Women and girls seeking asylum in Britain have alleged that they were raped, sexually assaulted and harassed after being placed in mixed Home Office accommodation, an Observer investigation has found. The claims include a case where a 14-year-old girl was allegedly groomed and raped after being separated from her mother at a hotel housing mostly single men in south-west England.
The girl's mother, speaking on condition of anonymity, said her daughter was “extremely vulnerable” due to previous abuse. Despite this, she and her sibling were placed in a different room across the corridor, next door to a group of men. The mother said she repeatedly raised concerns with hotel staff and asked for her children to be moved into her room, but was told this was not possible. When she tried to keep her door propped open at night to watch over them, she says staff told her it must be closed.
The girl is said to have been targeted by a man from the neighbouring room who gave her food and invited her into his room. The alleged rape was only discovered months later, in October 2023, after the girl began suffering gynaecological problems. Her mother claimed failings by the Home Office had allowed the man to “prey on her” daughter. The hotel was later closed, and the family was moved to a women-only hotel. The mother said it seemed as though the Home Office “knew what they did was wrong” but had initially prioritised cost-cutting.
In another case, a pregnant woman supported by Rape Crisis was housed in a mixed-sex hostel and remained living there after her baby was born. She described single men in neighbouring rooms who would “drink together and smoke different things”, and said she was often followed. Another woman, from Sierra Leone, who had been trafficked for sexual exploitation, was placed in mixed accommodation despite her history, and described it as “the most scary seven months” of her life.
The cases have prompted calls for urgent action by the Home Office to tackle “systemic failures to protect women and children from sexual violence in asylum accommodation”. Ciara Bergman, chief executive of Rape Crisis, said the failings amounted to a “scandal”. Sarah Collier, a human rights solicitor at Irwin Mitchell, said the firm was seeing “a lot of issues with women in asylum accommodation”, including that people were being housed in mixed hotels even when they had disclosed being victims of sexual abuse. She said that in cases where complaints were raised by fellow hotel residents, very little was done.
