Anupa who has been living and working in Ireland for eight years said the alleged incident took place when her daughter, 6, was playing outside the family’s Kilbarry home
A mother in Ireland is left feeling distraught after a group of kids allegedly attacked her daughter and told her to ‘go back to India’.
Anupa, who has been living and working in Ireland for the past eight years and recently received her Irish citizenship, said the alleged incident took place on Monday evening. As her six-year-old daughter Nia was playing outside of their home in the Kilbarry area of Waterford City, Anpua claims was subject to a hateful attack from a gang of kids aged between 8 and 14.
The mother said that she was watching her little girl play with other children outside when she had to go and feed her 10-month-old son, Nihan, inside. “It was around 7.30pm, and she was playing inside the house,” Anupa recalled. It comes after children ‘chased sheep off cliff’ before turning on shocked passers-by.
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“She wanted to play outside and go cycling. I let her outside for a few seconds. My husband was at work on night duty. He was off to work, and I was alone with my 10-month-old and my six-year-old. She went out with her friends. I was supervising them just in front of the house. They were playing together, and I knew they were safe,” she told the Irish Mirror.
“My youngest one started crying because it was his feeding time, so I just let Nia know that I would be popping inside the house and she could play with her friends, and I would be back in a second after feeding the baby.”
It was soon after that her daughter came into the house crying; she was so scared “she couldn’t even talk,” her mother recalls. She said: “I had never seen my daughter like that. I just asked her friends what happened, and they were all so upset they couldn’t talk.
“One of her friends said a gang of boys older than them hit her on the private parts with a cycle, and five of them punched her on her face… They said the F word and ‘Dirty Indian, go back to India.’ She told me today they punched her neck and twisted her hair.”
Anupa and her family moved into their new home in January, and everything was seemingly going well until the alleged incident on Monday. After moving in, her Irish-born daughter Nia seemed “so happy” and had made a great bunch of new friends.
Now though, the nurse feels terrible for being unable to protect her little girl from this bullying behaviour. She said: “I feel so sad for her. I could not protect her. I never expected that such an incident would happen. I thought she would be safe here.
“Now I am really upset because she told me last night she was crying in the bed and is really upset to play outside. I do not feel safe here; even in front of our own house, we believe she can’t play safely.”
After the horrific incident, Anupa saw the group herself, and claimed they were staring and laughing at her, with some of the kids as old as 12 or 14. Despite being shaken by the incident, the mother of two doesn’t wish for the kids to be punished but given counselling instead. The fact these children did this without any provocation is not acceptable, Anupa feels, and believes that they need an “education” on how to behave.
“I am proud to be Indian, but this is my second country,” the nurse shared. “I am so happy to be an Irish citizen, but now I feel that I don’t belong here. I am a nurse; I am doing my best to take care of people. I do my work, and I am 100 per cent professional. I changed my citizenship, but still we are called dirty people, and even my kids are not safe.”
Anupa talked about how both she and the Indian community in Ireland are still reeling from the two recent attacks in Dublin, one in Tallaght and another in Clondalkin. In both cases, we saw two Indian men subjected to random attacks, which resulted in the Indian embassy in Ireland issuing a statement that warned Indian citizens to be careful.
She said: “This is not the first incident in Ireland. We were so upset about what happened in Dublin. I never expected these racial comments to happen in my estate as well.”