Sri Lankan police question expelled girl

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

New Zealand lawyers for an expelled Sri Lankan teenager are concerned she is being questioned by police in a Colombo convent without having legal representation.

But a Sri Lankan child rights lawyer turned away from the convent says the 16-year-old girl is now under the care of his country's pre-eminent paediatrician, and believes official sensitivity about publicity will protect her from harm.

Philippa Cunningham, one of the girl's New Zealand lawyers, said yesterday that the police had begun interviewing her at the convent with the intent of taking action against sexually abusive male relatives.

Yet Arun Tampoe, the Sri Lankan lawyer her colleague Carole Curtis had instructed to act for the girl, was turned away by nuns at the convent.

Mrs Cunningham said she was relieved the girl was receiving specialist care, from Professor Harendra de Silva, who chairs Sri Lanka's National Child Protection Authority.

But she was concerned at the distress police involvement would cause the youngster and her maternal grandmother, who was expelled with her from New Zealand.

This was because the girl had accused uncles on both sides of her family, including the grandmother's only son, of abuse.

The grandmother, a dental nurse, claims to have sacrificed her career and pension when she brought the girl to New Zealand in 2002 to escape her abusers.

The Refugee Status Appeals Authority accepted that the girl's uncles had abused her, but rejected her bid to stay because it believed other maternal relatives were capable of protecting her.

The grandmother said she was particularly worried about an abusive paternal uncle, a petty criminal who she feared would kill her and the girl for disclosing the sexual abuse.

But the Immigration Service ended up pleading with the Catholic Church to find the girl accommodation in Sri Lanka after extensive inquiries by Child, Youth and Family failed to gain assurances of adequate state support services for her in that country.

Catholic communications director Lyndsay Freer said she understood the nuns turned Mr Tampoe away after feeling intimidated by his demand to see the girl.

She had phoned the convent to emphasise the importance of legal representation for the girl, and to assure the nuns they could trust Mr Tampoe.

But Mr Tampoe said last night that his involvement had become less critical now that Professor De Silva was overseeing her care.

He said the professor's agency was a respected statutory authority, distinct from Sri Lanka's Department of Probation and Child Care, which the girl's lawyers have been anxious to keep at bay.

He wondered whether the New Zealand authorities even knew of its existence before sending her packing, as he said this country's honorary consul to Sri Lanka claimed never to have been contacted by the Immigration Service.

The girl's mother said from Hong Kong, where she has worked for eight years as a domestic servant, that she was concerned news of the girl's return to Sri Lanka might have reached her estranged husband's family.

This followed publication of a story about her plight at the weekend in her native Sinhalese language press.

She said she could not return to Sri Lanka to care for her daughter as she still owed some of a $15,000 loan raised to send the girl and grandmother to New Zealand, and would be unable to earn enough money to support them in her homeland.