Who is Vivian Alvarez?

Dear mouse,

I blogged about the journey back home of the "wrongly deported woman" Vivian Alvarez to Australia after staying in the hospice in Olongapo, Philippines for four years.

According to the news article, she figured in a vehicular accident, suffered memory loss, got no papers to show that she was an Austalian citizen, so she was deported to the Philippines in 2001.

Being left brain domninant, I could not resist asking many questions while reading the story about this poor woman.

I was reading the news about Australia's efforts to free the Australian hostage in Iraq, (this is a separate blog) when I came across another news article about Vivian Alvarez Solon, aka Vivian Young, aka Vivian Wilson.

Who is Vivian Alvarez?

The news said that she will be reunited with her sons.

How come, the husband's whereabouts were never mentioned?

How come one son was in the foster care and one son was in high school; are there no immediate relatives of the husband ?

How come, she has had no contacts with her relatives in the Philippines ?

How did she become an Australian citizen ?

How come after 18 years in Australia, she was reported to be unable to talk in English?

Who was looking for her or who reported that she was missing?

How did they find out about the blunder of the Immigration department of Canberra.

This is one news that says who Vivian Alvarez is.

Vivian Alvarez, a dual Australian-Filipino citizen, was injured in a car accident and mistakenly deported from Australia after she told authorities - apparently because of memory loss - that she wasn't Australian and had been kept as a sex slave in Brisbane, according to Australian media reports.

So yeah , we know that, it is all over the newspapers, local and international.

I tend to believe this version.

The woman, who gave her name as Vivian Alvarez and spoke little English, had married an Australian and become an Australian citizen. However, he later abandoned her, after which she said she was imprisoned and forced to act as a sex slave in a Brisbane suburb. She escaped, only to be arrested after being injured in a traffic accident in Lismore, NSW.

Her story was so confused and appalling that she appears to have been deemed either mentally unwell or untruthful by officials prior to her deportation. And now, despite extensive (and belated) investigation by Australian officials, she has disappeared altogether.

It answers several questions that I raised about the woman, especially about her husband.

This news tell another story that supports the sex slave issue.

Betty Graham-Higgs, a former social worker at Lismore Base Hospital in northern NSW, told ABC TV, Ms Alvarez had been brought in to the hospital by a passer-by who found her "lying in a sort of gutter", contradicting reports that Ms Alvarez had been injured in a car accident before her deportation."She couldn't walk and she never walked when she was in Lismore Base Hospital," she told ABC TV."The only way she could have been injured like that is if she was beaten up."

Interesting ,isn't it?

But wait,this story was about her last few hours before she was deported.

Vivian Alvarez's last hours in Australia before being deported four years ago were at a Brisbane motel guarded by Immigration officials, a group of Filipino and religious workers say.She was shaking, complaining she had no money or clothes and that her passport had been taken, the group told ABC TV.Two members of the group spoke to her through the door of the motel room, which was blocked by the officials who ordered them to leave.

So what drove the Government to look for Vivian Alvarez, when a statement was made by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone that her department has no responsibility to people who have already been deported.

Only after a review prompted by the revelation that mentally ill Australian woman Cornelia Rau had been held in the Baxter Immigration Detention Centre for months did the Department realise its mistake.

Immigration officials were unable to locate Ms Solon, and her whereabouts were only discovered when a priest at the convent where she was being cared for saw a news report on the case.

The last question is how come she has no contact with her family in the Philippines?

Horror stories about interracial marriages between Australian men and Filipino women revealed that mostly these women were kept apart from their families back home by severing the communications.

The racist issue is going to be brought out as an issue in the effort to demand for compensation from the government.

But Alvarez is not only the victim of the ineptness of the commission.

The ABC TV's Lateline program has revealed that more than a hundred people have been wrongfully held in Australian detention centres over the last three years.

The figure has been leaked from the government's secret inquiry into wrongful detention, which was prompted by the shocking case of German-speaking Australian Cornelia Rau. A schizophrenia sufferer, Ms Rau was discovered wrongfully incarcerated in Baxter Detention Centre last year by her sister, who had searched for her since her disappearance nine months earlier.

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The Ca t