Tribunal decisions

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: AA/02634/2015

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Heard at Field House
Decision & Reasons Promulgated
On 19 December 2016
On 9 March 2017

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE PERKINS

Between

e--- d---
(anonymity direction made)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms C Robinson, Counsel instructed by J D Spicer Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr S Kotas, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer
Interpreter: Ms G Xhafa interpreted the English and Albanian languages
DECISION AND REASONS
1. Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 I make an order prohibiting the disclosure or publication of any matter likely to lead members of the public to identify the respondent. Breach of this order can be punished as a contempt of court. I make this order because of the very personal nature of the Appellant’s case and the possibility of her being harmed if my conclusions are wrong. Consistent with this direction I have disguised the names of characters in the narrative.
2. This is an appeal by a citizen of Albania against the decision of the Secretary of State on 20 December 2015 to remove her from the United Kingdom by way of directions under Section 10 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. The appellant says that she is a refugee or otherwise entitled to international protection. The appeal has previously been determined unsatisfactorily, most recently in a decision promulgated on 15 June 2016. I found there was an error of law for reasons set out in the appendix hereto and decided, given that the case had twice been determined unsatisfactorily in the First-tier Tribunal, and mindful of the understandable delays in listing in that Tribunal, that it ought to be determined in the Upper Tribunal.
3. Mr Kotas simplified things significantly by accepting that if I found the appellant a credible witness then I should allow her appeal. However, he made it plain that it was his case that I should not find her a credible witness.
4. I remind myself that although the appellant must prove her case it is sufficient if she shows that there is a real risk of her being harmed in the event of her return to Albania. This is a low standard of proof and is less than the balance of probabilities. I also confirm that I have been careful not to make any findings without first considering the evidence in the round as a whole.
5. It is undeniable that there are obstacles in the path of believing the appellant, although it by no means follows that she is therefore necessarily unbelievable. Rather than beginning with her own account I have considered the medical evidence about the appellant.
6. I have before me a medical report of Dr Larner which goes some way to explaining the difficulties in the appellant’s account. Dr Larner’s is a general medical practitioner and although I found her evidence helpful it did not add anything significant to the evidence of Professor Katona.
7. I also have a report from Professor Cornelius Katona dated 25 June 2015. Professor Katona is known to the Tribunal. His qualifications included the degree of Doctor of Medicine awarded by the University of Cambridge and his being a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
8. The report begins by setting out the appellant’s personal history. She said she was brought up as a Muslim. Her family was “not very religious” but her father was strict. Her father took a variety of work including work in building construction.
9. Her academic performance was undistinguished but she became interested in hairdressing and started work as a hairdresser in 2010. There she met a man called Ed and he became her first boyfriend. She kept him secret from her family. She believed she would “have been in a lot of trouble” if her father had found out.
10. In March 2011 she left the family home and moved in with Ed and his family. Her father tried to stop her going but she “had courage” and told her father that she wanted to see Ed. Ed’s family disapproved of the relationship.
11. Nevertheless, the appellant and Ed married in June 2011, although the difficult family atmosphere made the appellant feel “extremely bad, sick” and depressed. However, she knew she had the right man in her life and was doing the right thing.
12. After finishing her hairdressing training she started work and, with Ed, rented a flat of their own in Tirana. Money was tight and he had to go abroad sometimes to get work. She believed that they were happy together.
13. In the summer of 2012 while her husband was working abroad a customer at the hairdressers where she worked took an interest in her. Initially she was annoyed by him, but after two or three months, according to the appellant, “I gave myself to him. We became a couple.” His name was Sli.
14. Sometimes they went away for weekends. On a day in January 2013 Sli told the appellant that he was taking her to the town of Durrës. He was excited and told her they were going to a party that she would never forget.
15. They went to a house in Durrës. There was no party. Sli left her in a room with women’s belongings and locked windows. She went downstairs and as she did she saw a man coming from another room leaving behind a naked woman. Sli then grabbed her and rebuked her for not listening or obeying him. He hit her and then locked her into the room. He explained that she was going to work for him as a prostitute and he would kill her and her family if she did not oblige. She complained that Sli would beat her and was never kind to her. He had sex with her as well as requiring her to have sex with others.
16. This arrangement continued until 24 March 2013. She was not able to leave her room except to use the bathroom, but on one morning she realised the main door was open and she got out of the house. She got onto a main road and caught a bus to Tirana.
17. She went back to Ed’s parental home. Ed was there. She explained that she had been kidnapped. She realised that she loved Ed.
18. In the following days she realised that she was pregnant.
19. They decided they had to leave Albania for good and Ed arranged the necessary papers.
20. She was not prepared to report the matter to the police. She did not trust the police. She could not tell Ed that she was pregnant.
21. They tried to fly to the United Kingdom but their papers were not genuine. They were caught in Italy.
22. She said they were successful in crossing the channel but were caught and returned to France, finally reaching the United Kingdom on 1 June 2013.
23. There came a point when she could no longer conceal her pregnancy and her husband became angry. She did not acquiesce in his suggestion that she did not keep the baby. She said it was not the baby’s fault.
24. Her husband became cold towards her and announced that he would forget about her.
25. She overhead a Kosovan Albanian woman talking to her children in a public park and began a friendship.
26. On 24 September 2013 Ed did not return home. She decided that he had left her and she went to the home of a new friend who told her how to claim asylum.
27. She was delivered of a healthy baby, her daughter Lia, in November 2013.
28. The appellant and Lia lived in Nottingham until March 2015 when they moved back to London where she lives with the woman who befriended her at her home. She told the psychiatrist that she did not spend much time in the house because it reminded her of being confined by Sli.
29. The medical notes show that in March 2014 her general medical practitioner recorded that she reported being trafficked across Europe and brought to London while pregnant and that she had been “reliving bad experiences”. She did not want counselling but she was given an anti-depressant drug.
30. In March 2015 a further letter from the general medical practitioner showed that in March 2014 the appellant had said more about her experiences, she had reported that the anti-depressant was effective but she was reluctant to engage in counselling. She missed a follow-up appointment.
31. The doctor noted that she:
“presented as a somewhat dejected young woman. She was co-operative throughout the interview but became tearful and agitated when describing her experiences of enforced prostitution by Sli.”
32. She wanted to forget things. She did not feel able to watch adult television for fear of being scared by violence or shouting and screaming. She could not concentrate. She was easily startled by loud noises and so tried to avoid main roads because of the sound of cars. She described herself as having a low mood but a little better when she was playing with her daughter. She reported sleeping problems. She had had suicidal thoughts but did not kill herself because she was pregnant.
33. Professor Katona applied a Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation and found her score of 25 put her in the “severe” range. She had moderate depressive systems which were supported by the Montgomery Asberg depression rating scale which confirmed Professor Katona’s clinical impression. She was found to have severe trauma-related symptoms. Professor Katona found that the appellant “fulfils the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association 2013) for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”.
34. He then explained that he based this on her experience of a relevant stresser which was said to be enforced prostitution and violent treatment by her enforcer and some of her clients. Her having intrusive thoughts and nightmares and avoidance-related behaviour. She had negative alterations in cognition and mood and alterations in arousal and reactivity, the form of poor concentration, disturbed sleep and being startled by loud noises. Her symptoms have lasted for more than a month.
35. She had depressive symptoms described as “significant and disabling”, but in Professor Katona’s opinion they were secondary to her PTSD. Professor Katona found that her post-traumatic stress disorder was caused by her traumatic experience of enforced prostitution in Albania. He opined that her intrusive thoughts are “characteristic emotional responses to severe trauma and are unlikely to occur in the absence of such trauma”.
36. He regarded the separation from her country and estrangement from her family and her husband and her uncertainty over immigration status to be aggravating her depressive symptoms, but not an adequate explanation for her PTSD symptoms.
37. He expressly considered the possibility of the appellant feigning or exaggerating her symptoms. He concluded that it was his impression that her “clinical presentation is in keeping with the experience of enforced prostitution which she describes”.
38. He then explained why he did not think she was feigning or exaggerating. It was his view based on experience that it was:-
“relatively easy for actors to feign single mental symptoms, but very difficult even for them [i.e. professional actors] to feign the full picture of a mental illness consistently to experience clinicians as [the appellant] had to do with [the GP] and with me”.
39. He was aware that there were inconsistencies in her account and that some had been highlighted in the respondent’s refusal letter. He noted, for example, that she is recorded as having told her general medical practitioner that she was trafficked into the United Kingdom, whereas she had told Professor Katona that she had travelled to the United Kingdom voluntarily with her husband.
40. He then dealt with treatment and prognosis. He recommended therapy and said that people who had been traumatised by the deliberate cruel acts of another often need a lot of help. He then drew attention to “consistent research evidence” that victims of abuse and exploitation [such as [the appellant]] are at greater risk of being “revictimised”. However, she has not self-harmed and was not currently at a high risk of suicide.
41. I begin by considering this report and although I intend to look at the other evidence it may be that it will not make the position any clearer. It is plainly the case that this appellant is not a good historian and I anticipate that my task will be to work out if that is because she is the damaged victim of sex trafficking, as she claims, and if I am not so satisfied, even to the low standard applicable, if she is nevertheless entitled to some kind of international protection.
42. I have read her biometric residence permit application and note that she claims there that she was smuggled into the United Kingdom in a car boot and that she last saw her husband when he found out that she was pregnant by another man. She said in her screening interview that she had no relatives in the United Kingdom except her husband and she had lost contact with him.
43. She made a witness statement dated 2 April 2014. She explained there that her father strongly disapproved of her relationship with Ed because he was not of sufficient social status and that he “locked me in the house but I managed to escape and run away to be with Ed”. She was frightened that her father would try and arrange a marriage with someone else. Ed’s family did not like her because they thought she had brought trouble on the family. Her family threatened Ed’s family because she had run away. Eventually she said they moved out and got their own apartment.
44. In her statement she gave her account of friendship with Sli when Ed was away working and of Sli taking her to what was supposed to be a party but turned out to be the start of her kidnap and induction into prostitution. She said she was not sure how many other women worked in the house, but she knew that some did. She told of her escape because she noticed that there was no-one watching when she went to the toilet. She got on a bus to Tirana and got off at the end because she could not pay.
45. She expressed her delight and surprise that Ed was at his family home when she went there. She said they could not go to the police as they feared the men would go after the family if she did.
46. Ed was able to get two Italian identity cards and they used them to travel from Durrës to Italy where they arrived in April 2013. They then tried to fly to the United Kingdom but their false documents were detected and they were arrested and fingerprinted and later released.
47. Two Romanian men helped her travel to France where they were again found with false documents, arrested and fingerprinted. On 1 June 2013 they hid in the back of a car and boarded the train to the United Kingdom.
48. Ed became furious when he discovered that she was pregnant by someone other than him and said he would not be looking after “a ‘bastard’ child”.
49. She was interviewed. She repeated her story of her husband taking casual work and her losing contact with her own family because they disapproved of her choice. She explained how she was at first irritated and then later wooed by Sli. She claimed that the only protection from infection were condoms, but they were only used some of the time. She had no idea how much the men paid. They never paid her. She explained that when she was not with a man she would sit in the room. She was allowed sometimes to use the toilet. She would have to open her bedroom door and explain why she was going and then she would be allowed to go.
50. She was fed three times a day but did not spend time with other women. She thought other women there could move around freely (question 56). She said that when she went to the party she had taken her bag including her mobile phone, then originally said she did have her identity card in the bag and then immediately corrected herself to say she did not. When she had a chance to escape she went in the clothes she was wearing. She did not try to collect anything.
51. She stopped a bus and took a ride to Tirana knowing that she could not pay. She said that in Albania the passenger pays at the end of the journey.
52. When she got to her in-laws’ family home she told them that she had been kidnapped. She escaped on 24 March 2013 and left her in-laws’ home on 29 April 2013.
53. She then described how she left Albania by ferry. The appellant and her husband left France on 1 June 2013. She said that they wanted to leave because they were afraid in France. They wanted to come to the United Kingdom. However, they did not claim asylum when they arrived. They went to a house in London. Her husband left her on 21 September after she told him that she was pregnant. The lady who befriended her treated her well.
54. The applicant made a statement dated 7 August 2015. She said there that she arrived in the United Kingdom on 1 June 2013 and claimed asylum on arrival. She corrected the statement used to support her asylum claim. She said she did see money being given to Sli. Contrary to what she said in interview her identity card was not in her bag. She made a mistake. She said that she was able to escape after about a month because by that time the security arrangements were becoming lax. One of the reasons she did not return to her home where she lived with her husband was that Sli was not aware of the address of her parents-in-law and she felt safer going there. She did not want to claim asylum in Italy or France. She did not believe the Italian authorities accepted refugees and she feared her traffickers could find her in Italy or France.
55. She believed that if she were returned to Albania the traffickers would kill her or her family would disown her now that her husband left her because her baby was not his. She believes she would be destitute.
56. She made a further statement dated 9 June 2016. She explained that she had been in the United Kingdom for three years and gave birth to her second child on 5 May 2016 who she named E A D. His father was someone she met in Hayes and with whom she “had a short fling”. He lost all interest in her when he discovered that she was pregnant.
57. She believed that as a single mother with two children by different fathers she would have an impossible time in Albania. Her own family would do nothing for her because she had shamed them and her husband’s family would be out for revenge. Additionally, Sli and his gang would want to kidnap her.
58. She produced a birth certificate confirming the birth of E A D on 5 May 2016. The father is not named on the birth certificate.
59. The appellant gave evidence before me and adopted her statements. She was cross-examined.
60. The questions pointed out differences in her story. For example, she had indicated that she was afraid of her father and when he discovered her relationship with Ed her father was angry and locked her into her room and all she could do was when run away. However, she told the psychiatrist that her father had tried to stop her going out but she “had courage” and told her father that she wanted to see Ed, although she knew her father disapproved of the relationship.
61. She was also inconsistent about whether there were one or two other people in the house when she was first taken there by Sli. She confirmed that when Sli took her bag and telephone she did not have her identity card with her. She said it was too important to carry around with her. She was quizzed about her escape. She did not accept there was anything incongruous about her being dressed to go outside when she was able to escape. She said she took an opportunity when it came to her.
62. She insisted that she just ran away and found a bus with a destination board for Tirana, and she was able to enter the bus without paying any fare. She was expected to pay when she left the bus, but she ran away instead.
63. [In her statement of 2 April 2014 she said that she did not have sex with Ed in the United Kingdom. She would “ease him off”.]
64. She confirmed that Ed’s family were terrified when she told them what had happened. They were terrified about “everything”. She had not told them how Sli had corrupted her into prostitution. She did not tell them that she had been seeing Sli. She told them that she was kidnapped going back from work.
65. She confirmed that she had unprotected sex when she was forced to work as a prostitute. However, she insisted she had had no medical check-ups since she had left that work. She said that Ed was worried but his parents were not worried at all. Ed did not take her to the doctors because she was too scared to go out and just wanted to hide. She was also too scared to go to the police. She accepted that her general medical practitioner had referred to her being trafficked across Europe but she said that was incorrect.
66. She said Ed did not originally believe that she was kidnapped but locked up.
67. She confirmed that her first child was born in November 2013 and that he was therefore conceived in around February 2013. She insisted she did not know the father. Her husband had encouraged her to think of a termination but she was not prepared to do that. She said it was “not the baby’s fault”.
68. She denied the suggestion that her second child was Ed’s child.
69. I have considered the papers before me and particularly the documents appended to Ms Robinson’s skeleton argument. Certain things spring out. I have already considered Professor Katona’s report and noted his findings many of which support the appellant’s case.
70. I note the Home Office Guidance published in March 2016 cautioning the competent authority to appreciate that the victims of trafficking may be reluctant to come forward with information and may tell their stories with obvious error.
71. I accept completely the advice that genuine victims of trafficking might be poor historians. I note too the guidance given by this Tribunal in TD and AD (Trafficked women) CG [2016] UKUT 00092 (IAC) acknowledged at paragraph 2.3.1 of the Home Office Country Information and Guidance Albania: Female victims of trafficking that:
“it is not possible to create a typical profile of a trafficked woman from Albania; trafficked women come from all areas of the country and from varied social backgrounds”.
72. I note as well the caution that retrafficking is a reality.
73. Internal relocation can be difficult because of the strict code of honour in Albanian society and that those who have children outside marriage, as this appellant claims to have done, are particularly vulnerable.
74. Nevertheless, there are over 400,000 people living in Tirana.
75. I also note that in TD and AD the Upper Tribunal noted how the Albanian Government had in recent years:-
“made significant efforts to improve its response to trafficking. This includes widening the scope of legislation, publishing the Standard Operating Procedures, implementing an effective National Referral Mechanism, appointing a new Anti-trafficking Co-ordinator, and providing training to law enforcement officials.”
76. The US Department of State “Trafficking in persons report 2015: Albania” refers to the Government of Albania not complying fully with the minimum standards for the elimination of traffic but making significant efforts to do so. Same report says that:
“Psychological, medical, and reintegration services at the state run shelter were inadequate”.
77. My credibility assessment has been particularly assisted by Professor Katona’s report.
78. I have no hesitation in concluding that the appellant is a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. Professor Katona has distinguished symptoms that he attributes to PTSD from symptoms he attributes to depression and has emphasised that his diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is based on his informed impression over many years’ experience and reference to objective tests and dependence on a mesh of interacting criteria which he thinks would be very difficult to feign.
79. I have (of course) formed my own view of the appellant as she gave evidence. I do not presume to offer any kind of psychiatric diagnosis, but she certainly presented to me as a woman who was deeply distressed and insecure, and although I hope she was shown every courtesy that was appropriate, and Mr Kotas did his job professionally and respectfully, the appellant clearly found it difficult to give evidence.
80. Given Professor Katona’s observations and comments recognised elsewhere, it will be completely wrong to base adverse findings on inconsistencies in her account in a way that might be appropriate if, for example, I was testing alibi evidence in a criminal trial. However, I must also recognise that the burden of proof is on the appellant and the fact that her trauma may make it difficult for her to give her evidence clearly or consistently does not mean that she is telling the truth or that I should ignore difficulties in her evidence.
81. I also note that there is no pattern of victim of sex trafficking in Albania which would illuminate my findings one way or the other. It is perhaps appropriate to mention here that although I am using the word “trafficking”, I think correctly, this is a case where the appellant claims to have been corrupted into prostitution in Albania. She emphatically denies being trafficked to the United Kingdom for the purposes of prostitution. Given this insistence I do not understand the criticism of the respondent for accepting the competent authorities’ decision that she is not the victim of trafficking. Her case is not that she was trafficked to the United Kingdom but that she was corrupted into prostitution and escaped to the United Kingdom.
82. I do not believe her account for the reasons set out below. My finding is based on the cumulative effect of these points. There is no one point that is incapable of being believed but, I find, that there is just too much wrong with her story as a whole for me to accept it.
83. The appellant spoke tenderly of her husband Ed. She said that he was the man in her life. Yet on her account when he was out of the country to earn them money she developed an inappropriate relationship with Sli. She did not live with her parents-in-law but clearly had a sufficient good relationship with them on her own account to return to their house after she claimed to have escaped. She does not appear to me to have been a woman left in isolation after her husband had left to work away and I have difficulty in balancing the shabby way she claims to have treated him with the affection that she declared for him. I do not make too much of this point. I recognise that a person who corrupts a woman into prostitution is not a lover but a confidence trickster who has developed skills to persuade someone to do something they would not want to do. Nevertheless, it is a factor in the case which points against the account of being truthful.
84. I do find a difficulty about the inconsistent evidence about the appellant’s identity card. It was the appellant’s own case that it was an important document and it seems odd to me that she would not take an important document about with her as she claims to have done with other important documents. At interview (question 57) she said that she had the card with her and then corrected herself to say that she did not think that she had her card with her. Clearly, if there is any truth in her case, Sli would want to get her identity card and it is clear that he did not because the appellant has passed it on to the respondent. Her immediate answer when asked about Sli having her documents was to say that he had taken her bag and her ‘phone and her identify card that was in her bag. I give some weight to the possibility that she had lied and quickly realised that she had to change her account rather than the possibility of her making a simply mistake that she corrected promptly. I do not regard this a determinative but it is a difficulty in her case.
85. The differences in the account about how many people were in the house when she first went there for the purposes of prostitution are not important, and certainly not in the context of a woman who was being traumatised.
86. The account of the escape stretches credibility. She is not completely incapable of being believed. As I indicated in the hearing room, almost all accounts of escape involve an element of opportunism and other people not doing properly the tasks they were set to do. Nevertheless, there is no obvious reasonable explanation for security becoming lax. It is hardly the case that the appellant was enjoying her work and becoming reliable.
87. Her alleged journey home puzzles me. I do not know the procedure for paying a bus fare in Albania. It surprises me that a person does not have to pay a fare before entering the bus, but that might just be because I am ignorant of the public transport in that country. It is a further puzzling element of the case that she was able to run away at the end. Whether a fare is to be paid on entering the vehicle or on leaving it, the authorities must surely have some method of ensuring they get their money and escaping the bus company is a puzzling feature of the case.
88. Further, the appellant’s failure to gain any sort of help from the authorities is something that intrigues me. Rather than going to try and find a bus to Tirana, she might have been expected to look for a police station or somebody in authority who could have helped at least by contacting her relatives and helping her travel. I do not put too much on this point because there is evidence that the authorities in Albania are imperfect, but I find it extraordinary that there was not some more consideration of going to the authorities if, as she claimed, she turned up at the home of her parents-in-law after some months where, fortuitously, her husband was present and gave them an account of being kidnapped. She was then some distance away from the place of her alleged detention. Even if she was too traumatised to think sensibly, I find it puzzling that neither her husband nor her parents-in-law wanted to involve the authorities.
89. The short step from the appellant returning from being kidnapped and the appellant and her husband deciding that their safety could only be secured by travelling to the United Kingdom is an element of the case that I find to be profoundly unsatisfactory. I remind myself that the evidence shows that Albania is deficient, that is not a place where there is no regard for the victims of sex trafficking but even if the appellant did not want to involve the authorities I do not see why she decided so quickly that they should escape to the United Kingdom rather than re-settle in Albania. The suggestion that her former captors would have either the resources or inclination to track her down throughout the country is not credible. It is her case that she then had a supportive husband and parents-in-law.
90. I also find her denial of seeking any kind of medical advice about the possibility of diseases she could have contracted whilst working as a prostitute a very puzzling element of the case. Clearly, if she is telling anything like the truth, there must have been a very substantial risk of her contracting AIDS or other less serious but exceedingly nasty diseases. She was also pregnant and, if she is telling the truth, she must have known that pregnancy was an ever present possibility. She claims that when she discovered that she was pregnant she was anxious for the safety of the child within her. It makes no sense that she did not seek medical advice before resuming intimacy with her husband, given the indignities about which she had given evidence, it made no sense that she would have been coy about medical advice she might have been given.
91. I also find the alleged behaviour of her husband to be puzzling. I have commented already on the ease with which he decided that their future lay in leaving Albania. It makes no sense to me that he would be prepared to have her back and travel with her to the United Kingdom and then turn against her because he discovered that she was pregnant. That possibility must have been on his mind. I remind myself that social norms in Albania would be set firmly against him recognising the child but, if according to the appellant, he was very willing to have back after she had been working as a prostitute. My difficulty in accepting this part of the evidence lies in his alleged readiness to accept her after she returned and to planned their escape together and but then rejecting her.
92. It is also a surprising element of the case that, given her emotional state that she allowed herself to become pregnant on another occasion by a man she hardly knew. There is no scientific evidence to help me. I appreciate that the need for medical evidence has not been raised clearly before but it is an important element in her case that she would be rejected by her parents-in-law because she has children who are not her husbands and there is not independent evidence to prove that claim. Even without her husband’s cooperation, scientific evidence could be expected to show if the appellant’s children have the same father, whoever he might be. I do not accept that the appellant’s children have different fathers as she claims.
93. Ms Robinson said, correctly and with force, that the appellant has been traumatised. I have to ask myself how this is if she has not been traumatised in broadly the way she has indicated. No other explanation suggests itself. For example, this is not a case where there is evidence of bodily injury that could be the result of a traumatic event. There is no point in my speculating. I do not believe that she has told me the truth about her experiences in Albania. I wonder if she has been involved in the sex industry in rather different circumstances and that is a cause of her symptoms. I do not say that is what happened. I merely make the point that there could be an explanation other than the one given.
94. Professor Katona does not know what has made her ill in the way that she is and although I have made every allowance I think proper for deficiencies in her account and reminded myself firmly of the low standard of proof, I do not believe that she was corrupted into prostitution. I do not believe that she escaped as she claimed and I do not believe that she has anything to fear from Sli in the event of her return because I do not believe he was involved in controlling her or managing her in the way she alleges.
95. I have great difficulty in working out what sort of conditions she would in the event of her return. I do not believe that she has been abandoned by her husband and his family because the only evidence from that comes from her and she is not believable. I am concerned about the two children in her care. I do not know how else she is managing. There is no independent evidence before me about that. Although it is unsatisfactory, I have to assume that the best place for the children is to be with their mother and that proper arrangements will be made in the event of return to Albania because I do not believe her evidence that she is socially isolated.
96. Clearly, there is no question of her being allowed to remain on Article 8 grounds under the Rules and the lack of credible evidence about her circumstances on return make it impossible for me to find that removal would be disproportionate. Although she is ill she does have a trade and, as explained above, she has not persuaded me that she would be alone in Albania.

Notice of Decision
In the circumstances I dismiss this appeal.

Signed

Jonathan Perkins
Judge of the Upper Tribunal

Dated 8 March 2017

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: AA 02634 2015

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Heard at Field House
Decision & Reasons Promulgated
On 12 September 2016

…………………………………

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE PERKINS

Between

e--- d---
(ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent
Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms S Iqbal instructed by J D Spicer Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms J Isherwood, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer
REASONS FOR FINDING ERROR OF LAW
1. Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 I make an order prohibiting the disclosure or publication of any matter likely to lead members of the public to identify the respondent. Breach of this order can be punished as a contempt of court. I make this order because of the very personal nature of the appellant’s case. The appellant appeals, with the permission of First-tier Tribunal Judge Kelly given on 5 August 2016, a decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Abebrese promulgated on 19 July 2016 dismissing her appeal against the decision of the respondent on 20 February 2015 to remove her from the United Kingdom. It is her case that she is a refugee or otherwise entitled to international protection. The appeal has previously been dealt with unsatisfactorily.
2. The appellant relies on grounds settled by Ms C Robinson of Counsel who appeared in the First-tier Tribunal.
3. In very simple terms it is the appellant’s case that the First-tier Tribunal Judge gave inadequate or otherwise unlawful reasons for the decision and it is the respondent’s case that the decision is good enough.
4. Ms Isherwood, appropriately, reminded me the importance of considering the Decision as a whole. It was an apt warning that I kept in the front of my mind.
5. Paragraph 37 of the Decision is troublesome. There the First-tier Tribunal Judge explained that he substantially disbelieved the appellant’s core evidence. In particular he disbelieved her claim to have been corrupted into prostitution with the connivance of her then partner and to have escaped her controller when a door was fortuitously left unguarded.
6. The Judge was entitled to be sceptical of the claim that she escaped so easily although a large number of escapes depend on an element of good luck and someone not doing his or her job properly. It is probably a permissible reason but is not a compelling reason. The judge reinforced it with a finding that I consider to be wholly unexplained. Ordinarily the idea that a man who had any sort of affection or respect for a woman would corrupt her into prostitution is so repugnant to our ideas of decency that one would not want to believe it. However, as Ms Robinson explained in her grounds, there is clear evidence that ought to be in the minds of decision makers in cases of this kind that people corrupted into prostitution are often taken there under the guidance of someone who presents himself as a partner or lover. Without more to disbelieve an appellant’s claim that she was corrupted into prostitution by her lover for no better reason than the fact that the idea is repugnant is a bad reason. It played a part in the judge’s reasoning and undermines further the weak reason already advanced.
7. I am also concerned that the First-tier Tribunal Judge does not appear to have understood the appellant’s case. At paragraph 40 of his decision the judge found that the appellant had not been a victim of trafficking “into the United Kingdom”. The judge continued “It was argued that the appellant had been internally trafficked into this country”. I see no justification whatsoever for that assertion. It was the appellant’s case that she had been trafficked in Albania and that she had escaped to the United Kingdom. She may not have been telling the truth but she should not be disbelieved because the judge rejected a series of claims which the appellant does not appear to have made.
8. I am also concerned that inadequate regard was given to evidence about her mental health and the judge failed to show any consideration at all of Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009. This is material because there are two children to be considered. It may be that they do not have a strong claim to remain in the United Kingdom but the circumstances and conditions that they would face in Albania are relevant considerations. It is certainly at the very least arguable that protection arrangements available in Albania are not adequate when the appellant’s children would have to be protected too and/or that the conditions they would face make them irremovable.
9. I should make it plain to the appellant that she must not assume that her case will necessarily succeed when it is reheard. Ms Iqbal realistically and properly agreed that I could not responsibly allow the appeal outright. More evidence is necessary and there must then be a proper evaluation after sound findings of fact.
10. As the case has previously been heard prior to the first-tier Tribunal it must now be heard in the Upper Tribunal and it should be heard before me unless there are good reasons to justify a transfer order.

Signed

Jonathan Perkins
Judge of the Upper Tribunal

Dated 15 November 2016