#Staff was knocking on the kids doors every hour e en when the kids were sleeping

[coochiequeens]

"118 unaccompanied children remain unaccounted for, some as young as 12."

Children missing from Home Office hotels likely to have been trafficked, report finds

Exclusive: Study sparks new calls for public inquiry into ‘scandal’ of missing migrant children in UK

Mark Townsend Wed 17 Jul 2024

Scores of asylum-seeking children are still missing from the UK’s Home Office hotels as a new report reveals that many are likely to have been trafficked.

The most recent figures show that 118 unaccompanied children remain unaccounted for, some as young as 12. The study, released on Wednesday, is the first to conclude that children placed inside the hotels were at “increased risk of trafficking”, contradicting Home Office claims that the youngsters were not exploited.

Experts said the findings reinforced demands for an official inquiry into the “national scandal”.

The report, by the University College London (UCL) and Ecpat UK, was commissioned after it was revealed last year that dozens of asylum-seeking children were kidnapped by criminal gangs from hotels run by the Home Office. Basic checks to keep youngsters safe were not carried out in a scandal regarded among the most shameful of the last government.

The new report details interviews with professionals involved in the care of the children, including a former Home Office hotel worker who knew of three trafficking incidents from their hotel. Traffickers contacted the young people, they said, “via a fake [social media] account or Facebook … [It] is not that they are naive, but when in such a bad situation, they think: ‘OK, it’s the risk but this place is also bad.’

Researchers found that Home Office attempts to protect the children actually drove them into the hands of criminals. Hotel staff were instructed to knock on the doors of children every hour throughout the night, especially for nationalities deemed to be of high risk of going missing, such as Albanians.

“Ironically, [this was] the reason that most kids went missing,” said the former Home Office hotel worker.

Seven hotels were run by the Home Office to accommodate minors who arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel in small boats, many from Africa, including Eritrea and Sudan. Such hotels were in operation from 2021 until January 2024 after a high court ruling deemed them unlawful.

In total, 440 children went missing from them, with 144 not found by last November and 118 still unaccounted for in March, according the most recent update.

The report’s lead author and principal investigator, Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, of UCL’s department of risk and disaster reduction, said: “This is a national scandal which must not be repeated. It is still not clear what attempts have been made to find those who remain missing and make sure that they are safe.”

Patricia Durr, the chief executive of Ecpat UK, added: “This research confirms our fears and emphasises the need for urgent action to find the missing children, and for a statutory independent inquiry to ensure this child protection scandal never happens again.”

One social worker told researchers that boys from Albania were “very vulnerable, very frightened” due to a “targeted campaign” against them and concerns that they may be sent home imminently.

Although the hotels for children are now closed, researchers also found significant concern that youngsters seeking asylum were being incorrectly assessed as above 18 and placed in adult hotels, where they risked sexual abuse and exploitation. Several child-protection experts highlighted safeguarding risks from children forced to share rooms with traumatised adults.

Ayeb-Karlsson added: “Children who are incorrectly determined as adults are deprived of their rights to education, protection and safeguarding.”

Durr urged the new government to scrap the “catastrophic” Illegal Migration Act, which allows the Home Office to directly provide accommodation for unaccompanied children.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The allegations in this report are very serious. Unaccompanied children in the asylum system can be extremely vulnerable and their welfare and safety should be a central concern. We will consider these findings carefully.

“A new government is determined to restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly, and ensures the rules are properly enforced.”

[displacedprincess]

sleep oneshot

alternatively - the mateo effect

@mateodeavalor

Everyone’s heard of the placebo effect. Was it possible for a person to have that same effect?

March 4, 2010

Fact: Elena Flores liked to sleep. A lifetime of being groomed to take over the throne one day didn’t lend itself to having many days to sleep in. Elena clung to every minute of sleep as if it were a precious gem. Which was why, when nightmares plagued her sleep, she was disproportionately upset even as a small child.

This time, however, the Princess hadn’t slept but a handful of decent nights since February 19th on account of the on live television assassination of her parents, and the elaborate funeral procession and burial days later. At first it was just the stress of it all that kept her up late. That wasn’t so bad. She just slept in an hour past normal and her grandparents, Esteban, and the staff allowed it because she’d just lost her parents. That was before her brain had enough time to process everything enough for nightmares to come.

She had her first nightmare on February 27th. And since then she was afraid to close her eyes, for when she did, she was met with a ghostly version of her mother, asking her why she let them bury them when they were still alive. Her father, telling her they were scared in their dark coffins beneath the dirt. Blood pouring from black circle where their warm brown eyes once were. The last time she slept, Goliath made an appearance, glaring at her and shaking his head as he apologized to the corpses of her parents and his best friends for their ‘ungrateful daughter, so quick to rid her life of you.’ Elena woke up screaming the wee hours of the morning, March 2nd, and she’s not been able to fall asleep since.

Or if she has, it was quick cat naps. Her body thankfully protected her from the horrors that awaited her in REM sleep. Unfortunately, she didn’t get any meaningful rest, either.

So when Mateo de Alva came to the palace with his grandfather that afternoon, Elena...looked like hell. And she knew it. Oh god, did she know it.

And Mateo knew it, too. Surely he did, but he made no gasp of horror, no facial expression of disgust. He simply knocked on her bedroom door - Esteban must have told him she was in there - and let himself in after she called to him from her vanity, “it’s open!”

“Princess E-Elena,” Mateo greeted with his head in a partial bow. He still didn’t get she was ‘just Elena’ to him, even in front of palace staff, did he? “Um. Esteban said I’d find you, um…find you here.”

Elena set her brush down and frowned at her splotchy faced reflection. “Close your eyes, you don’t need to see this atrocity to God,” the princess said, voice croaky as she dabbed at her eyes that started to water again.

His footsteps were moving toward her. The opposite of what she wanted, but just what she needed. A part of her wanted to shout at him to leave, to let her be alone, to let her - to let her dissolve into nothingness like her parents, because that’s what they were now. Nothing. They were dead. And nothing - nothing. They were nothing now, and she wanted to be nothing.

Or, part of her did.

But a bigger of her... wanted to finish brushing her hair, wanted to force herself out of her bedroom and into the real world again.

And most of her? Most of her wanted to cling to Mateo and cry, cling to Mateo and hopefully feel like her best friend’s presence would make her breathe again.

“Mateo…” she trailed off after saying his name in a half-sob. With one hand, she gripped the handle of her hairbrush. With the other, she reached for him without looking at him. “Ven acá, Matu. Ven acá, por favor, te necesito.”

Most of her wanted to cling to Mateo, burrow under her covers, and nap like when they were children. Maybe next to him, the nightmares would go away. The only other time since they died she was able to sleep, to really sleep, was the night after the funeral when Goliath let her curl up in his lap like when she was small and hide in his wings. She got...a good three REM cycles. He didn’t have big, soft gargoyle wings, but Mateo was...well he was her best friend, her Matu. And nothing was safer than her two best friends, her boys.

“Elena, I-” Mateo began, before cutting himself off with a nervous swallow. “I don’t know what to say, Elena. But I want to be here. W-what can I do?”

“You can start by staying right here.” The princess took hold of his hand, warm in her icy one, and gripped her hairbrush tighter. “My - my arms hurt from brushing my h-hair. I haven’t in three...three days. Could you-?”

Mateo let go of her hand and picked up the brush before she could say ‘-just make sure there aren’t any tangles left.’ Of course he did. He was always eager to help, anything she asked. Elena tried not to take advantage of it for silly things like brushing her hair, but god, her arms were so tired. Just like the rest of her.

“You’re good at brushing hair,” Elena comments softly, cracking the thinnest of smiles as she watched in the mirror. “Marlena?”

“Yeah, my sister.” He chuckled, briefly. But warm all the same. “She used to make me brush her hair when she was too lazy, ¡qué fastidioso!, and she still does.”

Elena blinked at her reflection before making eye contact with him with help of the mirror. “I’m...sorry. You don’t have to brush my hair if it annoys you, I just…”

“No!” Mateo startled, accidentally tugging at her scalp when the hand holding the brush jerked. “I - I mean. No, I want to. I want to h-help you, so I like - I don’t mind. My sister is just annoying.” He gently worked at a tangle, holding her hair just above it to keep from hurting her and brushing it out, like a real pro. It made Elena smile again, just a little. Having a friend like him would make anybody smile, no matter what.

Even if it was the smallest, shortest smile.

“Mateo? Can I ask...a weird favor?” She asked, turning around to face him and gently taking the brush to set it back down atop the vanity.

He took a half step back, to see her clearly, and when she reached for his hand, he lazily let it hang there for her to mess with. “Nothing’s weird, Elena. I came with my grandfather today because I couldn’t stand not trying to help my best friend anymore. So I want to help. Tell me the weird favor.”

Right, this wasn’t just a random person. This was one of her two oldest and most loyal friends, so maybe Mateo wouldn’t...think she was being weird. Encouraged, she squeezed his hand and met his eye. She almost gasped, seeing her reflection in them. Elena looked almost as dead as her parents were.

Christ, she needed to ask this.

“Remember how...how when we were kids, and my cousin Danilo made me watch Kujo? And how I was crying and scared still when you came to the palace to play the next day?”

“I couldn’t forget, you ran over to me and kept crying about how mean Danilo was.”

“Yes,” Elena chuckled, blinking tears from her eyes. “Well, and then, do you remember how I told you to nap with me because I was scared?”

“Si, recuerdo. I remember that.”

“Do you think…” Elena trailed off and almost said ‘nevermind’, but it would have been stupid not to continue. She’d already tried every other method to sleep. “You could - that we - I...can’t sleep, Matu. I haven’t slept since it happened. The nightmares won’t go away, a-and I want to try-”

Mateo, for probably the third time ever, interrupted her. “Yes. Elena, yes, if you think it might help, I’ll -”

God, and she almost - almost - let the waterworks loose. She was tired, she was so tired, and sad, and she felt like her entire world had caved in and her life was shattered, and she was just. So thankful to Mateo. If she could just get one decent bit of sleep, just this once, just...please. Make her body, her brain, and her heart feel a little less heavy after some sleep.

She stood from the seat in front of her vanity and tugged on his hand, gesturing to her still unmade bed. It hadn’t been made in days, she was never out of it long enough for the maids to touch it. “No, that’s too far away,” Elena protested, when he timidly crawled in on the complete opposite end that she did. “Mateo, hold me. Like when we were kids. It’s the same.”

With just the slightest bit of hesitation, Mateo slid up behind Elena and slipped his arms about her waist. Oh. Warmth, he was warm. So warm. And for the first time since February 19th, Elena didn’t feel cold and lonely, and sad. Still sad. Yes, still sad, but warm and far from lonely. He was always a good friend, the absolute best friend, but Elena had never been more thankful for the younger teenager than in that moment.

It couldn’t make it go away. Or even really make it better. But at least she was warm, and now he was absently playing with her hair, and his steady breathing was keeping her mind from going a million miles an hour.

Yes, this was a good idea. But it - but she’d fall asleep a bit faster maybe if -

“Mateo?” Elena curled her fingers in the fingers of one of his hands. “...hey, um. Do you think, um. Can you maybe...sing a song?”

“What? Elena, you wouldn’t want-”

“It...sometimes helps. And stop it, you have a nice voice. Don’t blush like a baby, you’re fourteen, and I’ve heard you sing loads of times. So...will you?” Elena would have puppy dog eyed him, if her back weren’t to him.

“Sure, but...I don’t. What should I, uh. I don’t know...what.”

“Oh, well, I. I liked that Luis Fonsi song you were, um, singing the other day. When you were studying with your earphones in.” And she did, which was odd, because she always thought she didn’t like Luis Fonsi. “It was pretty.”

Mateo cleared his thought and nervous laughed against her ear. He wanted to protest, he did, but. Anything for her, she knew.

Tras la marea nadie tiene sed Nos lastimamos suficiente Cuesta mirarnos frente a frente

He was so kind. Too kind, she remembered thinking, as her brain zeroed in on the song, ignoring everything else.

Llora conmigo hasta que el cielo sea cielo Hasta que el frío que hoy sentimos se convierta en fuego Hasta que llore el mar Y el beso que quedó vacío ocupe su lugar Y todo vuelva a empezar

Too, too kind. Doing this. Singing to her, so she could sleep. Singing her to sleep, really. She’d pay him back...someday, when her world wasn’t falling apart.

La calma está por llegar…

Pero, la calma estaba muy lejano,  y no estaría viniendo para los dos.