imposed additional stress upon her. According to Dr. Mala Singh, whose
opinion is not disputed, she suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder
and depression, not caused by the posting, but the additional burden caused by
it cannot have improved her mental state.
41
In her witness statement she cites published Home Office guidance about the
reach of the Sri Lankan intelligence agencies. The posting occurred at a time
when she was liable to be removed to Sri Lanka. She believed, and still
believes, that they may have accessed the posting and so discovered
information about her. Although there is no reason to believe that they have, I
accept that it was a real concern for her and did cause her significant anxiety
until finally her appeal was allowed.
42
She must therefore be compensated for an acute shock, the after effects of
which endured for, at most, a few months. In addition, for two and a half years
she has had to endure the nagging fear that if removed to Sri Lanka she might
be the subject of adverse attention by the Sri Lankan authorities because they
might have accessed the spreadsheet with her details on it. In her case I assess
damages at £6,000, an award which is not out of kilter with the lower level of
awards for psychiatric and psychological injury of a moderate kind.
43
PNC is a citizen of Albania. She says that in 2004 she met and married an
Albanian man, by whom she had a son. He abandoned her in 2007 and she
was inveigled into going to another country by a pimp and people trafficker
and there forced into prostitution. She fled that country in the late stages of
pregnancy and arrived in the United Kingdom in 2012. She gave birth to her
second son a month later. She applied for asylum and she was refused. Her
appeal to the First Tier Tribunal was dismissed, according to a Home Office
letter of 11 January 2014, because the First Tier Tribunal judge was not
satisfied to the low standards applicable in an asylum case that she had been
trafficked, and because she had not shown that there were substantial grounds
for believing that if returned to Albania she would face a real risk of serious
harm. She made further representations to the Home Office, which refused to
treat them as giving rise to a fresh claim under para.353 of the Immigration
Rules. A claim for judicial review resulted in an undertaking by the Secretary
of State to retake the decision. That decision is still pending.
44
Assessment of her truthfulness and reliability as a witness is made more
difficulty by two factors. (1) The First Tier Tribunal's judge's disbelief of her
core account. For reasons which I do not know, I have not been shown his
determination and reasons but I accept the quotation to which I referred in the
Home Office letter. (2) The flat tone in which she gave evidence through an
interpreter, consistent with the diagnosis made by Jackie Roberts, the
psychotherapist and counsellor with the Helen Bamber Foundation, of complex
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