Immigrant victims of state officials

I HAVE written to the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, to express the serious concern of the Irish Refugee Council about the appalling insensitivity shown recently to a number of immigrants and their children by certain officials of the state.

There was the case of a multiple rape victim who, until her removal from the state earlier this month, was a client of the Rape Crisis Centre (RCC) in Co Mayo which had, exceptionally, written directly to the Minister indicating a belief that the woman was "unable to travel even to England due to health and psychological problems."

Despite this the woman was forced, without having first had the opportunity to contact her RCC counsellor and with less than an hour to prepare her young children for the unplanned trip, to undertake a lengthy overnight drive to Dublin with strangers before being taken off to the UK with great haste next morning.