on my own,” she said. According to Hardie and Docherty, many women who don’t get the support required never get the chance to find that out.

Finally free from abuse, Zinia applied for asylum but was refused. According to her decision letter, she should have spoken up when she first arrived in the UK. Her credibility is also undermined because she backed up her husband’s refused asylum claim, a statement made in front of a man she says was her abuser.

“My pain had got better and I was quite hopeful about my future,” she said. “But after the Home Office’s decision [to refuse her asylum case] the pain has come back and I feel very scared now about what might happen.

“The Home Office ask me why I didn’t tell my story as soon as I came to this country but I didn’t know where to go or who to tell. I only understood my rights when I got help from GCIN’s woman’s workers and started talking to Women’s Aid.”

Now her future is uncertain. She said: “Where will I go? It feels like there is no way out for me.”

*Zinia’s name has been changed.