Ex-boyfriend may hold clue to frostbite victim

An untraced boyfriend could reveal how a migrant worker whose legs were amputated ended up destitute on the streets of Northern Ireland, it emerged tonight.

Baffled medical staff are trying to unravel the nine-day blackout before Oksana Sukhanova, 23, was picked up ravished by frostbite.

The Ukrainian woman, who was laid off months earlier by a Co Antrim poultry factory where she worked, has told counsellors and social workers she can’t remember what happened.

She also refused a visit from former colleagues after a media organisation offered to lay on a minibus to take Eastern Europeans employed at McKeown’s Fine Foods to Belfast’s City Hospital.

Ms Sukhanova was rushed in for emergency surgery on New Year’s Day when she turned up at a house in Ballymoney, Co Antrim, she once shared with other Ukrainians and Latvians.

She had moved out around the time bosses at McKeown’s decided to end her contract, citing health and hygiene reasons, on September 17.

Although the firm offered to pay for a plane ticket home, Ms Sukhanova rejected the offer.

It is believed she went to live with Polish friends in another part of Ballymoney after beginning a relationship with one of them.

But nothing is known of her movements from December 22, when she lost contact with them, and January 1.

With police deciding not to launch an investigation after interviewing Ms Sukhanova, hospital staff cannot question her about her plight.

But one source said: “Something terrible befell this healthy girl that has resulted in her only being found in the final stages of hypothermia.

“How could someone have lived rough, unseen or unnoticed, in a community that size? Surely somebody noticed something.”

As she begins agonising rehabilitation in the hospital where she will stay for at least a month, staff were also amazed that the horrific ordeal had not taken further toll on her appearance.

“She looks well groomed, her skin and lips are not hacked and her eyes are very clear,” one said.

The young woman’s situation has also provoked demands for union rights to be extended to the estimated 26,000 migrant workers employed mainly in Northern Ireland’s meat processing industry.

Leading trade unionist Eamonn McCann told a meeting of the Socialist Environmental Alliance in Londonderry tonight that employers can dump Eastern European staff once their contract is up.

He said: “What’s needed is organisation to bring all the workers together to look out for one another and for our common interests.

“We need the meat industry, for example, fully unionised, with union membership automatically available to all incoming workers.

“Their wages and conditions, including living conditions, should be set through union negotiation.”