On migrant trail, women become prey
BERLIN — One Syrian woman who joined the stream of migrants to Germany was forced to pay down her husband’s debt to smugglers by making herself available for sex along the way. Another was beaten unconscious by a Hungarian prison guard after refusing his advances.
A third, a former makeup artist, dressed as a boy and stopped washing to ward off the men in her group of refugees. Now in an emergency shelter in Berlin, she still sleeps in her clothes and, like several women here, pushes a cupboard in front of her door at night.
“There is no lock or key or anything,” said Esraa al-Horani, the makeup artist and one of the few women here not afraid to give her name. She has been lucky, Horani said: “I’ve only been beaten and robbed.”
War and violence at home, exploitative smugglers and perilous seas along the way, an uncertain welcome and future on a foreign continent — these are some of the risks faced by tens of thousands of migrants who continue to make their way to Europe from the Middle East and beyond. But at each step of the way, the dangers are amplified for women.
Interviews with dozens of migrants, social workers and psychologists caring for traumatized new arrivals across Germany suggest the current mass migration has been accompanied by a surge of violence against women. From forced marriages and sex trafficking to domestic abuse, women report violence from fellow refugees, smugglers, male family members and even European police officers. There are no reliable statistics for sexual and other abuse of female refugees.
Among the more than 1 million migrants who have entered Europe over the past year, fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, men outnumber women by more than three to one, U.N. statistics show. “The men dominate, numerically and otherwise,” said Heike Rabe, a gender expert at the German Institute for Human Rights.
Susanne Hohne, the lead psychotherapist at a center in west Berlin specializing in treating traumatized female migrants, said almost all of the 44 women in her care — some barely adults, some over 60 — have experienced sexual violence. “We go to our own therapists for supervision twice a month to cope with what we hear,” Hohne said about her 18 staff members. Together they provide two weekly therapy sessions to each woman and up to seven hours of social work, including home visits, to help them adjust to life in Germany.
In Greece, one of the main entry points to Europe for migrants, reception centers are often overcrowded and lack adequate lighting and separate spaces for single women, said William Spindler of the U.N. refugee agency. “Men, women and children sleep in the same areas,” he said. Across Europe, he added, “cases of sexual violence and family violence have been reported to our staff in the field.”
Even in the relative safety of Germany, an asylum system struggling with the logistics of accommodating close to 1 million migrants in 2015, has been cutting corners when it comes to basic protections for women, like lockable bedrooms and washrooms.
“The priority has been to avoid homelessness,” said Rabe, the German expert on gender-based violence. “But an environment that inadvertently facilitates violence is a risk factor. We cannot allow standards to slip.”
That is easier said than done, said Jan Schebaum, who manages two homes for asylum seekers in east Berlin. There are two bathrooms per floor, and the rooms are full.
One of the homes he runs is the emergency shelter where Horani, the makeup artist, stays. Of 120 adults there, most are Syrian and Afghan, and 80 are men.
“The women are in the shadow of the men,” Schebaum said. “Their voices are drowned out, and it’s a problem.”
At the food counter, where volunteers hand out hot soup and fresh fruit, the women are often last in line. They stay in their rooms a lot and rarely sign up for activities advertised on the notice board, like museum visits or concerts. One Syrian woman has not left the building since arriving two months ago because her husband, who has not yet arrived in Germany, prohibited her from doing so.
In the laundry room, stories of domestic abuse circulate in hushed conversations among the women. There is a violently jealous husband on the fourth floor who has beaten his wife. There is a woman who has been beaten by her husband because they cannot have children. A couple of months ago, two Afghan men harassed an Afghan girl with lewd comments and pushed her off her bike before others intervened, a volunteer at the shelter said. But few incidents of violence are reported.
“THE WOMEN ARE IN THE SHADOW OF THE MEN. THEIR VOICES ARE DROWNED OUT, AND IT’S A PROBLEM.”
– JAN SCHEBAUM