R V Criminal Injuries Compensation Board ex parte 20th February 1992

FACTS:-

 The Applicant was born in October 1967 and she alleged that her stepfather had sexually abused her during the two years or so up to Christmas 1984. The last offence had been committed while the Applicant was living with her mother and stepfather, in Christmas 1984. Shortly after Christmas, her mother told her to leave which she did, then aged 17 and at school. She went to London to see her father and spent the rest of the school holidays with him. She then claimed for benefits at which point she disclosed the offences. Until then she had only told one school friend. In January 1985 she instructed solicitors to recover some items from her home, but she had written out a statement about the abuse, at the request of her solicitor. However nothing more was done by these solicitors. In February 1985, the local social services department became involved, but the Applicant said that she did not want to report the matter to the police. By the end of 1985 she had asked to see Rape Crisis, and as a result she was put in touch with a community psychiatric nurse, who described the symptoms of serious psychological damage. In October 1986 she began a degree course at university and then in 1988 she saw a solicitor, and made an application to the CICB. These solicitors took three statements from her in October 1988, March 1989 and November 1989. These showed that her condition had worsened considerably and she gave up her university course. She made a statement to the police in May 1989 but they decided to take no further action.

HELD:-

McCullough J considered the scope of the CICB Scheme and its accompanying Guide. There was a three year time limit, but the Applicant’s alleged incidents had happened between seven and five years before her application. aid that the Scheme was intended to be set out in simple language and a phrase such as “living together as members of the same family” ought to be given it ordinary straightforward meaning. This was a pure question of fact. There was no justification for saying that the CICB had erred in law.

McCullough J considered Paragraph 8 of the Scheme and Paragraph 16 of the Guide, along with Paragraphs 22 to 23 and 42 to 44. The CICB had said that under Paragraph 4 of the Scheme, applicants could only be entertained only if the application was made within 3 years of the incident, and this requirement could only be waived in exceptional circumstances. The Board had always been sympathetic to child victims.

 The Chairman of the CICB had held against the Applicant not because she had not informed the police earlier, but because she had not made a claim until December 1989 despite the fact that she had the benefit of advice from the local authority and from two firms of solicitors prior to October 1988. McCullough J said that the Chairman was obliged to inform the Applicant of the substantial reasons why he decided against her, but he was not obliged to set out the whole of his thinking either in his decision letter or in his affidavit, in which he amplified what he had said in his letter.

 However it was not realistic for the Chairman to treat the fact that she had assistance in January and February 1985, as a bar to her getting over the three year time limit. A solicitor aware of the provisions of the Scheme and acting for her early in 1985 would hardly have been likely to think that compensation could be awarded to her without the police being made aware of her complaints. That it seemed at that stage was something that she did not want. Until 1988 she did not know about the possibility of making a claim, and that accounted for the passing of the time during her minority and during the following three years. There was the matter of the final 14 months from the time she instructed her present solicitors to the submission of the application. However this could have been dealt with by asking the solicitor for an account of why it had taken so long to bring the claim. The claim had failed because the Chairman looked at the whole period and felt driven to conclude that there were only three possible explanations for her not having made a claim before she did;

 a)    she had not wanted to make an application

b)    she had been advised not to make an application

c)    she had not been advised that an application could and should be made.

 Therefore the decision of the CICB would be quashed, but this did not mean that the only reasonable thing to have done would have been to allow the application. The application should be reconsidered, in the light of all the available evidence including the psychiatric evidence, which suggested that victims of abuse in childhood tended both to shut out the experience from their minds and to minimize its significance.

McCullough J also considered whether it was right to make an order anonymising the Applicant’s name, pursuant to Section 11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981.