A resident of the Balseskin Reception Centre, home to many asylum seekers and refugees, wished to get his story out following a series of recent attacks on occupants of the hostel.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of being targeted, didn’t hold anything back in his story, which began seven years ago when he first arrived to Ireland.
“I came to Ireland to stay with a friend of mine,” he said, “but I soon realised that he had different intentions. My ‘friend’ had attempted to sexually exploit me for more than a week when I first arrived, demanding that I share a bed with him. I refused.”
A series of complaints to the Department of Justice landed the man who spoke to Metro Éireann in some trouble, as he said the State sought to deport him. After a sojourn in the UK and two short stints in prison, the man has been in Ireland for five consecutive years.
During this time, he has grown overwhelmingly upset with the situation he and his fellow residents are forced to live in at Balseskin.
“We live in a prison,” he said. “I am not free to invite any outside acquaintances inside. Our meals are scheduled for us; everything is determined by time. We are grown adults, but our schedules are as if we are children.”
He described the physical makeup of the centre as one to be questioned. “There are cockroaches all over the place,” he said. “Everything is dirty; the bathrooms are filthy with grime.”
Four recent attacks on residents of the centre prompted the man to share his story, in the hopes that the truth would be exposed.
“So many media outlets cover the truth of our situation because they don’t care to give us the time of day,” he said. “The gardaí, too, were slow to take us seriously until the attacks began to pile up.
The man explained that many of the residents tend to be hesitant to report their issues because they fear that gardaí involvement would lead to their deportation. He disagreed, however: “We have to bring these issues to light if we hope for them to end.
The man also claimed that management takes extra care to clean the centre when they know agencies are coming to check, so as to make the area appear better than it is from day to day.
“We would like someone to come and look at us and see how it truly is, with the management’s aggression and dirty facilities,” he said.
– Brendan O’Shea
