A sex trafficking survivor and her young daughter fears she could be deported to Rwanda despite living in the UK for several years.
The woman has been raising her five-year-old daughter in Glasgow after escaping the trauma of trafficking and slavery in the UK. Her young daughter meanwhile, although born here, is not recognised as a UK citizen because of her mum's status as an asylum seeker. Now the woman, who originally hails from Cameroon but cannot be named to protect her identity, has been heartlessly refused asylum. She escaped the country after her father was arrested for opposing the government, but despite having evidence of this she was still refused the right to stay.
She told the Daily Record: "My daughter is Scottish. Scotland is the only home she has ever known," "Her school is here, her friends are here. She speaks with a Scottish accent. It is terrifying to me that we could be sent to Rwanda or Cameroon, where we would be in serious danger." The woman has being identified "conclusively" as a trafficking victim under the UK Government's own system, the National Referral Mechanism.
Last week, MPs voted against amendments from the House of Lords to exempt victims of modern slavery from its widely condemned Rwanda scheme. Her MP, Anne McLaughlin has dubbed the decision as "cruel", adding that "her life reads like a horror story". This woman has suffered unimaginable cruelty at the hands of individuals but alarmingly at the hands of governments too, including the British Government," said the SNP MP for Glasgow North.
MP Anne McGlaughlin has condemned the decision (Internet Unknown)She continued: "The Home Office agrees she was trafficked here, it knows the barbarity she faced for years but it doesn't think she is worthy of our help. How can it be so brutal? And how can it justify sending a wee five-year-old Scottish girl to a similar fate as her mum?" The woman was given a permit to work, so took a job as a carer and wants to train as a nurse. Despite once having a comfortable life as a languages graduate with a small successful business in her home town in west Cameroon.
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She fled to Nigeria in 2016 after her father was arrested for involvement in a pro-independence movement, where she was abandoned by smugglers and targeted by sex traffickers. She claims she was raped by "five or six men a night", and later escaped to Europe after being promised a better life by a client. Instead, she was imprisoned in a house in Belgium where she was further exploited for sex.
When she begged to be freed, the man told her she had no documents, owed him a debt and she should treat him "like a God" because he had saved her. "I would just sit and cry," she said. "I knew it was not what he told me it would be but there was nothing I could do."
The woman fled her home country back in 2016, eventually being trafficked into the UK (Tony Nicoletti/Daily Record)After two weeks, she was taken through France and then Southampton, before being forced into domestic slavery to pay off the "debt". After eventually escaping, she flagged down a car. "He offered to take me to the police but I was scared of the police," she added. "He was kind and he dropped me but I was on the street again, with nowhere to go."
She later formed a new relationship with a man through the church and fell pregnant after two years, when the man cruelly abandoned her and her daughter. Her plight emerged on Monday as Rishi Sunak announced a press conference ahead of plans to push through the government's controversial Rwanda scheme.
Her only consolation at present is the support she gets from charity Survivors of Human Trafficking Scotland which has supported her to access legal and emotional help. She said: "If it wasn't for SOHTIS, I don't know what I would do. I am speaking out because I want people to know how cruel this all is. I suffer from depression and I am traumatised from what has happened to me. I am now terrified of being sent back to Cameroon or Rwanda. I just want to raise my child in her home of Scotland."
A Home Office spokesperson told the Mirror: “We have not been provided with enough information to look into this particular case. Nobody will be removed to Rwanda or another third country unless it is safe for them.”
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