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Elizabeth is cause celebre far away from Fleet Street – in a Manchester community that cares about her survival and utterly believes in her plight. She’s a Ugandan who fled to Britain in 2004 after escaping from a semi-official “safe house” where she’d been held for five months and repeatedly raped and beaten. Was she a common criminal, then? No, she was a lesbian, snatched away from an underground club. She feared for her life: she asked for shelter.
Her Manchester solicitors, her doctors and support organisations have played by the rules ever since she arrived. They’ve ploughed up and down the asylum process, making a case, entering appeals. But there’s a bizarre snag, which the adjudication in the case makes painfully clear. Home Office adjudicators recognise that homosexuals can be persecuted in Uganda – but they don’t accept that the word “homosexual” covers lesbians, too. And because Elizabeth had a child when she was very young, they scratch their heads over whether she’s a lesbian at all.

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