Lawyers trying to bring Sri Lankan girl back

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Lawyers for the deported Sri Lankan girl whose case became the downfall of Lianne Dalziel as Immigration Minister are preparing an urgent application to the new minister to get the girl back to New Zealand.

Carole Curtis, whose guinea-pig sketch for the sexually abused 16-year-old will be key evidence in a State Services Commission inquiry, hopes an appeal will be in the hands of Acting Immigration Minister Rick Barker by tonight.

Nuns at a Sri Lankan convent say they have struggled to care for the girl since she arrived nine days ago.

The lawyers will argue that the decision to deny the girl and her grandmother sanctuary was flawed, and that their testimony will be vital to the Government inquiry into how confidential client notes ended up in Prime Minister Helen Clark's electorate office.

The girl finally agreed to see a doctor in Sri Lanka on Friday and was expected to be examined by a psychiatrist at the weekend, but only after the nuns told her they could no longer be responsible for her if she kept refusing to eat or accept medical help.

Auckland Catholic Communications director Lyndsay Freer has contacted the nuns and says it is clear the girl was never in a fit state to fly, despite assurances from the Immigration Service.

The service approached her a week before the girl's expulsion, seeking an agency willing to keep the girl safe from abusive male relatives.

Mrs Freer contacted the Sri Lankan convent, but only after the service assured her that a care and protection plan for the Sinhalese Buddhist girl would be put in place by arrangement with the International Organisation for Migration.

She is now dismayed at a lack of evidence of any such plan.

"They [Immigration] have taken the easy option - I think it was just a face-saving operation."

The girl and her grandmother were taken by ambulance from the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre and put on a Korean Airlines plane on February 12 with just the clothes they were wearing, hours after Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor reconfirmed a refusal to let them stay because of their failure to gain refugee status.

Mr O'Connor said his officials sought an independent organisation to care for the girl after accepting advice that a state-run child protection agency was unsuitable.

Ms Curtis says that despite his assurances about a well-laid plan, she understands a New Zealand television crew who tailed the girl to Sri Lanka had to help the nuns lift her out of her wheelchair at Colombo Airport after police and nurse escorts vanished to catch a return flight.

The head of Immigration's border and investigations section, Arron Baker, said Mrs Freer's comments were "not consistent with reporting I've had from the sisters" in Sri Lanka.

Mr Baker said he wanted to contact the sisters directly before commenting further.

Girl's family says it has been dishonoured

The family of the deported girl say she has shamed them by speaking out about being abused by relatives.

The girl's aunt, who is a lawyer, and a grandfather who live in Colombo, told the Sunday TV programme she dishonoured the entire family by speaking out.

While the aunt and her husband, a policeman, confirmed the girl had been raped and abused by relatives they discouraged her from laying a complaint.

Her grandfather said he loved his granddaughter but she was not welcome at his home. He believed her life was in danger as two of her abusers had recently threatened him.

An unnamed Sri Lankan sexual abuse counsellor said many fathers felt it was their right to rape their daughters.