Ella

When I came to the UK to seek asylum, I thought I just had to tell the truth. ‘We don’t believe you’, the man in the Croydon UKBA office said. ‘Get out. I’ll call security if you don’t leave.’ I had no money and no friends in London, I waited through the night, terrified of the men on the streets around me.

When I applied for asylum, my decision was refused. They didn’t believe that I was married to my husband, who happened to be well-known musician because I didn’t know the date of his birth, and when they asked me to give his father’s name I gave a nickname and not the name they found on the Internet. Because they had not accepted my marriage, they didn’t even consider my evidence of abuse.