by Allan NormanThere I was, only yesterday, flippantly comparing caselaw developments for destitute asylum seekers to a particularly abstruse game of Mornington Crescent. I ended by observing:
Warning: you should not play 'Destitution at Mornington Crescent' unless you know the Rules currently being played. Real, vulnerable, people can be badly hurt by miscalled moves!
Just hours later, I was brought up sharp with a reminder of just how vulnerable, and how badly hurt, when the publication, 'Outsourcing Abuse' by Birnberg Pierce Solicitors, Medical Justice and NCADC was launched. It tells of hundreds of assaults on asylum seekers being deported: "casual racism and inhumanity from officers employed by the Home Office and its subcontracted private companies".
(Illustration by Lucy Edkins, used with permission of NCADC)You might want to ensure your empathy skills are disengaged before reading this, as if you can truly imagine yourself in the place of the victim it will be a horrible read.
Imagine what it is like to be the survivor of abuse. Add in the problems, all too common in abuse situations, of whether you would be believed. Now add in some more specific ingredients. The antipathy of the general public to you and other asylum seekers makes you wonder whether anyone would care; and the time and place of the abuse makes it almost impossible for you to be confident that anyone will learn of it. Abusers must feel they have almost total impunity when their victims are in the process of leaving the country, against their will, in circumstances that mean they are unlikely to be welcomed back.
What kind of abuse are we talking about? "...crushing of nerves at the wrist from forceful pulling on handcuffs, limitation of neck movement by patients whose heads were pushed under aircraft seats, numbness of the face after blows around the cheek and eye. I have also seen a dislocated wrist, giant bruises and swellings the size of my fist... Some of these findings are worse still. They include dislocation to the knee requiring a plaster cast and several people rendered unable to walk for extended periods..."
Social workers are not implicated as perpetrators of this outsourced abuse, although Duvell and Jordan ('How low can you go - dilemmas of social work with asylum seekers in London': Journal of Social Work Research and Evaluation, 2 (2), 2001, pp. 189-205) have found social workers with asylum seekers "will volunteer to do the 'dirty work' of social policy, even where this involves the systematic deprivation by official agencies of the means of dignified existence."
On second thoughts, let's hope our skills of empathy are fully engaged!
Allan Norman is Principal Social Worker & Solicitor at Celtic Knot (www.celticknot.org.uk), an independent law firm and social work practice.
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