They are now sheltered, in the heart of a remote holiday village, nestled in nature. Anna and Natalia *, 43 and 50 years old, have been living in this accommodation center for refugees since mid-April, in the south-east of France, after being taken care of in a neighboring department. Especially after three weeks “of nightmare” between Spain and the south of France. These Ukrainian mothers, who arrived in Europe in early March, claim to have experienced an attempt at domestic exploitation by taking the road to exile.
Recruited to work as childminders in a family originally from Ukraine and refugees in Europe, Anna and Natalia report having worked tirelessly, “24 hours a day with the children”, without any pause. Anna, a childminder for fifteen years in Ukraine, has “now afraid to go to work with a family, to sleep with a family”. With a soft voice, this petite woman with long black hair evokes a form of “post-traumatic stress” after three weeks with the family. “I try to enjoy nature here, but when I’m in my thoughts, anxieties keep coming back.”
When the threat began to approach Odessa, Anna, her daughter and her sister fled to the nearest border, between Ukraine and Moldova. Anna then receives a job offer from a couple from Ukraine that her former employers knew. Without knowing more about this family, she decides to accept the offer, accompanied by her friend Natalia. Direction Spain, the destination chosen by the couple, to work and send money to their loved ones. Refugee women are recruited to “monitor the [deux] children, playing with, doing housework”, they describe. The contract is made orally, without a written record.
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“At the start of the contract, the father had promised one day off per week”, Anna points. “They promised decent meals,” adds Natalia shyly, her face closed. In Spain, the two friends meet “Round the clock” in a hotel found by the couple. The parents occupy one room, the childminders occupy another with the children to be constantly supervised. Anna has to sleep in the same bed as the 2-year-old boy she takes care of, without respite.
“We were already looking for acquaintances to leave. I started looking on the internet for groups of Ukrainians living there who could help us.”
Anna, Ukrainian refugee in Franceat franceinfo
The family then decides to leave for France. She finds a rental in the South. But the conditions remain the same. The two refugees live in “two small rooms” on the ground floor, each sleeping with a child, while the parents reside on the first floor. They are forbidden to leave the property, even to walk in the neighborhood, they assure.
“The pitch was completely closed, we didn’t have the codes to get out. The barriers were two meters high. We were constantly afraid of being locked in.”
Anna, Ukrainian refugee in Franceat franceinfo
In this camera, Anna and Natalia watch over the children, prepare the meals and take care of the cleaning without interruption, the awakening of the little ones “from 7 am” at their bedtime, “when they are really tired”, between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. They cook breakfast, play outside, prepare lunch. Natalia cleans and does the laundry in the afternoons while the boy sleeps, while taking care of the 4-year-old girl. You have to prepare the snack, play in the garden and then cook the evening meal, before bath time and reading. “It was impossible to have five quiet minutes”, points the exile. For his friend Anna, “the only moment of rest was when the little boy was sleeping”, the afternoon.
The end of the evening, or the beginning of the night, are the only times when childminders can eat. “In fact, there was a refrigerator with food for the parents and the children, not for the nannies. We did not have access to it”, describes Natalia. “We are ashamed, but we had to steal to eat”, bananas and kiwis left on the balcony. Anna remembers one evening when they went up in silence to the kitchen, on the first floor, reserved for the couple; seconds to grab two pieces of bread and a tin can.
“We made a sandwich at midnight and it was our breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Anna, Ukrainian refugee in Franceat franceinfo
“We ate the sandwich and we cried, continues the childminder. We were exhausted (…). Every morning, we said to ourselves that we had to leave and every evening, we understood that we could not leave the field. We didn’t know where to go.”
Their employers, throughout this period, leave the house and return without warning, Anna and Natalia recount. They describe a wealthy couple, a man “explosive” and a woman regularly putting them down. One evening when they are out, Anna places a rock to block the entrance gate and tries to get help. The Ukrainian manages to exchange a few words of English with a neighbor, who gives her her phone number and advises to call 17. She puts her in touch with a Russian-speaking woman, because “the gendarmes spoke French [au téléphone], I couldn’t answer them, says Anna.
The two friends say they finally received plane tickets from acquaintances, in order to leave the place. They announce their departure to the couple. “We were afraid of being held back, of leaving without money.” The father, they claim, refused to allow them to leave until a new nanny arrived, then balked at driving them to the airport. He finally agreed to pay them 850 euros each for the three weeks of work, say those who were taken care of by the French police and taken to a reception center.
“We are on a thread between exploitation and trafficking, on a suspicion of trafficking”, comments Christophe Perugini, coordinator of the Ukraine crisis unit within the association Acting for social ties and citizenship (ALC) which collected them. “They were in tension, were afraid to stick around,” he underlines, specifying that the domestic trafficking service of the Central Office for the Suppression of Trafficking in Human Beings (OCRTEH) was contacted on this case. A few weeks later, Natalia soberly evokes her state of permanent stress, her sleep disorders, her tremors. “I had never known a moment of disrespect in my life, it traumatized me enormously”, she confides, letting out a few tears. The two friends worry about the women who will replace them with this family. “We feel that it will be worse.”
*The first names have been changed at the request of the interested parties and the locations are kept secret to guarantee their safety.