The parents of two young children have secured an injunction stopping their deportation after the family allegedly fled to Ireland from Malawi because of a threat by their grandfather to violate "a virgin from his own bloodline".
The threat came from the grandfather after a witch doctor said this would be the way to cure his HIV infection, it was claimed.
Despite the parents’ subterfuge in trying to avoid deportation so far, it would be unjust to visit their children with the consequences of the parents’ wrongdoing, the Court of Appeal said. The children are a girl of eight and a boy aged seven. The girl arrived here with her mother in 2008 when aged two, her brother was born here but is not an Irish citizen and both children attend school here.
Mr Justice Gerard Hogan, on behalf of the three-judge appeal court, said there is no doubt the dislocation the children would suffer if "suddenly wrenched from the only environment they have known or experienced would be significant". One could only "imagine the distress" they would suffer, he said.
The parents had sought the injunction after they failed in their 2009 application for asylum. An application for subsidiary protection was also refused.