Settled status scheme could be putting domestic abuse victims at risk

The Home Office launched its EU settlement scheme at the end of March, but the application process leaves some non-UK citizens in a particularly vulnerable position. Emily Goddard reports

‘I was afraid I’d be deported and my daughter would not be with me,’ said one woman whose husband was abusing her (Getty)

Hidden in a carrier bag, under a pile of rubbish sacks at the bottom of Victoria Silva’s* husband’s wardrobe, sit the documents that held the power to determine whether she had a future in the UK after Brexit. Silva has non-UK dual EU citizenship and has lived in the UK for more than a decade, but with no evidence of her own to prove it, she needed to access the paperwork to secure settled status.

But that was never going to be easy and her husband “would be very, very frustrated” if he found out that she had secretly accessed those vital documents. “He [her husband] thinks I don’t know where he hides the papers, but I know where everything is,” the 52-year-old says. “Taking them was very scary. I took everything and had to put it all back in the same position so he wouldn’t notice.”

After more than 25 years of marriage, Silva and her husband recently separated. They have a teenage daughter together and things were not always bad, but the last decade of their relationship was marred by merciless emotional and psychological abuse. Silva was cruelly prevented access to food and had to eat in secret. Her husband was against her learning English and would frequently mention her nationality to torment her about being deported. The taunting, she says, was another form of manipulation that made her fearful of deportation and she was unaware until last year that she had the right to apply to remain in the country.