Mom, kids who fled abusive dad in France must now face new refugee hearing (Ottawa, Canada)

What few concessions were won for abused mothers and children over the last few decades are being eroded away. Soon there will be no legal way to save your life or the lives of your children.

Remember how we used to be told that women needed to get an education so they could support themselves and their kids and wouldn't "need" an abuser dad as a breadwinner? This woman is a civil engineer, her husband appears to be a deadbeat. But since the authorities refused to prosecute him for his violence, what good does it do her? Divorcing him in France would be useless, because Dad would have had visitation with the kids--the same kids he had threatened to murder (thank you, fathers rights....). And then there's the impossibility of immigration....

Dad is identified as GEORGES ABBOUD.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Mother+children+fled+violent+abuser+France+must+face+refugee+hearing/6176008/story.html
Mother and children who fled violent abuser in France must now face new refugee hearing

By Don Butler, The Ottawa Citizen
February 20, 2012 8:41 AM

OTTAWA — Omaima Makdesi and her three children fled to Canada in 2008 to escape a violently abusive husband who regularly beat and threatened to kill them. Last year, the Immigration and Refugee Board granted them protection as refugees.

It’s a common enough story. Desperate women regularly turn to Canada when authorities in their own countries are unable or unwilling to protect them.

The twist is that Makdesi and her children were living on the island of Martinique, a territory of France, and are dual citizens of France and Syria. While Syria is seen as a place where domestic abuse goes unpunished, few would say the same of France.

That places Makdesi’s family in the category of refugee claimants who’d be less likely to succeed under reforms unveiled last week by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

Under the proposed changes, refugee claimants from countries designated safe by the minister — including France and most other EU countries — will be processed within 45 days, severely curtailing their time to prepare their cases. And if their claims are rejected, they’ll be swiftly deported, even if they apply for judicial review by the Federal Court of Canada.

Makdesi’s case also highlights the disconnect between the way the law handles refugees and the real-life perils many face. As the recent Shafia trial graphically demonstrated, even a democratic state can’t always protect vulnerable women and children from family members bent on mayhem.

In his decision, Gilles Guénette, the Ottawa-based IRB member who approved Makdesi’s refugee claim, acknowledged that France normally would be expected to protect its citizens. But in Makdesi’s case, he said, “the normal state protection that a French woman could obtain in France disappeared, was simply not there.”

Guénette’s ruling triggered an application for judicial review by the government. And last month, Federal Court Judge Richard Boivin emphatically quashed it and ordered a new hearing before a different IRB member.

Boivin found that Guénette — a lawyer and unsuccessful Ontario Progressive Conservative candidate in Ottawa-Vanier in 1988 — got pretty much everything wrong.

His findings on the availability of state protection in France were “unreasonable, were based on irrelevant considerations and were made without regard to the evidence,” Boivin wrote.

He said Guénette also applied the wrong legal test when assessing whether Makdesi and her children had a viable “internal flight alternative” — another place within France they could go to escape their abuser.

Since his appointment to the IRB in late 2006, Guénette has consistently approved more than 80 per cent of the refugee claims he hears — among the highest grant rate of any IRB member. Kenney reappointed him to a further five year term in 2009.

In a brief interview, Guénette declined to comment on Boivin’s judgment or offer an explanation for his unusually high rate of refugee claim approvals.

Boivin’s decision leaves Makdesi and her children in limbo. If the new IRB hearing goes against them, the family, now living in Ottawa, will likely face removal from Canada — and an unwanted reunion with Makdesi’s seriously disgruntled spouse.

Makdesi, a highly educated civil engineer, wed Georges Abboud in an arranged marriage in 1991 in their native Syria. Abboud didn’t graduate from high school and deeply resented his wife’s education, Makdesi told immigration officials in a 2008 statement.

It wasn’t long before Abboud began to assert his control. “He acted as if he owned me,” Makdesi told immigration officials. “It became routine for him to hit and insult me.”

Abboud moved to Martinique in 1997, and summoned his family to join him in 2000. The physical abuse resumed. Both Makdesi and the children were targets.

Makdesi finally went to the police in Martinique in 2004 after Abboud beat her so badly that she was bedridden for eight days. The police arranged a mediation session, but allowed Abboud to act as interpreter, since Makdesi’s French was poor. No charges were laid.

Makdesi lost confidence in the police after that. The IRB’s Guénette cited the handling of the 2004 assault to justify his conclusion that state protection by France did not exist “at that particular moment.”

Boivin found that a single incident was “not sufficient in and of itself to rebut the general presumption of state protection,” which, he said, “need not be perfect, but adequate.”

In 2008, Abboud’s behaviour worsened, according to Makdesi. After an argument with his daughter, Marina, he put a knife to her throat and threatened her. When his son, Mario, tried to protect his sister, he was stabbed in the arm.

A month later, Abboud again threatened Marina with a knife. When Makdesi told him she wanted a divorce, she says he threatened to kill her and “would not be responsible” if anything happened to their children.

In a tearful interview at their east-end townhouse, Makdesi and Marina described a virtual reign of terror.

“Every time we heard his car coming,” Marina said of her siblings, “we used to hide in our room and lock the door. My brother was afraid that he’d kill my mom.”

Makdesi, speaking through an interpreter, said her husband told her that, if she didn’t obey him, “I’ll kill you and drink a glass of your blood.”

In the weeks prior to the family’s escape to Canada, Abboud withheld the keys to the family car, cut off their cellphones, gave them no money and refused to let his children — all top students — attend school. “He had this face I’d never seen before,” said his daughter. “It was like a monster.”

Desperate, the family searched for a way out. Fleeing to another part of France wasn’t an option, because under French law, Abboud would have visitation rights with his minor children.

Returning to Syria was a non-starter, said Makdesi, who’s from Homs, the city now under bombardment by Syrian troops. If she’d taken her children there, she said, her husband could “just shoot us in a minute. He would say that it’s a case of honour, and nobody would say anything.”

Makdesi came to Canada because she has a brother here who offered to help. “We were emotionally exhausted,” said Marina. “We needed a solution and fast, as the situation at home was getting worse and worse.”

After they fled, Abboud returned to Syria and confronted Makdesi’s father, demanding to know where she and the children had gone. He wouldn’t tell him, but Abboud has since found out they are here.

When Guénette approved their refugee claim last year, the family was ecstatic. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is ours now,’” Marina cried, gesturing at the plainly furnished townhouse. “We can walk on it and feel like we can stay here.”

But a month later, they received a letter informing them that the government would be challenging Guénette’s decision “and the earth started changing,” Marina said.

Marina, 20, now works for the City of Ottawa’s translation services branch, and is highly regarded there. Last year, a supervisor described her in a letter to Citizenship and Immigration as “exactly the type of employee that every Canadian employer would be privileged to hire, retain and promote.”

Her brother and sister are attending high school. Makdesi, who places a high value on education, is learning English. “Going to school here in Canada,” she said, “is a gift from God.”

Ottawa lawyer Rezaur Rahman, who represents Makdesi, acknowledged that the odds are stacked against his clients at the new IRB hearing. “On our shoulders, the decision of the Federal Court will be hanging like a very heavy weight.”

He will marshal his best legal arguments. But he hopes the IRB member who hears the case will bear something else in mind, too.

“At the end of the day, there’s a human being.”