LGBTQ+ people face unique challenges in immigration detention (Picture: GETTY)
As soon as Joel Mordi was driven into the asylum detention compound, he described it as if the ‘gates of hell’ had just opened.
Wearing a blazer and Doc Martens with rainbow laces, he was guided through the big hall of Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) lined with yellow doors and gangs of people clustered together.
Joel immediately felt powerless, as homophobic insults from fellow detainees started.
‘People called me a sissy,’ the 26-year-old gay man tells Metro. ‘Then there was f****t and batty boy, but there were so many street terms that I didn’t know. The ones I couldn’t understand were probably really bad.
‘It felt like I had a target on my back,’ he adds, ‘but the officer I was with didn’t do anything.’
Joel was just 21 on November 5, 2019, when he touched down in London after leaving his home country of Nigeria – where homosexual acts are punishable by up to 14 years in prison. He fled Lagos after organising a public protest for LGBTQ+ rights and receiving death threats as a result.
But his ordeal wasn’t over. Claiming asylum at Heathrow Airport immediately after landing, he says he was held in a waiting room for 11 hours – where he was strip searched – and then transferred to Harmondsworth IRC.
Joel spent one night in the facility’s annex, then was transferred to the main detention area, where the homophobic insults from fellow detainees occurred. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning.
Joel was left shaken and scared for his life (Picture: JOEL MORDI)
Joel adds: ‘One night, the door handle started rattling and someone I didn’t know opened it. He had come to gain sexual favours and threatened to hurt me if I didn’t comply. Eventually, I did what he wanted and then he left.
‘The following night, he came into my room again. This time, he wanted something different, but I couldn’t go through with it. He tried but I screamed and he left,’ he says.
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Joel was left shaken and scared for his life, especially with how eerily silent it was in the aftermath when his world felt like it had completely crumbled.
At the time, he tried to report to one of the officers what had happened to him, but Joel says she ‘didn’t want to hear it’ and so ‘dismissed’ him.
Inside Harmondsworth IRC (Picture: Dominic Lipinski/PA)
Five years on, Joel still recalls vivid and traumatising details of the assault, including the man smelling of weed or the countless cuts on both of his arms. Thankfully, to Joel’s relief, he was granted bail less than a week after his detainment. But the damage was already done.
In the years since, his mental health suffered immensely, including insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks and ‘major’ PTSD. ‘Detention never really leaves you,’ he says. ‘I remember everything. I’ve tried to undo it but …read more
Source:: Metro
