Background
Jonathan Bridge, the Head of the Abuse team at Farleys Solicitors, was instructed by Client C in 2017 in relation to a potential claim for damages following two separate periods of child sex abuse. The first was by a man who lived with her aunt and the second was by her father.
The first period of child sex abuse occurred when our client was between the approximate ages of one year old and six years old. She was living with her aunt and her aunt’s partner. The abuse was perpetrated by the father of her aunt’s partner, who lived in the same house.
The second period of child sexual abuse occurred when our client was approximately 11 years old. Our client resided with her father and step-mother. Both her father and step-mother were physically abusive and her father sexually abused her on numerous occasions.
As a result of the abuse, our client has and continues to struggle with anxiety and depression. There have been periods during which our client has been unable to work as a result of the psychiatric injuries caused by the abuse. She has received limited counselling to support her recovery.
How Farleys Have Helped
We advised our client to submit a Criminal Injuries Compensation Claim in respect of each of the periods of abuse. We drafted a detailed statement based on our client’s instructions and submitted it to the CICA with her application.
At present, only the second claim has concluded.
The CICA initially made an offer of £5,000 in respect of the abuse perpetrated by our client’s father. We advised our Client to make an application for a review of this decision, submitting that our client has suffered a permanent mentally disability injury as a result of the abuse and she should be compensated for both her physical injuries, psychiatric injuries and loss of earnings.
The CICA then made a second offer of £7,200, which still failed to compensate our client for her loss of earnings and psychiatric injury.
We again advised our client to appeal this decision and we instructed a consultant psychiatrist to assess our client with a view to determining the full extent of her psychiatric injuries.
The psychiatrist confirmed that our client had suffered a psychiatric injury attributable to both periods of abuse and that the injury was ongoing. It was confirmed that our client had a 60% to 70 % chance of recovery with sufficient treatment.
Under the CICA Scheme 2012, a person can only recover one award for psychiatric injury, even if the injury was caused by more than one incident. Therefore, an application for an award for our client’s psychiatric injury was made in respect of the claim concerning the abuse by our client’s father. The application in respect of the first period of abuse was stayed pending the outcome of the second application.
A First Tier Tribunal hearing was held in respect of the second period abuse . Our client was represented by Ariella Jones at the hearing.
At the hearing, Farleys was successful in securing compensation for our client in the sum of over £18,000, which included compensation for the physical and sexual injuries, psychiatric injury and loss of earnings.
Farleys continues to represent Client C in relation to the first period of abuse.
If you would like to speak to an expert in CICA abuse claims, you can contact our team in confidence on 0330 134 6430 or you can fill in our online contact form and a member of the team will get in touch with you.