Gipsies move into immigration officer's home while she spent night away at Proms
An Immigration officer told of her distress last night after she returned home from a night out at the Proms to discover a group of Roman gipsies “squatting” in her house.
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2011/08/2308.jpg Julia High stands in her trashed living room Photo: NIGEL HOWARD
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2011/04/1715.jpg
By
Andrew Hough
10:00PM BST 16 Aug 2011
Julia High, who works at the UK border agency, found the family of eight living illegally in her home of 30 years in Leytonstone, east London, a fortnight ago.
Despite her furious protests, they insisted their bogus tenancy documents were legal, claimed neighbours had told them she was dead and that they had rented the house from her “son”.
While the women were wearing her clothes, the rest of her belongings had been stuffed into garbage bags and dumped in her back garden.
She was even offered a glass of her own wine after being “invited” her back into her own home.
After Miss High, 55, secured an eviction order the following day, the group proceeded to trash her house, leaving most of the rooms uninhabitable.
"These people have just trashed 30 years of my life and thrown it into bin bags,” Miss High said last night.
“It is soul destroying."
Miss High had been out at a Proms performance on a Monday evening earlier this month at the Royal Albert Hall when neighbours raised the alarm.
She had left for work the previous Friday morning and had then spent the weekend visiting her elderly parents in Guildford, Surrey.
She returned home to find the Romanians sitting around the dining table.
The front door had been levered open but she admitted she had no way of proving the Romanians were to blame.
"The women came to the door dressed in my clothes, they were sitting around my dining room table, drinking my wine out of my glasses,” she said.
“They even offered me a drink and told me they were from Romania.
"They said I was dead and my son had rented the house to them. I am very much alive, single and I don't have a son."
The following day Ms High secured a county court eviction order, which the police served that evening.
But by that stage, the group had destroyed much of her home. The kitchen and bathroom suffered water damage due to removal of the lead roofing.
A computer, containing valuable pictures of her two-month-old grand-niece, and digital cameras have been taken, the carpets have been removed and food taken from her fridge.
Squatters packed her clothes into in her suitcases. Only her two beds and her wardrobes were not damaged.
Last night, members of the gipsy family abused reporters after being confronted at the house they were currently staying at around the corner.
They chased reporters down the street, spat at them and also hurled abuse.
Later a woman, who gave who her name as Carmen, came out to the street and denied being the family behind the destruction.
The 35 year-old said she lived in the house with her four children, aged, 4, 12, 14 and 16 as well as her 54 year-old aunt and her two children aged 16 and 14.
The house cleaner, who came to Britain from Romania a month ago, said she rented the house from "a man who stopped me on the street and asked if I wanted to rent this house".
She declined to answer detailed questions.
Neighbours of Miss High became suspicious of the claims she was dead and called her parents Jean and Bernard, who are in their 80s, to confirm.
Her frail mother said: "As far as I am aware she is very much alive and she certainly was when she left our house this morning."
Outside Miss High's home were several garbage bags and a note pleading with people not to ransack the rubbish.
Neighbours said the gipsies had come back and collected clothes Miss High had thrown away.
Miss High had switched off her mobile phone last night.
