A migrant woman who had been declared “mum of the year” by a magazine in 2022 has admitted to assaulting a Ukrainian woman.
Ellie Kisyombe, a migrant woman who had previously run as an election candidate for Ireland’s left-wing Social Democrats, has reportedly admitted to assaulting a Ukrainian woman working in a migrant centre in 2019.
Kisyombe had previously been a darling of the Irish media establishment, even being declared “mum of the year” by one magazine in the county late last year.
According to the report by the Irish Independent, Kisyombe has now admitted to assaulting mother-of-three Svitlana Voloshchuk while at a migrant reception centre in 2019.
The migrant rights activist is said to have assaulted Voloshchuk after a row with one of the Ukrainian woman’s colleagues over paper cups, with the attack resulting in the naturalised Irish citizen being forced to take three months off work to deal with mental trauma caused by the incident.
The former Social Democrat politician is said to have initially denied the assault, claiming that Voloshchuk had actually hit her first, though later examination of CCTV footage of the attack reportedly showed such an allegation to be “completely untrue”.
Although Kisyombe has reportedly now admitted to the assault, she will not be formally charged in court, but instead will be given a formal police caution over the incident.
Voloshchuk, a naturalised Irish citizen, has expressed a degree of frustration regarding Kisyombe’s treatment by both the Irish government and media, with the Irish Independent reporting the woman as not knowing anything about the police cautioning process, despite the fact it is reportedly supposed to involve input from the victim before being used as an alternative to criminal proceedings.
“I feel like she has been playing some game,” the victim remarked, who criticised how often the country’s media would depict Kisyombe in a highly sympathetic light.
“She’s a fake person who starts crying and turns around and starts blaming someone, until someone believes her,” the Ukrainian added. “On that day she started blaming me, saying it’s my fault. I do not believe a person who just turns like that, starts crying, blames me and then says: ‘Poor me.’”