Six years after he fled war in Kosovo and arrived alone in Britain, Ricky says he hates sleep.
When he closes his eyes, the young ethnic Albanian is thrown back to terrifying memories of police cells, beatings and torture.
Ricky’s story echoes those of many residents of a children’s asylum-seeker hostel in Hillingdon in west London. As well as looking after him, Hillingdon Council cares for around 1 130 children and young people found wandering abandoned in the world’s biggest airport, Heathrow.
He has no mother or father to help: he has no idea if they are alive or dead. He has not seen his family since they were all arrested by the military in Montenegro and split apart.
”I don’t know what happened to them. I became separated from them when I was about 13 or 14, and I have no idea where they are now,” says Ricky, who is now 21.
”It’s difficult for me to talk about, it was a terrible experience — basically I was tortured.”
There were about 12 800 applications for asylum by unaccompanied children in industrialised nations in 2003, according to a 2004 report by the UNHCR refugee agency.
Many come to Britain alone, some as young as eight or nine, or in small groups of siblings.
Often orphans of war, they come from all over the world, having scraped together money to pay agents or people-traffickers, who then abandon them and disappear.
They have no papers, no belongings, and no idea what life holds for them now.
”At times they come in at a rate of between 20 and 30 a month,” said Teresa Bateman, a team manager at Hillingdon’s education and children’s services.
At the hostel are a 16-year-old girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo who saw soldiers arrest her mother and father, and rape her older sister. She hid until she felt it was safe enough to run away.
And a girl identified publicly only as F witnessed all her family members being killed by rebels in Sierra Leone. They then captured her, repeatedly raped and beat her, slashed her thigh with a knife and forced her to work as a servant.
The task of building a future for Heathrow’s lost children falls to the local Hillingdon authority, and it is stretching resources to their limits.
$12-million burden
The council faces costs of £6-million ($12-million) a year to deal with what it says is a unique problem for a British local authority, which it faces simply because Heathrow is within its borders.
It is now fighting a High Court battle with the government for more funding.
Margaret Cassidy House, the west London hostel, is one of several offering the children shelter. It houses 47 teenagers aged between 16 and 18 and provides emergency rooms for the daily influx of new arrivals who arrive on the planes that land every few minutes at the airport.
Those who arrive before they are 16, as Ricky did, need to be placed in foster care; those over 18 are housed in hostels or remain with families and are helped into education or work. Their applications for asylum can take many years to be processed.
”Often they suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome and they are coming here, setting up on their own in another country and culture,” says Bateman, who has worked with unaccompanied asylum seekers in Hillingdon for a decade.
”It’s incredible seeing young people struggle with these issues and get through.”
In just 10 years the number of staff Hillingdon employs to help the vulnerable children and young people — who arrive from all over the world — has grown to more than 100 from seven, but they still struggle to cope.
I just wish I never had to sleep
”All unaccompanied children who arrive at Heathrow under the age of 18 become our responsibility — either because they have been abandoned or because they need protection,” says Cathy Bambrough, acting deputy director of children’s services at the council. ”It’s a very significant financial burden.”
As Ricky tells his story in the sanctuary of the hostel, he shows the wounds of his past: a broken tooth, scars on his arms and hands, and one on the back of his ankle where he says he was hit with a metal bar.
But he also talks of the future. He is studying at university, making friends and doing voluntary work with young people in the area.
He says he is building a new life beyond the trauma of the flashbacks to his arrest and torture.
”Of course it doesn’t go away, it will always be in the back of my mind,” he says. ”It’s really hard to cope with, but I try to keep myself busy with things to keep my mind off it. That’s why I hate sleep. I just wish I never had to sleep.” – Reuters