Women fleeing rape face coercion and control by Home Office contractors | Refugees

Women fleeing rape, forced marriage and sexual exploitation are being subjected to coercion and surveillance by Interior Ministry officials in hotels, new research has found.

The charity Women for Refugee Women has conducted the first research specifically looking at the experiences of women in Home Office asylum seeker hotels. The researchers included seven women who had previously lived in such accommodation.

A total of 63 women from 26 different countries took part in the research. According to Freedom of Information data obtained for the report, there were 8,029 female asylum seekers living in hotels in June 2024, with the three largest nationality groups being Iranians (1,236), Eritreans (618) and Afghans (586).

According to the charity, 65-85% of its clients have been victims of gender-based violence over the past decade.

The survey found that nearly half of the women surveyed said living in an Interior Ministry hotel made them feel suicidal. Complaints were made about voyeurism by male hotel staff who entered their rooms without permission while they were naked or partially clothed, sexual harassment by male staff, and oppressive daily roll calls and curfews, which were described as “school dormitory rules” that “infantilized” the women.

Even women who left hotels to go to church or a local shop were sometimes questioned about what they were doing and where they were going. Women living in dispersed accommodation, such as shared housing, are not subject to the same level of scrutiny. One woman missed her curfew by 10 minutes and was locked out of the hotel. She had to knock on the window to be allowed back in.

The report’s authors acknowledge that women who experience sexual harassment by hotel staff are not facing Home Office-approved policies, but argue that the Home Office has designed hotel environments to be “controlling, threatening and surveilling”.

A woman said she was sexually harassed daily by a hotel manager who would constantly knock on her door and ask her to go out with him. He told her, “You’re looking for men outside, but we’re here.”

She was allowed to stay with a friend for a while when she became ill, but when she returned she found she had been evicted from the hotel, with some of her belongings taken to a charity shop and her Home Office paperwork thrown in the bin. She has been homeless for the past year, staying on various sofas. The hotel manager who sexually harassed her has been fired.

While some women were allowed to receive visitors, many were not. One woman returned to her hotel after surgery feeling so unwell that she asked for a friend to stay overnight to care for her, but her request was denied by hotel staff.

Women struggled to get by on the current Home Office allowance of £8.86 a week, which was cut from £9.58 in January. One woman said she had spent half her weekly allowance on bus tickets to report to the Home Office, while another said she did not have enough money to leave the hotel and a third said that although hotels were supposed to provide sanitary products, this was often not the case and she did not have enough money to buy them from her allowance.

The report calls for an end to the use of hotels and the provision of safe and supportive accommodation where women can recover and rebuild their lives.

Andrea Vukovic, deputy director of Women for Refugee Women, said: “The government urgently needs to get a grip on what is happening in asylum seeker hotels to prevent further damage.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “These are very serious allegations and we will investigate them urgently. The Home Office takes any allegation of misconduct or criminality by asylum reception staff very seriously.

“The health and safety of those we support and house is our priority. All incidents of inappropriate staff behaviour at our accommodation locations are thoroughly investigated and we expect suppliers to take swift action where they fall below our standards.”