Oz:Mentally ill woman wrongly locked up in detention centre

Yep!

More information on the identity of the woman who was wrongly deported (then misplaced!) 4 years ago. This woman suffered from a mental illness, as did Cornelia Rau.:

Last Update: Friday, May 6, 2005. 5:32pm (AEST)

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has revealed a woman who was wrongly deported to the Philippines left behind a child in foster care.

The woman, who was born in the Philippines but married to an Australian, was deported by the Immigration Department four years ago.

She is still missing overseas.

Mr Beattie has released new details about the woman's case.

He says she did not collect her five-year-old from a Brisbane child care centre in early 2001, but was not registered on Queensland's missing persons list for another five months.

Mr Beattie says that months later she presented to a New South Wales hospital under a different name and said she was applying for citizenship.

"Department of Immigration could not find any details or records in relation to her arrival in Australia," he said.

Queensland Police later deported her.

The Prime Minister says he is very sorry if the woman, who is thought to be suffering a mental illness, has been treated unfairly.

The case has been referred to the Palmer inquiry, which is already investigating the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau.

But Mr Beattie says the Government needs to reconsider the operation of the inquiry.

"This is an area which, in my view, has demonstrated a clear need for an open public inquiry and I think they should reconsider that," he said.

Mr Beattie's federal Labor counterpart, Laurie Ferguson, also says a full judicial inquiry is needed.

Last Update: Friday, May 6, 2005. 6:29pm (AEST)

Detained children allowed play group visits

The Immigration Department has reached an agreement to allow pre-school aged children in detention centres to attend play group centres in the wider community.

The move comes a day after it was revealed that a three-year-old girl born at Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre had been refused permission to go outside to a play group.

A spokesman for the department says all children in detention have access to educational services and excursions outside the centres.

A prisoner all her life, this girl bears the scars
By Lee Glendinning and Joseph Kerr
May 7, 2005/SMH

"Her life is so unfair" ... Virginia Leong on her daughter, Naomi.
Photo: Tamara Dean

Three-year-old Naomi Leong was born into detention and has known no other life but still asks her mother when they are going home. She started off warm and engaging but became increasingly disconnected as she grew. Now she is listless, will not play with other children and wants only constant nursing by her mother.

"Every time she sees me upset and feeling sad she bangs her head against the wall," her 31-year-old Malaysian mother, Virginia Leong, told the Herald from Villawood Detention Centre yesterday. "But there's nowhere I can hide. I am unstable and screaming all the time. I cannot help it."

Of the 74 child detainees in Australia, Naomi has been in detention longer than any of them.

Ms Leong says she lives only for her daughter, and has told a psychiatrist she is "exhausting" herself trying to look happy even though she "feels dead".

"She seems very weird," she said yesterday of her daughter. "She is never playing around children her own age and she will never talk much, but she always says to me, 'When can we go home?' and I say we can't and she says, 'No, let's go go home?' What can I say to that?"

Advertisement
AdvertisementPsychiatrists have said detention is indelibly damaging Naomi. According to one psychiatrist's report obtained by the Herald, Ms Leong was said to be apparently suffering severe major depression and psychotic features.

"She and Naomi are both potentially at risk of their safety if this condition is allowed to continue without adequate treatment, as it has been so far," said Michael Dudley. He also recommended removing Ms Leong and Naomi to a psychiatric unit.

It is understood Ms Leong entered Australia on a valid visa, but overstayed.

She was two months pregnant with Naomi when she was detained for trying to travel to Hong Kong on a false passport.

Naomi's case is just the latest to raise concerns about how immigration authorities are managing detainees' mental health. A Federal Court judge this week said the Government had failed in its duty of care to two long-term Iranian detainees who are now in a psychiatric hospital. The inquiry into Cornelia Rau's detention has also been widened to include 33 other people wrongly detained.

AN Immigration Department spokesman said Naomi was not an Australian citizen and that Ms Leong was free to leave Australia.

So disturbing has been Naomi's behaviour - she has stopped eating and drinks only juice - that a psychiatrist asked the department in March to let her visit a children's play group centre for two hours a week.

Ms Leong said: "My brain has already been destroyed but I am trying to stop hers from being destroyed. Her life is so unfair."


http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/A-prisoner-all-her-life-this-girl-bears-the-scars/2005/05/06/1115092692388.html[size=7][/size]

And we don't care. What the bloody hell is going on in this country?

We've been hijacked by Howardism, that's what. And we thought Pauline Hanson was bad!

At last, the opposition finds it's voice!:

Last Update: Saturday, May 7, 2005. 4:31pm (AEST)

Opposition demands immigration royal commission

The federal Opposition is calling for a royal commission into the deportation of an Australian woman and the mistaken detention of Cornelia Rau.

The deported woman, who was born in the Philippines, was sent back there by the Immigration Department four years ago and there has been no contact with her since.

The case has been referred to the inquiry investigating the Rau case, but Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd wants a more thorough investigation.

"Our view is that this continued abuse of human rights mandates a royal commission into each of these cases so that we can ensure that this does not happen again," he said.

"This sort of thing stinks and the Australian community feel that way, and we need to get to the bottom of it."

Search

The chief of The Philippines National Bureau of Investigation's Interpol division says he was not told of the circumstances of the wrongly deported Australian woman when asked by Australian authorities to search for her.

Ricardo Diaz has told ABC's AM program that he received a request three weeks ago from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to look for the woman under the name of Vivian Alvarez.

He was also told she might be using the surname Solon but addresses supplied by the AFP led no where.

Mr Diaz was surprised to learn details of how the woman came to be deported.

"I never knew what this case was all about until I talked with [AM]. The only thing I knew was that they were looking for this woman," he said.

Mr Diaz also says he was not provided with details that the woman may be injured or mentally ill.

"We need this kind of information so we could look for her in an asylum or a facility housing people with psychiatric problems or in the hospitals," he said.

"We need this kind of information if they would like us to help them better."

The search in the Philippines is now likely to be widened.

Oh, so it was a "junior immigration official" who was responsible for the deportation?

Last Update: Tuesday, May 10, 2005. 8:20am (AEST)

Vanstone says nothing was done then to fix the bungle. (ABC TV)

Something went "badly wrong" in the case of an Australian woman mistakenly deported to the Philippines in 2001, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone says.

....Speaking about the case for the first time, Senator Vanstone has confirmed that a junior immigration official identified Vivian Young from a missing persons register in 2003, two years after she was mistaken for an illegal immigrant and deported.

Senator Vanstone told Lateline nothing was done then to fix the bungle.

"The advice I have is that [the advice] was not [passed up to the minister]," she said.

The case is being investigated by the Palmer Inquiry.

..."But we will get to the bottom of this matter, we have got Mr Palmer looking at it and we'll look at what Mr Palmer says as to what the facts are."

Senator Vanstone says she has heard reports the woman had a history of mental illness, was taken to the plane in a wheelchair and had head injuries from a car accident.

...."The escort met with someone in the Philippines who was contacted in advance to meet her at the airport from an agency described to me today not quite as an NGO," she said.

"Efforts are under way to locate and speak to the specific person who met her at the airport when she arrived with the escort officer."

Ms Alvarez still has not been found in the Philippines and her family say they fear the worst.

Vivian Alvarez's brother, Henry Solon, told Lateline about the four fruitless years the family spent searching for her in Queensland, unaware she had been deported to a country she had not lived in for almost two decades.

"Why wasn't I informed about this? I mean if I was informed, we could have fixed it straightaway. Nothing, nothing like that,nothing! ...... <cont>>

<complete article>
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1363674.htm

Hello, I came across this thread searching for info on the Vivian Young case. I'm really interested in it because I'm half Filipino, and it reminds me of something that happened to my mother's friend (who migrated from the Philippines) about ten years ago, I think.
Her family was almost broke, and her husband started drinking heavily. One night, he started beating her - she fought back, as in, more than just enough to defend herself, but she isn't exactly a match for him and ended up bloodied. Then she called the police, but they said there wasn't much they could do because she had fought him too. But get this - they took the husband aside and said that if she ever gave him more trouble, they could get her out of the country! None of the Filipinos trust police...

dmarcie

Hello & welcome to A2K. You don't say where you're from, but I assume it's Australia. What a terrible story! <sigh>
It seems (according to news stories I've seen) that Filipinos in Australia are extremely anxious following the Vivian Alvarez/Young deportation. And who could blame them? If it happened to her then why not them?

You often hear stories of abuse of Filipino women from by their Australian husbands. I assume at least some of this is accurate. It sounds as though fear of losing Australian citizenship (if they leave abusive husbands) is a very real threat to these women. I hope there's more support for the women in these situations these days than a few years ago.

Government may have found Alvarez
May 11, 2005 - 10:20PM/the AGE

An Australian woman mistakenly deported to the Philippines four years ago may have been found - in a convent in the country's north.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone tonight said she had received some positive and hopeful advice from her department concerning Vivian Alvarez's whereabouts.

"The Department for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs has been advised by our ambassador in the Philippines that Filipino police have spoken, at the request of the Australian embassy, to nuns at a convent in the country's north," she said in a statement.

Senator Vanstone said the nuns had indicated that a woman by the name of Vivian Alvarez was staying at the convent.

The government has been embarrassed by the Alvarez case which involved the 2001 deportation of the Queensland woman, who had two children in Australia and had lived in the country for up to 18 years.

The scandal is another blow for the Immigration Department which is already reeling from the case of Cornelia Rau, an Australian resident, who was held in detention for ten months.

- AAP

I'm so glad she has been found! Part of me thought she might be dead!
Yep, msolga, I live in Australia! Did you see the interviews on Lateline? The priest who looked after Vivian made sure we all understood that the government had nothing to do with it and he only realised she was missing from watching TV! Ouch. I was surprised how calm and collected her sister was (I wouldn't have been!)
With the Cornelia Rau case exposed and now Vivian Young, it's hard for anyone to argue that our immigration system is just "tough on illegals" rather than plain screwed and in grave need of reforming. The game is up.
But then, I think that every time one of these type of stories is made public and have learned that no matter how outrageous the scandal, the people who should be held responsible always find a way to slither out, shift the blame and get away with it.

Yes, very, very good news, dmarcie! No, I wasn't watching television last night so missed Lateline. Good on the ABC, though! And absolutely no thanks to the Federal government & the immigration authorities. Shame on them! Howard (& Vandstone) couldn't bring himself to say an unqualified "sorry" ... AGAIN!
Like you, I'll bet they try to find find some way to wriggle out of taking responsibility for this, they always do! I hope her family DOES sue the government! I think they got off far to lightly with the Corneilia Rau case. Certainly something needs to happen to make them answerable for what's happened & to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

... ps.... Do stick around & explore A2K, dmarcie. It's a terrific forum! And it's great to see more Oz folk like yourself here. There are quite a few of us already. The more the merrier!

Alvarez 'wants to come home'
By Jane Bardon
May 12, 2005 - 5:15PM/the AGE

The Australian woman who has been found in a charity hospice four years after being mistakenly deported to the Philippines wants to return to Australia, the institution's chaplain says.

Father Mike Duffin realised Australian immigration officials were finally looking for Vivian Alvarez after hearing a satelitte television report.

Ms Alvarez saw a member of her family for the first time in four years today, at the Mother Teresa Missionaries of Charity hospice in Olongapo, west of Manila, where she has been cared for the past four years.

"She had not seen her sister, who lives in Manila, since 1989, because she has been in Australia for most of that time, so at first she didn't recognise her," he told theage.com.au

"But then they started talking about their family and she started asking about her sisters and brothers. And she was saying to her sister "Can I live with you, really?' "

Mr Duffin says when Australian consul-general Frank Evatt came to visit her, she was asked whether she wished to return to Australia, where her half-brother and two children are still living.

"She was asked many times if she wished to return and she was very excited, and was making a joke, saying 'When can I come back, when can you get me a passport and a ticket, in two hours, in three hours?' She seemed very excited," Father Duffin said.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone stopped short of accusing Father Duffin of deliberately delaying calls to Australian authorities to reveal he had found Ms Alvarez.

But Father Duffin said: "I had only heard about Vivian's story on the television, I had not seen a photograph of her, so I had to check that it was her.

"Vivian had been cared for here by the sisters, after she got out of St Vincent's hospital after being treated for what we now know was a car accident in Australia, so I had to get their permission before contacting any one.

"And after being here, in this institution for four years, I wanted to talk to her about it before every one came wanting to speak to her. I was willing to take my time because I knew this could be a real shock to her."

Alvarez reunited with sister

At a reunion today at the hospice, Ms Alvarez asked her sister, Cecile Solon, "Are you going to look after me, really?"

Alvarez said she did not immediately recognise her half-sister, Cecil Solon, because of the trauma she suffered, pointing to her head.

She also said she wanted to meet the rest of her family: "That would be nice, but I can't remember them because of my injuries."

Australian consul-general Frank Evatt later held a private meeting with Alvarez, her sister and Australian priest Mike Duffin, who identified Ms Alvarez at his hospice for the poor after he saw her on ABC satellite television.

Ms Alvarez's family say they are considering legal action against the Government over her treatment.

Deportee 'can come home'

Meanwhile, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said Ms Alvarez could have been sent straight back to Australia if Father Duffin had made contact with the Australian embassy immediately after seeing the television report.

"If they had been contacted on Sunday, if Ms Alvarez wanted to be back in Australia and seeing her children, she could be here now," she told ABC radio.

"I don't know what's happened between Sunday and now with Mr Duffin or the nuns or Ms Alvarez."

Asked if she was criticising Fr Duffin's handling of the matter, Senator Vanstone replied: "I'm simply making the point that apparently Mr Duffin did connect who this woman was and that the Australian Government was looking for her.

"We have no record of him or the nuns or Ms Alvarez contacting us."

Asked if she would like to see Ms Alvarez return to Australia, Senator Vanstone replied: "I'd like to see Ms Alvarez get what she wants.

"If she wants to come back, of course we will facilitate her coming back, we will facilitate assistance for her when she arrives so that she's got support and can settle in and of course she'll be entitled to Australian benefits.

"But she'll need more than simply money, she'll need assistance to settle in if that's what she wants to do and we'll be making it very clear that that is not so much an offer, that is her entitlement."

Downer defends Vanstone

Mr Downer was forced to stand by Senator Vanstone, who has been criticised over the case.

He said it was not an act the Government deliberately perpetrated.

"Senator Vanstone has had a good deal to say about this," he said.

"There is a good and a feisty woman doing a good job and defending her corner. Senator Vanstone is a very honourable woman. She is a very humane and decent person."

'Time for royal commission'

The time has come for the Government to call a royal commission into immigration detention and deportation, in the wake of the Vivian Alvarez bungle, Labor says.

Opposition immigration spokesman Laurie Ferguson said it was time for Prime Minister John Howard to come good on his statement earlier this week that he was prepared to consider a royal commission if justified by the current inquiry by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer.

"The decision should be made now by the Prime Minister," Mr Ferguson told reporters today.

"It is coming out, day by day, contradictions of what the minister said, comments by her that essentially we don't need to know things, the Australian public really has no need to get to the bottom of this.

"The time has passed when we can hide behind either privacy of the individual or behind the question of the Palmer inquiry. The time has come."

Ms Alvarez had two children in Australia and had lived here for up to 18 years.

Mr Ferguson said it was clear the Government had been dragged screaming to this position and there needed to be a full investigation.

"One has to ask just what is actually on the departmental files about this woman," he said.

"They knew two years ago she had been deported. Did they investigate whether she had children in the country? She hadn't been here five minutes. She had been here for over a decade."

Australia's human rights commissioner - whose report last year concluded the mandatory detention regime was cruel and degrading - has called for an urgent review.

"When there is no provision for an independent individual assessment of each and every person and no requirement for judicial oversight, the risk of serious mistakes becomes unacceptably high," Sev Ozdowski said in a statement.

"And mistakes like those revealed from immigration department officers over the past weeks and months become unsurprising."

The Government had failed to implement recommendations by mental health professionals contained in the report.

"The facts revealed so far in the Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon (Alvarez) cases seems to suggest that our findings were far from backward looking - rather they were tragically prophetic," he said.

"It is undisputed that the detention environment is either the cause of mental health issues for long term detainees and-or exacerbates existing conditions."

The commissioner said the government was failing in its duty of care to detainees, most of whom were found to be refugees sooner or later and were integrated into the community anyway.

"Our immigration detention system is creating tragic and unnecessary costs both to individual detainees and the Australian community at large," Dr Ozdowski said.

"It is no wonder that there is no other system like it anywhere else in the world.

"Enough is enough - the system has to change."

- with agencies

The most ridiculous part of this case is that the shelter that the government "found" her in is the exact same place they left her when she was deported in the first place.

Yes (!), then Amanda Vandstone had the nerve to criticize the priest in the Philippines for failing to notify the Oz authorities immediately when he discovered the missing woman at the hospice

Last Update: Friday, May 13, 2005. 1:34pm (AEST)

I did not know I was being deported: Solon
By foreign affairs editor Peter Cave


Unaware: Ms Solon says she was told she had to go to the Philippines for medical care. (ABC Photo)

Vivian Solon, the Australian woman wrongly deported to the Philippines, says she was unaware she was being deported.

Ms Solon was located on Wednesday after a priest in the Philippines recognised her in a report from ABC TV's Lateline that was broadcast into Asia.

She had been missing since her deportation four years ago, which occurred after she underwent surgery for spinal injuries in New South Wales.

Ms Solon says she was told by Australian officials that she would be ineligible for medical assistance unless she returned to the Philippines.

She says several times that she had told Australian officials that she had an Australian passport, which was at her home in Brisbane.

Ms Solon says at all stages she thought the trip was voluntary and that she only discovered last week that she had been deported.

She thought that Australian officials had been extremely helpful in organising her medical treatment.

She says she received physiotherapy and medical treatment from the nuns at the Philippines convent in which she has been staying.

Ms Solon says there was no telephone at the convent, and as she was too unwell to leave she could not call her family.

At this stage it is still unclear if Ms Solon is mentally ill as has been reported, though she appears quite lucid, if vague at times.

She is on her way to Manilla where she will receive medical treatment and meet with her wider family.

Ms Solon says she is looking forward to being reunited with her children, one of whom has been in foster care since her disappearance.

She will then decide whether or not to return to Australia.

Inquiry

Ms Solon's deportation has been referred to an inquiry into wrongful detention that is being conducted by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer.

But Australia's Human Rights Commissioner says Ms Solon's latest claims are too serious to be tested under that inquiry.

Dr Sev Ozdowski from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission says the inquiry cannot do the job properly in its current form.

"The officials who make or didn't make this statement require also protection, they need to be tested," he said.

"Testimony needs to be tested with proper protection, therefore I think the inquiry by Mr Palmer will have to be given judicial powers now."

Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley says the case is "screaming" for a royal commission.

"This now simply an outrage," Mr Beazley said.

"I don't know what's going on in the Department of Immigration at the moment, but what is being teased up at the moment is a shocking story.

"The Cornelia Rau case is an extremely bad one, and there are apparently 30-odd other pretty bad ones of a similar ilk."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1367951.htm

Fair dinkum I am totally, utterly and implacably disgusted - I never thought that this and the other things could happen here. I am so angry I could bloody well spit chips. I listened to a radio interview the other day and I heard a woman - as I said at the time "play the racist card." I thought she was right out of line saying that. I am now eating my words. She was absolutely right. We have a racist federal government with a racist department. I won't say anything about Vanstone because I don't want to cause any trouble for the site owner or get myself banned.