New report backs Sri Lankan girl's bid to stay

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor will today consider stopping the expulsion of a sexually abused Sri Lankan girl after his officials received an independent psychiatric report.

The Immigration Service received the report yesterday from former Auckland Starship Children's Health specialist Dr Craig Immelman, after asking him to assess the 16-year-old girl amid growing concern for her welfare.

Her lawyers say it reaches the same conclusion as a report last week from her regular psychiatrist, that she is unfit to fly in her current state.

They immediately used it to urge Mr O'Connor to reconsider a fortnight-old decision not to allow her to stay here.

The girl's regular psychiatrist deems her a suicide risk.

Mr O'Connor was away yesterday but a spokeswoman said he would consider the lawyers' request after returning to Wellington overnight.

The girl has spent days hiding under her bed at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre, terrified at being sent back to Sri Lanka, where the lawyers say she will be in renewed danger from male relatives who put her through years of rape and abuse.

One of her lawyers, Philippa Cunningham, said Dr Immelman had concluded it would be "untenable" to send her back in her present condition.

This was because of her frailty from having eaten and drunk little since losing a court appeal against Mr O'Connor's initial decision not to let her stay.

The girl and her grandmother, who is also at the Mangere centre, asked to stay on humanitarian grounds after the Refugee Status Appeals Authority decided they were not refugees.

They arrived in New Zealand in mid-2002 via Hong Kong, where the girl's mother has a temporary visa as a housemaid, but they were not allowed to stay under a fabricated story of persecution in Sri Lanka's civil war.

Their supporters say this was because they were ashamed to disclose sexual abuse, and that the grandmother had, in rescuing the girl, forfeited her pension from a long career as a dental therapist.

Mrs Cunningham said the girl was also terrified of being sent to hospital, a possibility which Dr Immelman raised last week, so had agreed to take food supplements under the eye of a nurse.

She said the latest report indicated that the girl, whose name is suppressed, had been coping well before falling apart at word she would be sent home.

"What the doctor is saying is that she's not physically fit to fly and that would need to be addressed."

Immigration Service spokesman Brett Solvander could not say what officials would make of what he called a long, comprehensive and complex report.

One of the girl's supporters, Sri Lankan takeaway owner and former teacher Nandasiri Alwis, has written to Prime Minister Helen Clark pleading for her not to be expelled.

Mr Alwis, who sent food to the refugee centre at the weekend in the vain hope the girl would eat it, said she would be treated as an outcast if sent back to a country lacking social supports outside the family circle.