May 07, 2005
From: AAP The Australian

PHILIPPINES police today complained their search for a missing Australian mother who was wrongly deported was being hampered by a lack of information from Australian authorities.

It has emerged that Vivian Alvarez, who was deported from Queensland in 2001, had two children in Australia, lived here for up to 18 years and could be mentally ill.

The Philippines' Interpol chief Ricardo Diaz, who is overseeing the search for Ms Alvarez, said he had received none of this information until told by an ABC reporter today.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) have said they are working with their Philippines counterparts to find the woman, who the Australian Government has admitted was wrongly deported.

Mr Diaz said while his police had received a formal request from the AFP three weeks ago to search for her they had only been given the names Vivian Alvarez and Vivian Solon plus possible addresses to check.

Checks of her names and addresses in the cities of Cebu and Tacloban had proved fruitless.

Mr Diaz said Philippines police were unaware of the circumstances surrounding her deportation, of claims that she may have been mentally ill or that she had been suffering a head injury when she was deported.

As a result, Philippines police had not checked hospitals or psychiatric facilities for the missing woman.

"I never knew what this case was about," he told ABC radio.

"All I knew is that they are looking for this woman.

"I don't know anything about this woman except the name.

"I have to tell them (the AFP) that we need this kind of information so we could look for her in asylum or facility housing people with psychiatric problems or in the hospitals.

"So we need this kind of information if they really would like us to help them better."

Last night, ABC TV's Lateline program reported the woman could have lived in Australia for up to 18 years and had two children, including a nine-year-old in foster care.

Her husband also had the surname Young, not Wilson as earlier believed. The program said it was understood the woman, who had been injured in a car accident, was confined to a wheelchair when she was deported from Brisbane Airport.

She could have suffered injuries which made it difficult for her to explain herself to authorities, the report said.

Yesterday, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie revealed one of the woman's sons was taken into care after she failed to collect him from the Brisbane City Hall child care facility on February 16, 2001.

The Queensland Department of Family Services reported her missing to police on July 17, 2001, and the two names she used were listed on the state's Missing Persons Register.

Mr Beattie said the woman went to a hospital in the northern NSW town of Lismore to seek treatment some months after July.

The woman used a different name and told staff she had applied for citizenship and been kept as a sex slave in Brisbane.

Hospital staff alerted immigration officials who could find no record of her and three days later she was deported.