Sri Lankan girl given reprieve

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Immigration authorities have backed down from sending a sexually abused Sri Lankan girl home until aspects of her case are reassessed.

Their rethink comes amid growing pressure on Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor from Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro and organisations such as Unicef, Amnesty International and Save the Children to let the 16-year-old stay here.

The organisations say this is necessary to honour New Zealand's ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, even though the Refugee Status Appeals Authority has refused to classify the girl and her grandmother as refugees.

Her lawyers, Carole Curtis and Philippa Cunningham, are relieved at an assurance yesterday from the Immigration Service that it will wait for an assessment of a damning report by a senior psychiatrist on the girl's emotional health.

They had feared she would be removed early this week, following their failed challenge in the High Court to a ministerial decision not to intervene, but understand the new assessment could take weeks.

Ms Curtis says that when she and consultant psychiatrist Dr Karl Jansen visited the girl on Sunday night at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre, they found her cowering under her bed, terrified for her life.

She has expressed fear of being killed in Sri Lanka by relatives, including her father, who are furious at her disclosure that she was raped and abused by uncles for seven years until she fled to New Zealand in 2002.

Immigration spokesman Brett Solvander said the new assessment followed the service's receipt of fresh information, but he would not elaborate.

The assessment was to ensure that all pre-conditions for the girl's travel were met.

"In removing this individual from New Zealand, the [Immigration Service] continues to have her welfare, including during travel, and the safety of the aircraft as paramount concerns," said Mr Solvander.

He reiterated that the service decided on the basis of a report last week by a Counties-Manukau District Health Board psychiatric crisis team that the girl was fit to travel, and said the service stood by its decision.

This was because the report did not "preclude this individual from being removed from New Zealand" and "determines to the service's satisfaction that the individual has no ongoing need for psychiatric treatment".

Mr Solvander initially told the Herald on Monday that the crisis team had assessed the girl as "fit to fly".

That comment prompted clinical leader Dr Hugh Clarkson to contact the service to emphasise that this was not the team's role.

Although Mr Solvander would not say what new information spurred the rethink, Ms Cunningham said the service told her yesterday that it would assess Dr Jansen's report, a procedure which she understood could take weeks.

Mr Solvander said the airline that brought the girl to New Zealand - which he will not identify but is understood to be Korean Airlines - was prepared to repatriate her "with appropriate escorts, medical and security".

He said the service was working strenuously with the Sri Lankan Government and the International Organisation for Migration to ensure that the girl, whose name is suppressed, would receive proper care and protection when she returned to her homeland.

But Gordon McFadyean, investigations manager in the office of the Children's Commissioner, said several months of efforts by Child, Youth and Family and the NZ Embassy in India to find out what protection services were available in Sri Lanka had "drawn a blank".