Mother awarded compensation for UK immigration detention mistake
February 01 2010 by Liam Clifford
A Bolivian woman and her four children have been granted £100,000 in compensation for their suffering after wrongly being held in a UK immigration detention centre.
The family has now been granted the right to remain living in the
UK, after fleeing the country in fear of their lives.
The Home Office has
admitted it was wrong in detaining the family for 42 days in 2004. They were
held at Oakington detention centre when the children were aged just three to
eleven years old.
The mother, Carmen Quirogo, stated, "I brought these
proceedings so that my voice and the voice of other detained families would be
heard. No family should suffer as we have done. I hope the Home Office have
learned the lessons from my children's case.” She claims they suffered abuse and
threats at the hands of the guards.
This case and others have led to
calls for the banning of children being held in detention centres. Sarah
Campbell of Bail for Immigration Detainees stated, “this shocking case
demonstrates the serious harm caused to children by detention. In our work we
regularly see the horrendous effects which detention has on children - many of
the children we work with experience depression, bed-wetting, weight-loss and
even self-harm.”
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