“Prison is better than Yarl’s Wood,” said Elsie*, 40, who is bisexual and claiming asylum on the grounds that she was kidnapped and tortured for her sexuality Nigeria. “In prison you count your days, you know when you’re leaving, but in Yarl’s Wood you don’t know when they’re coming to take you. It’s so traumatising.”Yarl’s Wood’s has a history of sexual abuse . In 2013, a Prisons Inspector report recommended that: “Men should not enter women’s rooms unless explicitly invited to do so.” But according to Elsie, the recommendation has been ignored. “Men can walk into your room any time they want because they have the key; when you know they are coming is when you hear the key,” she said.“It affected me a lot,” Elsie continued, of her time in detention. “By the time Medical Justice came to me to assess me, I was diagnosed with PTSD, paranoia, and I have memory loss. I was living in fear, with flashbacks of what happened back home: it was like it’s put on television and you’re seeing what was happening.”Medical Justice are particularly concerned about the way torture survivors and people with mental health problems are affected by detention. “Someone who’s experienced trauma, who’s been locked up before, who might suffer from PTSD, the symptoms will get triggered by things that might remind the person of the trauma,” explained Schleicher. “So a guard walking along the corridor, or the sound of a key in the door, or being a small room that’s that kind of shape might remind them of the previous circumstances and might exacerbate their symptoms quite a lot.”So far, the Home Office’s response to the Shaw report has been non-committal. The immigration minister, James Brokenshire, accepted that there should be a presumption against detention for a new category of “adults at risk”, however he has refused to implement a ban on detaining pregnant women. He has also refused to implement an “arbitrary” time limit on detention.“If they take me back there, I can’t handle it,” said Elsie. “No woman should be detained in Yarl’s Wood,” she continued, pointing to her slogan t-shirt: “Set her free… God made women to be free, to bear children…”“Ugh, don’t start with that Bible rubbish,” Jo interjected. “I used to go to Church,” she explained, “but since all these bad things have happened to me, I have lost my faith.” @CharlottEngland

*Names have been changed