“However, the panel finds (she) has not provided clear and convincing evidence that state protection was inadequate in her circumstances, whether due to these injuries or with respect to the issue of domestic abuse.”

Ganova, her husband Elemir Horvath, their five daughters and one son came to Canada from Prague in June 2009, triggered by an alleged kidnapping that Ganova says caused the permanent marks on her back. The family claimed they were victims of persecution and Czech officials failed to protect them.

“This refugee board decision marks a low point of refugee protection in Canada,” said the family’s lawyer Max Berger. “If a woman with two swastikas carved on her back is not deserving of refugee protection, I don’t know what is.”

In her claim, Ganova, 38, said her family fled discrimination and harassment from neo-Nazis in the Slovak Republic in 1999 to seek protection in Belgium. They were deported after their claim was rejected and later made another failed asylum attempt in Sweden.

In 2005, after the family was deported back to Slovak Republic a second time, they moved to the neighbouring Czech Republic, where Ganova claimed her daughters were attacked in the school in a series of incidents but officials and police ignored their pleas. The carving of the swastikas on Ganova’s body was the last straw.

Paquette-Neville, however, found that Czech officials did take the family’s complaints and conducted repeated investigations before ruling that there was “no proof of any psychological or other pressure of the school” on the children.