Constance was referred to Asylum Aid by the British Red Cross in January 2010.  She was destitute and homeless, and deeply traumatised by the events that had forced her to flee Uganda and seek asylum in the UK when she was just 16.

After the arrest and subsequent disappearance of her father in 2003, it was arranged for Constance to leave the country.  While waiting to leave, she was raped by two family acquaintances. Once in the UK, she was abandoned at a tube station in central London. Although she was permitted to remain in the UK until her 18^th birthday, her account of her family’s persecution was disbelieved and her asylum claim dismissed.

When Asylum Aid started work with Constance, she had been living for many months either on the streets or in a women’s refuge. She had once attempted to take her own life.  Her future was only secured in February 2011, after her Asylum Aid caseworker made detailed representations outlining the continued threat facing women in Uganda and the deep connections Constance had made with friends and colleagues in the UK.

Despite such terrible upheaval and uncertainty, and arriving so young and on her own, Constance has built a life for herself in the UK. She is now in the final year of an engineering course at university, and volunteers caring for children in her local community.

Photograph posed by model.