Akuoch Akuoch, one of the so-called ‘lost boys of Sudan’ whose childhood was ripped apart by civil war and homelessness, had found his way to the US as an asylum seeker in the early 2000s. But it was the remark of a high school friend in Virginia in 2005 that promised to tip his world upside down yet again.

“I think I met your sister,” ventured his friend Bol, also from Sudan.

Bol had been visiting his own sister in Australia and, through her, had met Mr Akuoch’s sister, one of several siblings whose fate Mr Akuoch had long pondered. “It was one of the happiest moments of my life,” he says.

But now, more than a decade after reconnecting with his family, and having moved to Australia to rebuild his life, the 30-year-old fears losing them again.

Mr Akuoch was charged in June 2015 with allegedly assaulting his former girlfriend while visiting their child at her home in Flemington. He faces trial later this year, the outcome of which will almost certainly determine whether he can remain in Australia.

Initially, the Immigration Department refused to extend Mr Akuoch’s bridging visa necessary for him to contest the charges and told him to leave the country, but later relented after Mr Akuoch’s legal counsel, Kurt Esser, successfully argued that refusing to extend Mr Akuoch’s visa would cause him to break the terms of his bail, which in itself would amount to a criminal offence.

Sitting in Mr Esser’s office, Mr Akuoch says he is not anxious about the prospect of being deported, given what else he has experienced in his life. “Because people like me, we’ve seen too many things,” he says. “They’ve threatened me by saying ‘leave’, but they’re not doing anything violent towards me.”

Mr Akuoch’s firsthand experience of war has hardened his resolve. “That’s how people live [in Sudan], in violence,” he says. “People die every day.”

The conflict between Sudan’s Muslim centralised government based in the north and the largely Christian south erupted in 1983. Mr Akuoch was born just three years later, his early life defined by war and fleeing violence throughout east Africa.

During a raid on the village where he and his family lived, he was separated from his siblings and biological parents, who he now believes are dead. “During the war, people were scattered everywhere,” he says. “Because when the war comes, people run in every different direction.”

Ultimately, with his foster parents, the infant Akuoch fled from South Sudan to Ethiopia in 1987. But when trouble erupted in that country in 1990, with rebel militias attacking the Soviet-backed dictatorship of Mengistu, the family headed south again, settling eventually in Kenya.

“I don’t like to talk about my past that much because that part is just gone, you know. You can’t change the past, so you want to move on with your future in a different direction.” — Akuoch Akouch

Mr Akuoch falls silent when asked about what he witnessed during those years. “Do you want me to go all the way, brother?” he asks. “I think that part of my brain just wants to close. I don’t like to talk about my past that much because that part is just gone, you know. You can’t change the past, so you want to move on with your future in a different direction.”

The conflict in his homeland raged unabated until 2005, becoming one of the longest-running civil wars in history. During this time, thousands of people were displaced, including around 20,000 children, many of them boys, who were cut off from their families. Dubbed the ‘lost boys’, many succumbed to disease or were conscripted as child soldiers.

In response to this dire situation, the US State Department admitted around 4000 of them.

“I was one of the lost boys,” Mr Akuoch acknowledges. “In 2001, I believe, that’s when I went to America.”

Mr Akuoch left behind his foster family in Kenya, who eventually returned to South Sudan where a peace treaty was signed in 2005, the same year that his friend Bol had stunned him in the playground of their Virginia school with the revelation that his siblings had survived the war and were in Australia.

He had not seen any of them since the day his village was raided. “When I heard that my sisters are here in Australia, I was so excited,” he says. “It was the most beautiful thing.” Bol had bought his friend a phone card so that he could make contact. “My sister said, ‘Yes! We’ve been trying to look for you’,” recalls Mr Akuoch.

In fact, he soon discovered he had two sisters living in Sydney, along with two sisters and a brother in Melbourne. But he says his American foster mother did not want to see him go. “She said, ‘How do you know for sure? These could be different people’. But I told her, ‘They would never lie’.”

“I want to see my boy grow up . . . Not like when I was in the jungle in South Sudan, where there was a war. There’s no war here . . . it’s just a piece of paper that is telling me to go.” — Akuoch Akuoch

Sally Webster, Mr Akuoch’s migration agent, says Sudanese social networks in both Australia and Sudan confirmed they were blood relatives.

Mr Akuoch did not have money to buy a plane ticket but, on finishing high school, he worked for three years as an apprentice electrician, earning around $US500 a week. During this time, in 2010, he broke his leg while playing soccer. Sitting idle unable to work, his sisters convinced him to come and visit them in Australia in March, 2011.

“When I came here, I thought I was back in Africa,” he says. “There’s so many Sudanese. In our community, if they haven’t seen you for a long time, they will throw a party. They had a celebration for me. People were happy.”

It was after this family reunion that Mr Akuoch decided to apply for Australian residency while on his visitor visa. Ms Webster says he had made an application for a “last remaining relative” visa but it was refused. She says the department took issue with what Mr Akuoch had written regarding his biological parents.

According to Ms Webster, in Dinka culture, a person will not usually say someone is dead if they cannot be certain. In his application, Mr Akuoch had failed to indicate whether or not his parents were deceased, even though he strongly believes this to be the case.

Mr Akuoch remained in Australia on his brdiging visa up until the time he was charged mid-last year. Ms Webster says because of this status, he was placed straight in detention upon his arrest. “There’s no waiting around for a conviction, it’s just straight to detention,” she says.

Eventually, he was released. But Mr Akuoch was shocked when he was informed by Australian authorities that he needed to leave the country.

“My sisters are here, I have family here, friends here. And now, I have children here,” he says.

The government did not have a good reason to send him back to America. “There is nobody over there,” he says. “I sold everything. I sold my car, and I’m not working. So to go back to America – what am I going to?”

Complicating this are problems with his leg, which has not properly healed since his 2010 soccer mishap. “I need an operation, but I don’t have Medicare,” he says. “I’m just here as a person, but not in Australian society.”

While Mr Akuoch is keen to defend the assault charges later this year, Mr Esser believes the case has wider legal implications. He has accused Immigration Minister Peter Dutton of instructing Mr Akuoch to leave the country knowing full well that Mr Akuoch needed to be in Australia in 2016 to face the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court. An action launched against the Minister for allegedly interfering with the court’s processes is pending, with the matter listed for hearing next month. 

But Mr Akuoch’s immediate focus is on his family. Currently living in Melton, his girlfriend is nine months’ pregnant and is due to give birth to a baby boy. 

“I want to see my boy grow up,” he says. “I grew up in a foster home and I feel like I want to see my kid grow up. Not like when I was in the jungle in South Sudan, where there was a war. There’s no war here . . . it’s just a piece of paper that is telling me to go.”

Mr Akuoch says he would love to settle in Australia, where he believes he has a future. “I have a life here,” he says. “I have family and I have my sisters here, nieces and nephews. There’s 18 of us. This is home.”