A local authority professional contacted the Angelou Centre about a 26-year-old African woman with three children who had disclosed being a victim of domestic violence. Gloria had been arrested for allegedly attacking her husband with a knife. On the night she was arrested her husband had become aggressive and violent. She tried repeatedly to get away from him as he was beating her and told him that she would call the police. In response, he picked up a knife and said if she called the police, he would cut her into pieces.
A neighbour heard Gloria’s screams and contacted the police. However, Gloria was arrested and placed in a cell overnight. She repeatedly asked for an interpreter to understand what was happening, but this was not provided.
Gloria’s husband had used her insecure immigration status to threaten and abuse her further. She didn’t have access to any of her immigration documents. She knew she had entered the UK on a spousal visa but her husband told her that she now had no status in the UK and if she left him, she would be deported and lose custody of her children.
When Gloria was arrested, she couldn’t confirm her immigration status to the police, who contacted the Home Office to clarify her status. When they explained this to Gloria without the use of an interpreter, she thought it meant the police would have her deported, just as her husband had always threatened to do if she accessed support. As a result, Gloria would not disclose her experience of violence to the police for fear that she would be deported, and her children forcibly removed. She didn’t believe that the police would care or listen to her, as their focus appeared to be only on her immigration status.
The police, the Local Authority and professionals involved in Gloria’s case wrongly assumed she had no recourse to public funds. She wasn’t given any access to legal advice about her immigration status, and she had been removed from her home and put into a local hotel, with bail conditions imposed and her three children left in the care of their father. Her husband manipulated services and refused her access to see her children. She wasn’t given any support for food or subsistence, and was left destitute.
After disclosing the violence she experienced to the local authority professional, Gloria spoke to someone on the Angelou team who spoke her language. She described being subject to high levels of physical abuse, domestic slavery, sexual violence, economic abuse, coercive control, and honour-based violence perpetrated by her husband and her in-laws who she lived with.
Within 24 hours the Angelou Centre provided Gloria with:
- Housing and wrap-around intensive support from a multi-lingual advocate
- Legal advice from an independent immigration solicitor
- Access to financial support whilst waiting for her benefits to be granted
- Support with a civil protection order and support with private law proceedings to gain custody of her three children
Gloria now has Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the United Kingdom, and she has her children back with her residing safe in the refuge. The police dropped all charges against her, and pursued the disclosures of domestic and sexual violence by her husband and in-laws.
*Names have been changed to protect privacy
”I thought will I be killed? The Angelou Centre has saved me from thinking in that way. I now feel this is not how it’s going to end. I feel through this organisation now, I have the power to be heard