- Adelaide Abankwah
Adelaide Abankwah (born circa 1971) was a pseudonym taken by
Ghana ian Regina Norman Danson when she tried to immigrate to the U.S. as arefugee claiming to be fleeingfemale genital cutting and seekingpolitical asylum ."Adelaide Abankwah" appeared in the USA in 1997 from Ghana. She claimed that she had inherited the position of a female chief of her tribe after her mother had died. The position, however, demanded that she would be a virgin. She had fallen in love with a Christian and if she went back, the tribe would discover she was not a virgin any more and she would be forced to submit to genital mutilation. Thus she applied for political asylum on
March 29 1997 .The INS officials suspected that her passport had been forged or otherwise altered, had her detained and begun proceedings to expel her. Abankwah was detained for over two years in a detention facility in
Jamaica, Queens when her application for asylum was twice rejected, first by an immigration judge, and then in 1999 by theBoard of Immigration Appeals .Eventually the INS investigation determined that the "Abankwah" was an impostor. Her real name was Regina Norman Danson. She had adopted the name of another Ghanaian woman who was living in
Maryland and whosepassport had been stolen in Ghana.Danson admitted that she had given a wrong name but that her story was still true. Further inquiries from Ghana showed that her mother, who had never been a tribal leader, was still alive. Immigration
court also noted that Ghana had declared female circumcision illegal in 1994, and that it had never been widespread there.The case came to the attention of feminist and
human rights activists who began to lobby for her release. They included actressesJulia Roberts andVanessa Redgrave and then-First LadyHillary Clinton .The Second Circuit Court of
Appeal s reversed the decision in July 1999 and granted Danson asylum. INS continued to investigate and found "overwhelming evidence" offraud . The justice department was still hesitant to pursue a fraud conviction because of possible public furor and badpublicity but indicted her in 2001. The real Abankwah cooperated with INS to have the case cleared.The fraud trial began on
January 14 2002 . Tribal ChiefNana Kwa Bonko testified that Danson was not in thetribe 's royalsuccession and that they did not practicefemale circumcision .According to ( [http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=31766] ), Danson was to be sentenced for fraud on
March 23 ,2003 "for up to 16 months in prison, after which she will be deported to Ghana."Post Note
As of 2008 it has not been publicly disclosed whether or not Regina Norman Danson was deported or removed from the United States.
External links
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A13252-2000Dec15 "Washington Post" - "Asylum Seeker is impostor, INS says"]
* [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/14/national/main536361.shtml "CBS" - "Mutilation Horror , Or Hoax", (Jan 14 2002)]
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