The Department for Work and Pensions prides itself on embracing diversity and promoting equality of opportunity. And indeed, when it comes to pulling the plug on benefits there is no sign of discrimination – everybody is treated equally harshly.

It is not only those who are too sick to work but are informed they are well enough to do so; nor just those who have failed to adhere to some tiny sliver of bureaucracy. This also applies to people who don’t even realise they have sinned but are left suddenly and brutally penniless.

Hawa (not her real name) falls into that category. She was brought up as a slave by her adopted family in west Africa. As a young child she was forced to work for long hours, thrown scraps of leftover food like a stray dog and still has fine scars down one side of her face and right leg, a legacy of the times her “owners” threw heavy objects at her. She was denied education and, at the age of 15, was sold to a trafficker who brought her to the UK.

In London, Hawa was locked in a house and repeatedly raped by men who paid her trafficker to do so. She escaped when she was five months pregnant from one of the rapes; she claimed asylum and was granted refugee status. The Home Office accepted that her life would be in danger if she was forcibly returned home.

Life in England was a struggle. Unable to read, write, or speak much English, she found that the system presented many challenges. But throughout it all burned a fierce love for her baby.

“He is my mother, my father, my sister, my brother,” she said. “Before him I had no family but now I have everything.” She later gave birth to a daughter. Hawa longs to study English, get a job and walk away from life on benefits as soon as her daughter starts school.

At the age of 22 Hawa has endured more than most people do in a lifetime. She is a loving mother and her children’s stability and security is her priority. She struggles to buy essentials such as shoes for them, but was just about managing. Then the DWP informed her that it was axeing both her housing benefit and income support because she had failed to show them a document. Bewildered, she said she had never been asked to produce any document.

Two calls to DWP helplines followed, which took two and a half hours. During a wait of more than 30 minutes to speak to someone, a recorded message said there was a charge for the call. But when the human adviser finally came on the line, he was unable to say how much the calls cost – presumably more than a person left without benefits could afford.

It eventually emerged that Hawa’s benefits had been pulled because she had not shown the DWP a letter she had recently received from the Home Office extending her refugee status into indefinite leave to remain. But why were her benefits being axed for failing to comply with an instruction that was never received? It was explained that the benefits could be applied for again but the process would have to start from scratch. The interview to reapply took 30 minutes and the reinstatement is expected to take several weeks. The adviser said that he could not say exactly when this will happen. Yet pulling the plug on Hawa’s benefits was carried out in just a few seconds.

“You could apply online for some emergency support from the council,” suggested the DWP worker. With assistance, because she does not know how to use a computer, Hawa tried. But her application was rejected after she answered yes to a question enquiring whether she had received more than three benefit payments in the past 12 months.

So for the time being Hawa remains yet another statistic in the government’s proud boast to have reduced the number of people on benefits to an all-time low. The filmmaker Ken Loach recently described this system as “conscious cruelty”. It is worse than that. The brutality practised by the DWP is breathtaking.