The High Court has quashed the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s decision in a Botswana woman’s protection case, finding that it did not adequately explain why it rejected her account of an alleged assault by her father or the related conclusions of a medical expert. The case was remitted for a further hearing; the court did not decide whether she qualifies for international protection.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Mary Rose Gearty on 9 May 2024, concerns an appeal from a Tribunal decision that rejected parts of the applicant’s account as not credible. The Tribunal accepted that she had PTSD, depression and anxiety, and that she was involved in a 2019 car crash in which two friends died. It did not accept that her father was involved in that crash or that he had tried to kill her in an earlier incident.
The applicant said she feared returning to Botswana because her father had tried to kill her during a car journey in 2012. She linked that alleged assault to an earlier discovery that he intended to use her body parts in a ritual sacrifice. She also described other incidents that she associated with him, while acknowledging that she could not establish his involvement in some of them.
A doctor who examined the applicant online prepared a medico-legal report diagnosing PTSD and other conditions. The report described her symptoms as highly consistent with the traumatic history she recounted, including fear of her father. The Tribunal accepted the diagnoses but considered them supportive of other events, including the 2019 crash and separation from her mother and country, rather than her claims about her father.
Justice Gearty said a decision-maker is not bound by an expert report, but must give reasons when rejecting it. In this case, the Tribunal had not explained why it accepted the diagnosis but rejected the expert’s view about its cause. The court also found that the Tribunal’s conclusion that the earlier car incident was not credible relied on a formula stating that the evidence had been read and assessed, without explaining the basis for that conclusion. The medical report was not addressed in that part of the decision.
The judgment noted that the alleged assault was central to the applicant’s account and to the medical report’s explanation of her symptoms. The High Court did not make findings on whether the alleged assault occurred or whether the applicant’s account of ritual sacrifice was true. It held that the Tribunal must reconsider the case with adequate reasons for its assessment of the evidence.