|
The Seton Hall University School of Law
Center for Social Justice's Immigration and Human Rights Clinic
won asylum protection in a case involving family-based violence,
gender-based harm—including forced marriage and spousal abuse—and
the client’s fear of violence because of her father’s sorcery
powers. The applicant, M.B., feared that if she were forced to
return to Congo, her father would use sorcery to harm or kill her in
retaliation for her fleeing the abusive U.S. citizen-spouse, whom
her father forced her to marry.
Obtaining asylum protection for a victim of family-based violence is
a significant victory; many victims who face a lifetime of torture
and the threat of death in their home countries have no protection
from abusers, while their claims simultaneously do not fit easily
within the legal requirements for obtaining asylum in the United
States.
Last year, through threats and violence, M.B.’s father forced her to
marry a U.S. citizen of Congolese descent. He later forced her to
move to the United States to be with her husband. M.B. believed that
if she did not comply with her father’s orders, she would be killed.
Throughout her life, M.B.’s father brutalized her entire family. He
regularly beat her, her brother, sisters, and mother. M.B. believes
that several years ago, her father used sorcery to kill her older
sister because the father viewed her sister’s decision to flee her
abusive spouse in Congo as an act of disobedience that brought shame
on the family.
Upon M.B.’s arrival in the United States, the pattern of abuse she
experienced from her father continued with her husband. M.B.’s
husband beat and raped her on a daily basis. After a month of
torment, M.B. escaped from her husband’s house and sought refuge far
from him. In spite of her marriage to a U.S. citizen, M.B. did not
have any legal status in the United States. She, therefore, feared
being forced to return to Congo, where her father would find her and
retaliate against her for leaving her husband. She sought help from
Professors Lori Nessel and Jenny Brooke Condon at Seton Hall’s
Center for Social Justice.
The clinic sought political asylum for M.B. on the ground that she
would be persecuted by her father if forced to return to Congo
because of her status as a member of “the particular social group”
of her father’s immediate family. Demonstrating a well-founded fear
of persecution because of an individual’s “membership in a
particular social group” is one of five grounds for demonstrating
eligibility for asylum, and is frequently the only ground available
to victims of private actor harm, such as familial and gender-based
violence.
The Seton Hall Law students who prepared M.B.’s case obtained expert
affidavits, country conditions evidence, and prepared M.B. for her
testimony at an asylum interview. Through research and evidence
showing that Congo does not intervene to protect women from
family-based violence, which it disregards as a private matter, the
clinic demonstrated that the Congolese government was unwilling or
unable to protect M.B. from further harm at the hands of her father.
Congratulations to 3rd-year law students Lyndsay Speece and
Jeremy Farrell, who worked hard on the case this year, and to
graduates Susan Hallander and Maks Fuks, who worked on
the case last year.
|
|
Professor Lori Nessel
Immigration and Human Rights Clinic
Jenny-Brooke Condon
Clinical Teaching Fellow
Immigration and Human Rights Clinic
|
