Ghanian Immigrant Found Guilty of Lying
By TOM HAYS
Associated Press Writer

January 16, 2003, 9:56 AM EST

NEW YORK -- Regina Danson was granted asylum after she claimed she was a
disgraced tribal princess who would face sexual mutilation if deported
to Ghana. 

Her tale of woe outraged the public and won her support from feminist
Gloria Steinem, actress Julia Roberts and then-first lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton. 

Officials now say the tale wasn't true. A federal jury in Brooklyn
deliberated about five hours Wednesday before finding Danson, 33, guilty
of lying to immigration officials. 

Danson, who is free on $200,000 bond, faces up to 16 months in prison
and deportation at sentencing on March 23. 

"Her biggest fear is deportation," defense attorney Dawn Cardi told
reporters after the verdict was read. "There may be people in Ghana who
feel angry about her being found to have slandered Ghana." 

The defendant was first detained in 1997 when she tried to enter the
country with a falsified passport at New York's John F. Kennedy
International Airport. 

At an asylum hearing, she claimed that as a "queen mother" in waiting,
she had violated tribal law by becoming a Christian, secretly falling in
love and losing her virginity. If forced to return to Ghana, tribal
elders would punish her by cutting her clitoris, she told an immigration
judge. 

"I will be mutilated, and my lover will be found and executed," she said
in an affidavit. "After that, I will have to live the rest of my life in
shame." 

The judge denied the application, noting Ghana had outlawed genital
mutilation in 1994 and that her identity was in doubt. An appeals court
reversed the decision in 1999 after she attracted support from Steinem,
Roberts and Clinton. 

But in 2000, an Immigration and Naturalization Service investigation
concluded Danson's story was a fabrication. Investigators alleged she
was a former Ghanaian hotel worker who assumed the identity of another
woman named Adelaide Abankwah. 

Danson was indicted last year, only days before the statute of
limitations would have run out on perjury, false-statement and passport
fraud charges. 

At trial, tribal chief Nana Kwa Bonko testified that Danson was not part
of the tribe's royal family, and that mutilation was not practiced in
his region of Ghana. 

Female genital mutilation, typically performed on girls before puberty,
ranges from cutting the tip of the clitoris to removing all external
genitals. 

According to Amnesty International, an estimated 135 million of the
world's girls and women have undergone genital mutilation. It is
practiced extensively in Africa and is common in some countries in the
Middle East. 
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

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