How to report abuse?

RandomA75

Hi all,

I'm writing this on behalf of my partner who has recently had to leave her job as an au pair due to excessive abuse from her host family. This has included:

- not being allowed access to any food in the house during evenings
- being excessively verbally abused on an almost hourly basis for no reason
- having her private possessions rifled through
- being told she is worthless frequently
- being harassed by abusive text messages in her free time
- having her work hours frequently exploited

Now, obviously she has left this job. However, the problem is that following this, the host family is trying to jeopardise her finding a new job by going on au pair websites and posting abusive and false claims about her on her profile. This is beyond atrocious, and has led to her not being able to apply for jobs due to her profile being blacklisted. We have tried contacting the sites but have had no reply.

This is absolutely disgusting for her and for me, and we would really appreciate it if anyone could offer some help or suggestions. She is an EU citizen, but not Irish, so we have considered going to the MCRI, but really any advice would help.

Wanderer78

sounds like to me, the gardai need to be contacted. maybe others will have other options. im sorry to hear your story. terrible experience for both of you

Chemical Byrne

If there is evidence of these statements openly accessible on the web then I would imagine that your partner would have a fairly stong defamation case against the hosts.

She should speak to a solicitor.

fed up sick and tired

Keep all the abusive text messages. How people think they can get away with this kind of stuff on devices... amazing.

From experience I can tell you that the support and love of a partner in these things is worth anything.

Good luck.