Judge: No extra damages to condemn IRA
AWARDING higher damages to ‘mark society’s condemnation’ of the IRA’s Hyde Park bombing can only happen if the law is changed, a judge has ruled.
Mr Justice Martin Spencer refused the request as he awarded £715,207 to Sarah Jane Young for psychiatric injury she suffered after her dad died in the 1 82 IRA atrocity.
As a four-year-old she watched from her nursery window as her father L/ Cpl Jeffrey Young, 1 , left the Royal Household Cavalry’s Knightsbridge barracks on horseback before hearing the car bomb blast which killed him.
She was suing IRA member John Downey, 68, after a criminal case against him collapsed at the Old Bailey in 2014. The High Court ruled last year he was an ‘active participant’ and jointly responsible for the attack, which left 31 other people injured.
Ms Young’s barrister Anne Studd QC asked for an ‘exemplary’ sum because relatives were denied a ‘measure of justice, and thereby closure’ as no-one has been brought to justice.
Justice Martin said it was the first time this had been asked in a terror case in the civil court, and ruled it would be ‘for either Parliament or the higher courts, and probably the
Supreme Court, to decide.’ L/Cpl Young died with Squadron QMC Roy Bright, 36, Lt Dennis Daly, 23, and Trooper Simon
Tipper, 1 , as they rode through the London park to attend Changing of the Guard. Seven horses had to be put down. Another, Sefton, survived.
Downey, whose fingerprints were found on a parking ticket, was later wrongly given a letter telling him he was not on a wanted list as part of the Northern Ireland peace process. Ms Young said last night she will appeal the decision on exemplary damages, and said the judge’s finding that she was not a ‘secondary victim’ of the blast was wrong. In a statement she said she aimed to ‘ensure that terrorists and those that support them will, in future, be properly punished by the courts for their wrongdoing.’ Most of the award will go to her mother for past care.