Our Immigration and Refugee Board seriously needs to find better judges. Following up on my Monday commentary Refugee Presumed a Liar by Former Conservative Candidate Turned Refugee Judge, Sarwanjit Randhawa is my candidate for Refugee Judicial Clod of the Year.

When a woman applied for refugee status in Canada, she never thought her claim would be denied because she made the difficult choice to keep her baby after she was gang-raped by a Hungarian gang of street thugs in 2011.

What she didn’t know at the time is her case would be heard by Refugee Board Adjudicator Sarwanjit Randhawa.

In a hearing held on March 22, 2019, the woman, whose identity is redacted from the decision, was asked a simple question by Sarwanjit Randhawa.

Why would you keep a child conceived by rape?

I don’t believe in abortion, the woman replied.

Sarwanjit, in her written decision issued on April 5, 2019, said:

“[I am] sensitive to the subject of rape, but the claimant’s explanation does not make sense as to why she would keep a child who would remind her of being raped, unless that is not the case.”

Randhawa needs to brush up on her rape statistics.

First, women raped by strangers almost never report the crime.

According to the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC), “Women who were raped by a current or former intimate partner were more likely to report RRP (26%) compared to those raped by an acquaintance (5.2%) or a stranger (6.9%).”

Randhawa went on to say:

The applicant “also stated that her family had no idea of her being raped. One would expect some medical documents and that her family would know about such a crime if, indeed, it took place.”

If that many women won’t report the crime to the police, why on earth would they tell family members – the people most likely to shame her into making the decision that makes them most comfortable?

Second, a study by The Elliot Institute found 73 percent of rape victims chose to give birth to their babies. Dr. Sandra Mahkorn, in a study done prior to The Elliott Institute’s, found 75 to 85 percent of rape victims did not have abortions.

The fact both Dr. Mahkorn and The Elliot Institute are pro-life advocates is the primary thought used to discredit their findings.

A more difficult finding to discredit is from a 1996 study of 34,000 American women published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. That study showed an average of 32 per cent of women who became pregnant by rape kept their children.

Talk about an inconvenient truth.

Women who choose to keep the children they conceive by sexual assault do so far more often than our “we love abortion” society wants to believe.

Case in point: Refugee Board Adjudicator Sarwanjit Randhawa.

Her “explanation does not make sense as to why she would keep a child who would remind her of being raped, unless that is not the case.”

Kathryn Marshal, in her editorial published in the National Post, wrote:

Unsurprisingly, the decision was successfully appealed when the Federal Court determined that the applicant hadn’t received a fair hearing.

No kidding.

The Federal Court overturned Sarwanjit Randhawa’s decision using the words “serious” and “fatal’” to describe the many errors she made in concluding the refugee claimant was lying.

Thank God there’s still a little common sense left somewhere in our court system.

But when will competent people start hearing refugee claims? A lot of the current crop of adjudicators are bloody awful and that simply must change.