FFS!!!
A Sri Lankan immigrant who was jailed over a horror car crash that killed his mother and daughter has been spared deportation despite a lengthy history of domestic violence after a tribunal took him “at his word” that he would not continue bashing his ex-wife.
Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) senior member John Rau SC on Monday revoked the mandatory visa cancellation of Tharanga Ehalape-Gamage, 42, who was jailed for three years in April 2022 after being found guilty of two charges of dangerous driving causing death and one charge of dangerous driving causing serious injury.
halape-Gamage and the female driver of the other car sustained serious, life-altering injuries, resulting in the offender having to wear a colostomy bag.
Following his conviction, Ehalape-Gamage’s five-year resident return visa was cancelled in March 2023 under the Migration Act, which provides that a person does not pass the character test if they have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 12 months or more.
In July last year he was transferred from Melbourne Detention Centre to Adelaide Immigration Detention Centre, where he lodged an appeal of his visa cancellation.
Mr Rau considered the decision in light of Ministerial Direction 110, new guidelines issued in 2024 for dealing with visa cancellations related to family and domestic violence which gave greater weight to the protection of the Australian community than other considerations, such as length of time living in Australia.
In his decision, Mr Rau noted that Ehalape-Gamage’s principal offending and the trigger for his visa cancellation “although very serious … is unlikely to happen again”.
“The possibility cannot be excluded of course, but the risk may be little different to any other, randomly selected driver,” he said.
“The family violence conduct and offending, although not the trigger for the mandatory cancellation, is far more problematic. The applicant has a significant history of family violence … this is very serious.”
Mr Rau noted that “his family violence behaviour began soon after his arrival in Australia”.
“It continued in the face of … bail conditions,” he said. “It only stopped with the applicant’s separation and divorce from his wife.”
In one incident in early 2019, Ehalape-Gamage dragged the woman out of bed by her hair and kicked and punched her multiple times, police records state, leaving her to believe “the accused was going to kill her”.
The prior year, he kicked through their bathroom door during an argument and punched her multiple times in the face, leaving her with a bloody nose and impaired vision “in a way that caused her to only see the colour white for a few minutes”, police records state.
His ex-wife wrote a letter of support to the tribunal, saying the couple “work towards reconciliation”.
Ehalape-Gamage told the tribunal his imprisonment and injuries from the crash had “caused a significant decline in my mental health” and that his visa cancellation “left me feeling overwhelmed, stress and struggling to cope”.
He indicated that if released from detention he planned to live in Adelaide with his ex-wife and son.
“I am satisfied that despite his assurances and the support of [his ex-wife], there is a moderate risk that the applicant will continue to engage in family violence,” Mr Rau said.
“That said, I accept that the applicant now has some insight into his past behaviour and its consequences. I accept that he wants to behave in a more constructive way with [his ex-wife] and [son]. I accept that his connection to [his son] is a strong motivating consideration.”
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/at-his-word-migrant-jailed...
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