The High Court has ruled that a bid for international protection by a Botswana woman, who claims her father wants to kill her and use her body parts as part of a ritual sacrifice, must be reconsidered.
The woman, who came to Ireland in 2022, cannot be named for legal reasons.
She applied for asylum in Ireland but her application was ultimately rejected by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) after finding various aspects of the woman's narrative to be lacking in credibility.
However, in a judgement Ms Justice Mary Rose Gearty quashed IPAT’s decision on the basis that the grounds for rejecting her application had not been properly and fully explained to her.
The woman challenged IPAT's finding by way of High Court judicial review proceedings.
In her decision, the judge held that there was “a combination of factors” which persuaded the court that “the Tribunal must revisit its decision.”
The Tribunal, she said, had rejected the applicant's accounts of certain events “without specifically explaining why her account is not credible.”
The judge said the Tribunal also rejected medical evidence in support of her claim, "but only insofar it would support the woman’s history."
No explanation was given by the Tribunal as to why this evidence was rejected, the judge said.
The judge noted that the woman, a university graduate, claims that over a decade ago, when she was aged in her teens, her father wanted to become a tribal chief.
She claims that she overheard her father, described as a violent, psychotic man prone to alcohol abuse, on a telephone call saying that he wanted to "use her body parts in a ritual sacrifice" as part of his bid to become a chief.
The judge said that “crucial to an Irish understanding and assessment of this narrative” is the fact that this kind of sacrifice is not only historically associated with some tribes in Botswana, there is support in the country of origin information before IPAT that the practice of using human body parts for tribal rituals was continuing at the relevant time.
The judge said that the woman had claimed that in 2012 while taking a drive, her father banged her head off the steering wheel of the car.
This caused her to drive off the road. She claims he then attempted to strangle her.
She did not report this to the police as her father is an important man, and feared she would be told that was “a tribal matter.”
She also associated other incidents, including being followed and attacked in her university accommodation by an unknown individual and the theft of her laptop computer, with her father.
Five years ago, she claims that two of her friends were killed when a car she was a passenger in was run off the road by another vehicle, which drove off.
She accepts that she did not tell the police that she believed her father was involved in that incident for which she felt terrible guilt.
Fearing for her own safety, she left her native country and sought protection in Ireland.
The woman claimed her mental health had been badly affected by these events, resulting in her suffering from depression, anxiety and PTSD.
The judge said that the Tribunal’s treatment of a medical report and its conclusions “lead me to the view" that either the report was not considered at all before the credibility finding was made and was then "read so as to chime more harmoniously with that finding”
The judge added that if the report was read in advance of that finding, its implications for the assessment of the applicant’s credibility were not appreciated, or the rules in respect of assessment of expert evidence were not applied by the decision maker, or both.
The judge said while the Tribunal had identified some inconsistencies in the woman’s application, nothing in the analysis of the case supported the decision to reject part of the medical report.
If the implicit view is that the account is simply implausible and this conclusion has led to the rejection of part of the expert report, that should be expressly stated and the logic explained, the judge said.
This was "a possible explanation for the decision taken but it is impossible to know" she added.
Given the circumstances, the judge said she was quashing IPAT’s decision to refuse the woman’s application for international protection, and remitted the matter back to the Tribunal for a fresh consideration.
