[Australian] Immigration laws tear family apart

Meagan Paterson with her adopted daughter Pisey.

August 23rd, 2011
Geelong Advertiser (Australia)

A TORQUAY family has been torn apart by a heart-breaking legal loophole, with their five-year-old adopted daughter languishing in a Cambodian rape shelter while her parents try desperately to bring her home.

All the girl wants to know is when she can play with her brothers and sister again.

Meagan Paterson said the family regularly Skyped with Pisey and were at a loss how to answer their daughter when she asked when she would see them again.

"It is just devastating," Mrs Paterson said.

"She says she loves and misses us and asks when she is coming home and when she can play with her brothers and sister again.

"We have no answers for her."

Pisey recently celebrated her fifth birthday at the rape centre with her family, watching via Skype, huddled around the computer screen, watching her blow out her candles dressed in a princess outfit they sent to Cambodia as a gift.

Just over three years ago, Mrs Paterson and her husband Michael were expatriates living and working in Cambodia, where they had set up a crisis centre for women who had been raped and sexually abused.

It was at the centre that the Patersons fell in love with 18-month-old Pisey, who was born after her mum was raped.

When Pisey's mother decided to give her daughter up for adoption, the Patersons stepped in and legally adopted the little girl, working with the Australian embassy in Cambodia to ensure they abided by Australia's notoriously tough intercountry adoption laws.

However, when a member of Mrs Paterson's family in Australia was diagnosed with cancer, the couple returned home, not knowing their decision would result in years of heartbreak and separation from their daughter.

"We acted on advice at the time that if we returned home and lodged Pisey's adoption visa from Australia, which she needs in order to come here, the Australia Government would invoke a compassion clause and give us the visa," Mrs Paterson said.

"We now know that advice was wrong.

"The Australian Government does not review adoption cases on a case-by-case basis and the law said we had to be in Cambodia when we lodged the application for that visa.

"It has been three years of struggle with the Australian Government to try to get our baby home and with all the bureaucracy and red tape the fact that there is a little girl without her family living in Cambodia is just forgotten."

To make matters worse, Pisey is about to become homeless, with the rape shelter set to to close within weeks.

Immigration Department spokeswoman Laura Stevens said the Government would not compromise on the conditions attached to the visa application.

Mrs Paterson struggled to hold back tears as she recounted her torment over her little girl.

"She is our daughter and we will never give up," Mrs Paterson said. "She is a little person who is full of potential and I just want to see her home with us where she belongs."