Fiadjoe v. Attorney General of the United States

Petitioner, Lorraine Fiadjoe, petitions for review of orders of the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA") denying her application for asylum, withholding of removal and relief under the Convention Against Torture and denying her motion for reconsideration. With the exception of an eleven year interval, from 1978, when Ms. Fiadjoe was seven years of age, until her flight from her native Ghana to the United States in March 2000, Ms. Fiadjoe was held as a slave of her father, a priest of the Trokosi sect, who, in accordance with the tenets of the sect, forced his daughter to work for him and abused her physically and sexually. Ms. Fiadjoe sought asylum and other relief on the ground that if she were returned to Ghana she, as one of the women subject to the practices of the Trokosi sect, would likely once again become subject to her fathers bondage and abuse, a consequence that Ghanian government authorities were unable or unwilling to prevent.