Are You a Victim of Crime? Legal Advice Paves the Way to Compensation

04/12/2017


There is a tendency to think that victims of crime receive little or no compensation and have to be content with seeing the guilty punished. However, as one High Court case in which a sex abuse victim won six-figure damages showed, those who take professional legal advice can achieve far more than that.

The case concerned a woman in her 50s who had suffered years of abuse on an almost daily basis at the hands of her step-father, beginning when she was aged three or four. He threatened her with a jar of spiders, forced her to write him love letters and raped her for the first time when she was aged just nine. He beat her with a stick and threatened to kill her or have her placed in a children's home.

The step-father was convicted and sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment after the woman went to the police decades later. She had by then suffered a mental breakdown. Her adult life had been blighted by low self-esteem, depression, constant nightmares and eating disorders.

After she contacted solicitors, she launched a damages claim against her abuser, by then aged in his 70s. He played no active part in the proceedings and judgment was swiftly entered against him. In assessing the value of her claim, the Court found that the abuse had affected all aspects of her life, including her education and career. She had, however, formed a stable partnership and become a mother.

She was awarded £90,000 for the pain, suffering and loss of amenity that she had endured and £10,000 in aggravated damages. With other substantial sums to reflect her past and future loss of earnings and the cost of counselling, her total award came to about £590,000. The step-father was also ordered to pay the £113,842 legal costs of the case. The court expressed the hope that psychiatric treatment would enable the woman to live a happier life than she had done hitherto.

JXH v MXB. Case Number: TLQ17/0001

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