Keturah Cupid is a domestic abuse victim from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. She applied for refugee status in Canada and was deemed a credible victim by the Immigration and Refugee Board. However, they denied her claim because they decided Saint Vincent and the Grenadines was capable of protecting her, a claim she vehemently denies
Every now and then you have to cuff them down/ They love you long and they love you strong/ Black up they eye, bruise up they knee/ Then they will love you eternally
— lyrics from a classic Calypso song
KINGSTOWN, ST. VINCENT
AND THE GRENADINES—Hungary, China, Namibia, Colombia, Mexico. These are
among the top 10 countries from which refugee claims to Canada are
made.
But one of the world’s
tiniest nations has started appearing on the list, a place many
Canadians couldn’t find on a map: St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Last year, 710 Vincentians sought asylum in Canada, up from only 179 in 2001.
Over the past decade,
it adds up to more than 4,500 refugee claimants — or 4.3 per cent of the
tiny Caribbean archipelago’s population. Proportionally, it’s as if the
entire populations of Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador were
to flee Canada.
Last year, this “jewel
of the Caribbean” ranked 8th in the world for refugee claims to Canada,
surpassing India (population 1.2 billion) and Pakistan (population 187
million).
The population of St. Vincent and the Grenadines? An estimated 104,000.
The majority of Vincentians flocking to Canada are women. And it appears most are fleeing domestic violence.
“There is something
very wrong in the relationship between men and women in St. Vincent and
the Grenadines,” wrote Canadian Federal Court Justice Sean Harrington in
a 2009 ruling. “Year after year, woman after woman washes up on our
shores seeking protection from abusive, violent husbands or boyfriends.”
It turns out the
vacationer’s idyll, with its turquoise waters and verdant hills, is one
of the world’s worst places to be a woman.
Over the last decade,
more women have been murdered in St. Vincent than any other country in
the nine-member Organization of Eastern Caribbean States.
In 2007, the island
nation had the third-highest rate of reported rapes in the world,
according to a UN report. Even Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has been
twice accused of sexual assault, once by a policewoman and once by a
Toronto lawyer. Both charges have since been withdrawn by the public
prosecutor.
And then there’s domestic violence.
In August, Stephmnie
Daniel was stabbed in the throat, allegedly by an ex-boyfriend. On Sept.
16, George (Chocolate) Franklyn was charged with gunning down his wife
and their female neighbour, reportedly one week before the couple was to
begin divorce proceedings.
And last month, a
jealous boyfriend attacked Rosalie Roberts and her 25-year-old daughter
with a machete before setting their home on fire and drinking poison.
Attacks like these
have driven untold numbers of bruised women from St. Vincent’s
white-sand shores. But of those who have recently sought asylum in
Canada, only one in three have been successful.
Phillips contends
shady immigration consultants have “duped” many Vincentians into making
refugee claims. And those claiming domestic violence are running from
financial difficulty, not fists, he says.
A beleaguered banana
export industry and a 22 per cent unemployment rate have caused many
Vincentians to leave. And word has spread that claiming domestic abuse
is an easy ticket into Canada, Phillips says.
“The fact that . . . Vincentians are making refugee claims, (is) alarming and disgusting for us as a nation,” he says.
But in 2008, Phillips
wrote a letter to support the refugee claim of domestic abuse victim
Leila Brown Trimmingham, who feared for her life in St. Vincent.
Phillips wrote that
Trimmingham would require 24-hour protection and this could not be
guaranteed given the police’s “limitations and challenges.”
For two other Vincentian women, Canada has been a hope for survival.
Faith, a 19-year-old who asked that her real name not be used, speaks softly, eyes downcast, as she recounts her story.
It began Oct. 7, 2006, her 14th birthday. The day of her first kiss from a girl. The day she was first raped.
Faith’s sole guardian
was her adoptive grandfather. When he caught her kissing her friend, he
beat her. Then he raped her. Then he left her with an ominous message:
by the time I’m finished with you, you won’t be gay anymore.
After that, Faith was raped and beaten daily, sometimes by her grandfather’s friends.
When Faith reported
the initial assault to police, “they told me that I should behave and
stop being a ‘batty’ girl,” she says, using a Caribbean slang word for
homosexuals.
At 17, Faith ran away.
Borrowing money from a
friend, she flew to Canada, where no visa was required for a visit. She
landed in Toronto in July 2010, filing her refugee papers soon after.
About a decade earlier, another woman had come through Pearson’s arrival gate looking to escape.
Keturah Cupid is a
tremulous woman whose girlish braids are flecked with grey. Now 43, the
pain of her childhood still causes her dark brown eyes to swim with
tears.
The youngest of four,
Cupid was beaten by her mother, brother and one of her sisters. She was
often tied up like a “Thanksgiving turkey” and thrashed with everything
from cable wires to broomsticks.
“I can’t count the times that I went to the police,” she says. “They just chase you away and say, ‘Go home and be a good girl.’”
After Cupid escaped to
Union Island, the southernmost of the Grenadines’ 32 islands, she began
a relationship with a pastry chef.
He beat her, too.
Cupid came to Toronto,
living illegally in Scarborough for three years. In 2001, someone told
her about the Immigration and Refugee Act.
She was granted
refugee status. Faith attends high school, listens to reggae, hangs out
with friends. Some day, she will become a social worker to “help people
like myself.”
Faith uses two words to describe her new life: “I’m free.”
But Cupid was deported to St. Vincent in July.
The refugee board believed her story, but concluded St. Vincent offered places to hide and adequate “state protection.”
Since 2006, more than
1,800 Vincentian women have applied for refugee status in Canada,
although it is unclear how many were related to domestic violence.
Only 34 per cent of
finalized claims have been accepted, according to Immigration and
Refugee Board statistics. The global acceptance rate for refugees in
Canada is between 37 and 47 per cent.
In 1993, Canada became
the first country to implement refugee board guidelines on
“gender-based persecution,” which includes domestic violence.
But according to
Toronto immigration lawyer Marc Herman, the refugee board has been
“bending over backwards” to deny domestic violence claims from St.
Vincent, citing adequate state protection.
“Often they’ll find
something, somewhere, to suggest that adequate state protection would be
forthcoming,” Herman says. “And as a result the claims go down the
toilet.”
Every nation is presumed to be able to protect its citizens, and refugee claimants must prove otherwise.
But Vincentian lawyer Nicole Sylvester says state protection in St. Vincent exists only on paper.
“Women do not feel
sufficiently protected,” she says. “The reality is many of our police
officers are guilty of committing domestic violence themselves.”
Restraining orders are ineffective, women like Cupid and Faith say, because police will not enforce them.
And in a pint-sized
country like St. Vincent, there is nowhere to hide, says Jeanie
Ollivierre, public relations officer with the St. Vincent and the
Grenadines Human Rights Association.
The country does not
have a battered women’s shelter. Its first “crisis centre” has been on
the books since 2004, yet the two-storey building remains empty.
Ollivierre sees as
many as 50 women a week, all victims of domestic abuse. In some cases,
the women are so threatened Ollivierre has paid out of pocket for them
to flee to Canada.
Failed refugees in
Canada can seek judicial reviews at the Federal Court, which can send
cases back to the refugee board for redetermination.
Some federal judges
have criticized refugee board members who have “ignored evidence of the
unavailability of state protection” in St. Vincent and made
“unreasonable” decisions in rejecting domestic violence claims.
“The court is supposed
to show deference to (refugee board members) who allegedly have greater
expertise in country conditions than the court itself,” Harrington
wrote in the 2009 decision, in which he granted judicial review to a
Vincentian abuse victim.
“However, there comes a time when it becomes obvious that deference should be earned.”
In a 2010 ruling, Harrington spelled it out a little more clearly.
“I think the time has
come where it is insufficient to simply say that St. Vincent and the
Grenadines is a democracy,” he wrote.
“It is a democracy where domestic violence runs rife.”
Cupid has been living
in an unfinished home with no running water. Desperate, she has sought
help from the police, government agencies — even the prime minister’s
office. A counsellor at Marion House, a social services organization,
sees her three times a week.
But even there, Cupid is met by those who are unsympathetic.
“I don’t think the
situation is as bad as the persons claiming refugee status are making it
out,” says acting director Barbara Matthews. “I really find it hard to
accept that 4,500 women would find it so violent down here that they
have to be running.”
In the Caribbean,
violence has traditionally been viewed as a “normal part of the
relationship dynamic,” says Dr. Peter Weller, a Trinidad-based clinical
psychologist and advisor to a UN batterer’s intervention program.
But in recent years, a
depressed economy has further upset the relationship between men and
women, he says. Caribbean men are expected to provide for their families
and that role is now being threatened by rampant unemployment, he says.
“Some men respond by
becoming even more controlling, more dominant,” Weller explains. “Losing
that identity, (they’re) choosing to exert their dominance and control
over the most vulnerable.”
Although the problem
is getting worse, lawyer Sylvester says many domestic abuse victims
don’t go to the police because they lack confidence in the system.
In 2008, 36 rapes were
reported to police but not a single case was filed with the court,
according to family court statistics provided by the Human Rights
Association.
“Between the
commission of the offence and the hearing, something happens,” says
Jonathan Nicholls, spokesman for the St. Vincent police.
“The perpetrator is
able to get to them and persuade them not to go forward with the case.
And that is completely out of the police’s hands.”
Nicholls insists the
850-member police force has been trained to respond to domestic violence
complaints. “Anyone who comes to the police with complaints, action
will be taken.”
Cupid has given up on the police, though. She wants to return to Canada, the one place she has felt safe.
And, after holding on to it for so long, she is starting to give up hope.
“I want to live. And I don’t feel safe here,” she says, her eyes glistening with tears. “Where am I supposed to go?”
