Incest Victim Granted Asylum

• Client: Guatemalan Asylum-Seeker
• Date: October 2008
• Location: San Francisco Asylum Office

Summary:

Schiff Hardin's pro bono work with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCR) led to an important victory for a young woman from Guatemala who sought asylum in the United States to escape brutal violence in Central America.

"B," a 24 year-old woman from Guatemala, was raped and brutalized by her father, a former army officer and veteran of Guatemala's "scorched earth" conflict. When LCCR referred B to attorneys in Schiff Hardin's San Francisco office, the mentor attorney assigned to the case warned that B's legal obstacles were nearly insurmountable. First, the one-year window to apply for asylum had closed seven months earlier. Second, an asylum applicant must prove she reasonably fears persecution on account of one of five statutory grounds; neither gender nor domestic violence alone is recognized as such a ground.

Schiff Hardin attorneys, consulting with a psychologist specializing in the repercussions of Guatemala's long conflict, argued that B should be excepted from the one-year rule because she was illiterate and suffered the effects of years of traumatic abuse. Interviews with B and statements from her relatives revealed that one of the central motivations for B's father's targeting of B was that he and others in their village believed he was not B's biological father.

At B's asylum interview and in supplemental briefing requested by the Asylum Officer, Schiff Hardin's attorneys argued that the perception of B's disputed parentage was an immutable characteristic, beyond her power to change, and led to her being persecuted on account of her membership in the "particular social group" of illegitimate persons. Further, by physically resisting and attempting to flee her father's abuse, B expressed a political opinion in opposition to sexual subjugation, for which her father punished her with more severe abuse. Finally, Schiff Hardin argued that B's darker skin and closer resemblance to the indigenous people of Guatemala than her siblings' made her "insufficiently authentic to the ethnic ideal" espoused by her father, leading him to persecute her on account of her racial characteristics.

On B's 25th birthday, she and Schiff Hardin learned that B was granted asylum. This victory gives B hope for a future free of violence and the right to bring her young daughter to safety in the United States.