Joan* was in her late 20s when she arrived in Ireland alone in May 2019. The former midwife fled her home because of sexual violence and felt cautiously optimistic about starting over.
Her hopes were dashed when, a year later, she says she was raped by a man in the Midlands direct provision centre where she lived.
Joan was briefly hospitalised and lodged a formal complaint with gardaí. She was moved to a women’s refuge where she felt “supported and safe”. However, a month later she was transferred to another direct provision centre in the southeast of the country.
Despite repeated requests for her own room, Joan spent the next four years in shared accommodation. She shared living and eating areas with men she did not know. Gardaí investigating the alleged rape visited on a number of occasions asking for more details about the attack. These visits stopped in 2021.
“I just wanted my own space but they wouldn’t give it to me,” says Joan. A softly spoken woman who now works as a carer for elderly people, she stopped raising the issue when her repeated transfer requests fell on deaf ears.
“You can’t relax in that environment and I couldn’t sleep – everyone was a stranger to me. I believed my roommate could bring another stranger into the room and I’d be attacked again.”
Joan spoke with counsellors over the phone but, because of Covid-19 pandemic restrictions at the time, never met them in person. “I think they should have considered how traumatic it was for me to be in a shared room. And to put me in a centre with men, that felt really bad. I didn’t feel safe.”
A Garda spokesman said the DPP had “directed no prosecution” following an investigation, arrest and questioning of a suspect in relation to an alleged assault in Portlaoise in March 2020. Gardaí say Joan was “informed of this outcome” but she says she has no recollection of this.
Last year, she saw her attacker on the street in Dublin. “It was really frightening – I suddenly remembered everything I went through.”
Joan has secured her papers to live and work in Ireland but, like many others, cannot find a place to live. For now, she must continue sharing a room with a stranger. “I should have a safe place where I can be alone. I’m still struggling, I still don’t feel safe.”
When Joan arrived in Ireland, there were about 7,500 people living in direct provision centres and State-provided accommodation. Direct provision was established in April 2000 in response to rising numbers of people claiming asylum. Originally envisioned to accommodate people for six months, the system was widely criticised for not fulfilling residents’ basic human rights.
A 2012 report by Akidwa, a national network of migrant women living in Ireland, into sexual harassment in direct provision found women lived in “a hostile environment” and did not have proper “security and safety”. It also warned of “a lack of effective follow-through of women’s allegations of sexual misconduct by residents, staff, management and local community service providers”.
In September 2020, a Government-appointed expert advisory group called for appropriate accommodation to be provided for victims of trafficking and sexual or gender-based violence, with non-shared rooms provided in the interim.
That same year, the Government committed to ending direct provision while in office. This commitment has collapsed in light of the sharp increase in people seeking asylum here over the past two years. Today, more than 30,000 people live in international protection accommodation.
Given this continuing crisis, transfers to women-only settings or in to a single room are only considered “in cases of exception and high-needs medical situations,” says a Department of Integration spokeswoman. When a move to a single room is required following a sexual assault, the International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) works with medical professionals to assess whether a person’s accommodation situation is “impacting on their physical and mental health” or is “essential to meet their health needs”.
Victims of sexual assault are “linked with all relevant national supports” and a welfare team considers the “suitability” of a person’s accommodation.
Rachel*, who came to Ireland in 2022, also fled her African home because of sexual violence. She initially lived in an all-women house in South Dublin but was moved to a much larger, mixed-gender accommodation centre when her teenage daughter arrived in Ireland the following year.
“I was safe in the first centre. All the women there had different stories – one woman had been raped, another was forced into a young marriage,” she says.
The centre where she now lives “brings flashbacks of my rape”, says Rachel. “I have a phobia of crowds or being around men but this place is so overcrowded, management stuff people in together and there’s a lot more men than women.
“People sell drugs in the hotel and there are men texting my teenage daughter for sex. The situation feels so much worse here than when I was in the other centre. All the women knew each other, it was like a family.”
Rachel says her doctors have requested that she and her daughter be moved to more appropriate accommodation but no transfer has been offered to date.
[ ‘Direct provision takes away your ability to dream’Opens in new window ]
[ Government has quietly shelved its plan to end direct provisionOpens in new window ]
Dr Caroline Munyi, migrant women’s health co-ordinator with Akidwa, a network for migrant women living in Ireland, says the country has never been equipped to support single asylum-seeking women, particularly those who have suffered sexual trauma. Housing a woman victim of sexual violence in mixed-gender accommodation is “likely to cause a lot of harm”, says Dr Munyi.
Counselling for these women should also be “culturally appropriate”, she says. “A woman who has gone through this needs a very special space where staff are trained to handle her mental health. The psychological impact of sexual violence lives with a woman forever and if health professionals express doubt she has been raped, that retraumatises her.”
Some women struggle to speak openly about the violence they’ve suffered, says Immigrant Council of Ireland anti-trafficking co-ordinator Jennifer Okeke.
“Europe is a place where you’re encouraged to say something but these women come from a culture where there is a lot of shame involved in being raped,” says Okeke. “That shame doesn’t disappear because you move to a different country.”
Okeke acknowledges that placing men in single-sex accommodation without requisite supports can cause other problems, but says vulnerable women must be prioritised.
Any woman who has suffered exploitation “does not feel safe” in mixed-gender housing, she says. Women living in some direct provision centres, particularly in rural areas, can also be perceived as a source of “cheap sexual services”.
“When we talk about sexual harassment for women living in direct provision, it’s not only coming from men within the system, it’s coming from the local men as well,” she says.
She says that rather than paying for an escort, it’s seen by some men as cheaper to go to a direct provision centre and pay a vulnerable migrant woman for sex instead.
“Women do get propositioned from time to time and men can become aggressive if you refuse,” Okeke says.
Former asylum seeker and now Irish citizen Amanda Nyoni says most women who seek asylum alone struggle to trust the people around them. “You keep a lot of personal and intimate stuff to yourself. Just because we’re all in the system doesn’t mean we’re the same.”
Navigating the health system is also challenging, she adds. “There’s also a lack of awareness around how to pair you up with someone for counselling. They just put you with whoever is available – it’s not based on what you’ve been through.
“I think every migrant woman I know, including myself, has suffered from depression while going through the system. There’s a certain atmosphere and climate that breaks you to your very core. You’re carrying this weight, and trying to keep going and just hoping you don’t crash.”
*Women requested pseudonyms be used to protect their identity
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