Sources for this story came from a newspaper.

Crime refugee Brandon Huntley’s estranged Canadian wife believes he “suckered” her into marriage in a bid to secure permanent residence in her country.

And mother-of-two Melanie Crete-Huntley has reacted with shock to Huntley’s claims to the Canadian Immigration Board that he separated from her – after she gave him a home and financially supported him for nearly a year – because “she was not a nice woman”.

 

Melanie Crete-Huntley

 

“I have done nothing but try to help him,” Crete-Huntley said yesterday. “I don’t know why he would say things like this about me.”

in a controversial ruling that the Canada’s Department of Citizenship and Immigration is now trying to overturn, the Canadian Immigration Board awarded Huntley refugee status on the grounds that he was being persecuted by black people in South Africa.

In its findings on the case, the board said: “(Huntley) met his wife-to-be and fell in love with her. He married her believing that he could use her to help him to get permanent status in Canada.

“He was to find out later that ‘she was not a nice woman’. He separated from her by moving out just before Christmas 2008.”

 

Huntley

 

Crete-Huntley, who is to apply today for a full transcript of her husband’s evidence to the immigration board, said she had married Huntley because she loved him, but now questioned if he had been driven by the same motives.

“Now I think that his wanting permanent status in Canada might have been a factor in his wanting to marry me… I feel like I was suckered,” she said.

She said she and Huntley had split up in October last year because of disagreements between herself and her children over Huntley and had “agreed that we would try to work on getting things right from separate homes”.

Before learning of what her husband had told the immigration board, she said she had hoped they could patch things up.

“But for him to degrade me like this… I don’t think so any more,” she said.

According to Crete-Huntley, she met Huntley in 2004 through a cousin who had worked with him at the carnival where Huntley set up, repaired and took down rides. The couple started dating a year later.

Crete-Huntley said she had invited Huntley to live with her because he had nowhere to stay.

“One day we were playing around and he said to me, ‘We should really get married’, and I responded by asking him whether he was joking.

“But he said he wasn’t.”

The couple were married in court on August 31, 2007.

Because Huntley did not at that time have the legal status necessary to work, Crete-Huntley had to do two jobs to support him and her family.

Asked about her response to Huntley’s bid to get refugee status on the basis of his experiences of crime in South Africa, Crete-Huntley said she was concerned that “chances are high that he will be killed if he ever goes back”.

“He’s shown me his stab wounds,” she said.