BACKGROUND TO THE APPEAL
1. The Appellant is a national of Albania . She was born in Fier a and attended university in Tirana between October 2009 and September 2012. Whilst there, she met a man called Florian Buzzi, who became her boyfriend in May 2010. He was an Albanian who was living in Italy and she believed that she was going to join him there to study for a Ma sters degree. 2. She did not initially tell her parents about their relationship , as her father was very strict. However, she had to do so in May 2012 when her parents said that they w anted her to marry into her sister-in-law’s family. They then demanded that Florian marry her but he told her that it was too early for them to get engaged . The Appellant told her family that she had stopped seeing Florian but continued to do so. 3. In October 2012, just after she had completed her first degree, Florian took her to see a man called Artan in Sauk, stating that he could help them obtain the necessary documents to live in Italy. Whilst there , she believes that her drink was spiked. When she woke up, Florian had gone and Artan told her the she had been “sold” to him. She was then detained and beaten until she submitted to working as a prostitu te. She remained imprisoned in his house until February 2014 when she was taken to Italy and prostituted there. She was then brought back to Albania in June 2014 and held and prostituted in Durres and Vlore and once again in Sauk. 4. She managed to escape on 25 May 2015 whilst the men guarding her were preoccupied by the death of Artan ’ s nephew. By this time , she had saved the equivalent of over 2 , 700 Euros in tips that she had received from “clients” and hidden away. She fled to her parents’ home but they would not assist her and she went to stay with a friend in Patos . She stayed there until she learnt that Artan had gone to her family home looking for her and her friend thought it was no longer safe for her to remain in her home. Her friend’s father assisted her to find someone willing to smuggle her to the United Kingdom in the back of a lorry and she arrived here on 5 June 2015. 5. She applied for asylum that same day but her application was refused on 31 March 2016. Meanwhile, the Immigration Service had referred the Appellant into the National Referral Mechanism, as a potential victim of human trafficking on 8 June 2015. The Competent Authority, which is located in the Home Office, found that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that she was a victim of human trafficking on 12 June 2015 but on 10 December 2015 it found that, applying a balance of probabilities, she had not established that there were conclusive grounds for finding that she had been a victim of human trafficking. The findings in this decision formed the basis of the subsequent decision to refuse her asylum. 6. She appealed against the decision to refuse her asylum and her appeal was initially allowed by First-tier Tribunal Judge Heatherington in a decision promulgated on 13 October 2016. However, the Respondent appealed and in a decision, promulgated on 16 February 2017 , Upper Tribunal Judge Hanson found that First-tier Tribunal Judge Heatherington had made material errors of law and the Appellant’s appeal was remitted to the First-tier Tribunal to be heard de novo. 7 . Her appeal came before First-tier Tribunal Judge Andrew, who dismissed her appeal in a decision, promulgated on 7 August 2017. She appealed and in a decision , pr omulgated on 27 March 2018, Dr Storey, a Judge of the Upper Tribunal, set aside First-tier Tribunal Judge Andrew’s decision but ordered that the appeal be retained in the Upper Tribunal for a de novo hearing.