In a civil legal claim, the formal purpose of compensation is to put the claimant, so far as possible, back in the position in which they would have been had they never been injured.
Of course, where someone has experienced sexual or physical abuse, neglect or emotional abuse or grooming, that is impossible. No amount of money can ever compensate for the trauma, which can be deep and life changing.
When someone consults us about bringing a civil claim, we will advise you that financial compensation is the remedy a Court can award if the case goes to court and is successful, and it will therefore be the basis of any out of Court settlement or compromise.
However, we know that bringing a civil claim is often about a lot more than compensation. It can be about:
It is generally not possible to tell you what compensation you may get at the start of your case with accuracy.
Civil claims in England and Wales are decided by a judge, not a jury, and you will need to evidence and prove your claim.
Most often, we will need to get background documents and a medical report from a Consultant Psychiatrist or Psychologist before we can start looking at what compensation sum a court might award.
We may need to get witness statements too – from you and from people who know you well.
The compensation can be divided into compensation for the abuse itself and psychological or psychiatric, and sometimes physical, injuries caused by the abuse, on the one hand, and compensation for consequential financial losses or needs the survivor may have.
Courts and lawyers use guidelines produced by the Judicial College (the official body responsible for training judges in England and Wales). These contain guidance on valuing all types of injuries: everything from minor injuries, where someone may have made a complete recovery within days or a few months, to catastrophic brain damage and quadriplegia. There is a chapter on mental injuries (Psychiatric and Psychological Damage) and this contains guidance on how to value claims for Sexual and / or Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Psychiatric Damage generally. There are different compensation “brackets” depending on the severity and duration of the abuse and / or its psychological consequences.
It may seem very odd to hear your lawyer talking about which “bracket” your case falls in. After all, there is no level of abuse that is acceptable and survivors of non-recent child abuse may have been living with the effects for 20, 30, 40 years or even longer.
Many clients have asked: shouldn’t they receive a compensation sum for every year they have been harmed?
However, the courts have to strive to do justice not just for the individual survivor but by all the other people who come to court with claims for abuse and injury, some of whom will have been more severely affected and some less so. If there wasn’t any guidance then awards would likely be very arbitrary – dependent on the life experience and personal sympathy of the judge – and it would be much more difficult to settle claims (because to reach settlement the parties and their advisers need to be able to predict the range of awards that might be made if the case were to go to court).
The Judicial College Guidelines get revised every couple of years and they have gone up – a lot – since I first started conducting abuse claims for survivors. The very top of the bracket for the most severe cases is now almost £200,000.
Relatively few survivors will be awarded figures like this for abuse and injury. Many people if they are successful will receive some sort of five-figure sum.
You may be able to claim for financial needs and losses: what lawyers called “special damages”, because they compensate for specific, quantifiable financial losses.
These can include therapy or treatment costs. This can be very important, as it can often be difficult for survivors to access the type or duration of the specialist treatment they need under the NHS or from the voluntary sector.
It may be possible to ask the Defendant to make an “interim payment” so that treatment can start without having to wait for this until the end of the case.
You may also be able to claim compensation for other things such as: the financial value of emotional support, informal care or household help that family members have provided to you; medical expenses like prescription costs if you have had to pay them; specialist items like camouflage make-up if you have scarring; and compensation for loss of earnings. Often survivors will report that, as a result of the abuse, they have been knocked off the trajectory they would have been on in education and then in employment. This has cost them opportunities and sometimes lasting financial consequences. Or they may have had a breakdown in their mental health, perhaps when deciding to disclose the abuse for the first time or go to the police, and now they are not able to work or work as much.
It is beyond the scope of this blog to give detailed advice as to how such claims for loss of earnings are valued. This is a very complex area. Judges, whilst they may be sympathetic to what the survivor has been through, can often be rather sceptical of claims that, but for the abuse as a young child, the individual would have been able to pursue a particular career as an adult and earn large amounts.
Your lawyer will advise you on what is legally reasonable, based on the evidence available and what a Court would be likely to award.
Survivors can be worried, if they are going to receive some compensation, how this may affect them. Your lawyer should also advise you, if you are claiming or are likely in future to need to claim any means-tested state welfare benefits or Council-funded care, how to set up a special type of trust, called a “personal injury trust”. This can ringfence your compensation and protect your eligibility for means-tested benefits and services.
