Hate crime in Ireland:
Jane* has heard her children being called “monkeys” and has been told “to go back home”.
Little did she ever expect that the racism would escalate, within recent weeks, to a situation where she would have to abandon her home of seven years.
In early July, the four tyres in her car were slashed with a knife. At the time, she did not think there was a racist motivation behind it.
Just over a week later, it happened again. Jane, a single mother, reported it to the gardaí.
“After the second time, I moved my car. Imagine, you have to walk somewhere to your car, because you cannot park it in your own driveway.”
But the intimidation didn’t end. Just after midnight last Tuesday, July 14, she was in her house when there was banging on her door.
“I didn’t answer. I got a phone call after that. It was a neighbour, who had been knocking. He saw two men in my front garden, one at the door and one at the gate.”
When she went out she saw the entire front windows graffitied with ‘Blacks Out’. Her front porch window was also graffitied. They had even opened the porch door and sprayed graffiti over her front door.
“I thought it was horrible. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I called the guards and they came and they stayed here for about two hours. I was so scared, so, so scared.”
Jane said she sat up the whole night, worried for her children, a boy, 12, and a girl, 8.
She said she has “no idea” who is behind the harassment, or why they are doing it. “There must be something wrong with someone to do this. I didn’t do anything wrong to anybody.”
She said the following morning, Wednesday, she had to bring the kids out to drop them off, while she went to work.
“It was so bad. If I was able to close their eyes — I didn’t want them to see it. I told them, ‘you must go forward, don’t look, but whatever you do you must turn to get into the car’.
‘That is horrible’, they said. ‘That is very bad.’”
Jane went to the council, armed with the various Garda letters detailing the incidents. “The council said my house was not a council house [it is privately rented], so they cannot help us. They directed me to the homeless unit. We went there and we were told, ‘you are not on the council list, you are not homeless’, and they can’t help us.”
Jane said all she wanted was a room for one night, so that they didn’t have to go back to their home.
“After that I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t know where I was going to bring the children,” she said.
“I was driving around and around for ages. I was in a state. The boy was crying, I was crying. My girl said ‘mommy, I am not going to that street’. They said they were not going to ‘the horrible house’, ‘the scary movie house’. We had nowhere to go.”
She reached out to a friend, and stayed in her attic on Wednesday night. The next day she loaded the children on to a bus for a four-hour trip to Donegal, where they could stay with a friend. Jane travelled back on Friday to try the council again, to no avail. That day, while in the house, she discovered the four tyres of her car had been slashed again, for a third time. She is still staying in her friend’s attic.
“I am exhausted,” she said. “Since two weeks I am not sleeping, I don’t feel hungry, I am shaking when I think of it. But how much more are the children affected now or in the future?”
She said the children feel rejected: “They feel they are not part of this country. The boy doesn’t talk much. The girl says she feels she doesn’t belong. They are all born here.”
Jane said the previous week her uncle had moved his family, including five children, out of Clondalkin.
“His house was broken many times. One day they went out and they had broken in and left a kitchen knife on their bed. How could you sleep there? It was racist and criminal.”
Local councillor Gino Kenny, a member of the People Before Profit group, said this was not just an attack on Jane. “This is an attack on everyone, the whole community,” he said.
“The people behind this are a minority of a minority and do not speak for anyone. The neighbours are sickened by it.”
Gardaí confirmed they were investigating the incidents involving Jane.
A spokesperson for South Dublin County Council said: “In this case we are investigating the matters brought to our attention.”
In the meantime, Jane is at her wits’ end, separated from her children and unable to see a way out. “What is going to happen? I have no idea, no idea.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
