Review of policy that denied payouts to child sex victims

THE Ministry of Justice has said it will review the cases of child sex abuse victims denied compensation because they were deemed to have “consented”.

Around 700 children have been refused compensation by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (Cica) since 2012, some because they were judged to have gone along with their abuse and had therefore not suffered an “injury”. A group of charities has called on David Lidington, the Justice Secretary, to change the guidelines. His department confirmed that it had urgently requested details from Cica on the cases that were refused on this basis and would then consider a wider examination of the compensation scheme.

Under the law children under 16 cannot be deemed to have consented, unless they are over 13 and the perpetrator could reasonably have believed they were over 16. Cica uses guidelines which test whether the child consented “in fact” based on their behaviour.