Ghanaian women living in Rugby may be deported after using a false passport to get jobs in care homes

A judge has recommended that a Ghanaian woman living in Rugby who used a false passport to try to get agency jobs in care homes should be deported.

Janet Kyeremaa had pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to possessing an identity document, a false French passport, with improper intent.

Kyeremaa (47) of Pinfold Street, Rugby, was sentenced to six months in prison suspended for two years, and was ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid work.

Judge Andrew Lockhart QC also imposed an electronically-monitored 7pm-7am curfew for six months – although he agreed to lift it for four days for her to attend her father’s funeral.

And he also recommended that Kyeremaa, who had overstayed her leave to remain in this country after her application for asylum was rejected, should be deported.

Prosecutor Laura Culley said that in March last year Kyeremaa had an interview with the Pearson Anderson agency for work as a health carer.

She gave a false name, supported by a fake French passport in that name – which it was later discovered she had done three times before with other agencies.

When she was arrested other documents were found in the false name, and she accepted using the passport to try to get work.

Miss Culley said that Kyeremaa, who was of previous good character, had come to this country as an asylum-seeker, but had over-stayed after her application was rejected.

David Everett, defending, said Kyeremaa was born in Ghana and had worked as a seamstress from a young age.

She married and had her first child at the age of 15, and later moved with her husband to Italy.

“If there had been no problem in Italy, she would still have been there, but the marriage became abusive and he divorced her because he wanted to take another wife – and that cut her adrift.

“She was allowed to come here initially and had rights to work in 2009, but that ran out and she was not allowed to continue working.”

Mr Everett said Kyeremaa then met her second husband who wanted her to get a job and, as a French national, had ‘played a part’ in obtaining the false passport.

He added that Kyeremaa had worked as a carer in old people’s homes, and there had been no complaints about her work.

But Judge Lockhart commented that it was ‘a significant aggravating feature’ that her use of a false identity document meant that proper checks could not be carried out on her.

Sentencing Kyeremaa, he told her: “You had led a blameless life until the moment you became involved in possessing this false identity documents with improper intent.

“You knew it was false, and you tried to use it a number of times, and did use it on the occasion I am dealing with, to seek to obtain work with an agency to work in the caring profession.

“This has a significant level of potential harm, because it undermines the controls on those working in the caring sector.”