Case No. UKUT-00092-(IAC)

2.The appellant is a citizen of Saint Lucia (‘St Lucia’) and is 26 years old. He arrived in the United Kingdom (‘UK’) on 30 May 2017 and claimed asylum on 7 September 2017. After hearing detailed oral evidence relatively recently at a hearing on 17 April 2018, the FTT accepted that the appellant is gay. The FTT was concerned that adverse inferences could be drawn regarding the appellant’s credibility, as a consequence of his delay in claiming asylum. The FTT noted that the appellant is a well-educated person who held a job in retail banking in St Lucia and did not accept his explanation for not claiming asylum sooner. Nonetheless, the FTT considered that the appellant gave detailed, plausible and consistent evidence regarding the development of his awareness of his sexuality. The FTT noted that the appellant noticed he was attracted to males from a young age but adopted an “avoidance strategy”. He did not speak to others about his sexuality and took an “extremely cautious” approach to revealing his sexuality whilst residing in St Lucia. He was discreet about his sexuality at least in part due to fear but he was also concerned about prevailing societal norms in St Lucia. Since arriving in the UK the appellant has had a brief relationship, which ended when he left London for Manchester. 3.The FTT accepted that the appellant joined ‘Grindr’ (a dating website for gay men), whilst still residing in St Lucia, in January 2014, and has been a fairly active user since then. The FTT also accepted that the appellant was able to avoid anyone on the site realising he was in St Lucia by adjusting his profile and removing any reference to distance. The FTT regarded the precautions taken by the appellant in his use of Grindr as consistent with “his extremely cautious approach to revealing his sexual orientation” whilst in St Lucia.4.The FTT concluded that the “threshold of persecution suffered or apprehended” by the appellant as a gay man had not been reached. In my decision identifying an error of law in the FTT’s decision, I explained that the FTT noted there were “few incidents” of violence against gay men but failed to engage with the apparently cogent evidence that there might be more violence in St. Lucia than the statistics or reports indicated, because of the underreporting of crimes and incidents of victimisation against gay people, and this failure was sufficient to impugn the reliability of the FTT’s overall finding that there is no apprehended or prospective risk for those who are openly gay in St Lucia. The FTT’s finding that the appellant is gay was not subject to any cross-appeal and is a preserved finding of fact.5.I now turn to the issues to be determined by me, when re-making the decision.