1,000s of victims are missing out How can you put a time limit on the trauma of child abuse?

you’re dealing with abuse. You’re just trying to get by day to day. “I wasn’t even aware I could claim until close to the end of the trial, when Victim Support shoved some leaflets into my hand. My y abuse meant my education suffered a and I wanted to use the money to make a fresh start and go back to university for a PhD so I could for really make something of my life.” The woman was abused after her dad got in touch with her a after three years of e estrangement. “He took me out for dinnerdin in London and gave me alcohol ‘like a grownup’, then took me to stay at his and raped me,” she says. “But it didn’t stop there. He started calling me every night and asking me questions, like what was I wearing. It went on for about six months. “I told my mum and we went to the police. I gave statements but I felt I couldn’t go through with a court case because I felt so scared.”

Tortured by her ordeal, she took the case to court to find some sense of closure – but being told she was not entitled to compensation was another blow.

Company boss Nick French, 45, was molested by his stepdad Gary Moscroft as a teenager and he complained to police about physical abuse in 1987, when he was 15.

Depression ession

Moscroft, now 78, of Brighton, was given a police caution at the time. But he was jailed for ten years in January 2015015 after Nick, having had two childrendren of his own, could bottle it up no longer and went back to the police.olice.

Yet when Nick applied for criminal injuries,ies, he was told he was not entitled because he had not made a claim aim before he was 20.

He said: “Youou don’t suddenly turnn 18 and think, ‘Oh well, I must make that claim’. It took me years to come to terms with what had happened to me, let alone share the abuse with police officers. “But because I had complained about Moscroft when I was 15, I was told I wasn’t eligible for anything. “It put me into a real depression. I felt that the abuse wasn’t believed. “Then I became enraged. It wasn’t about the money and became about other child victims. How can you put a time limit on such trauma?” Nick’s abuser w was convicted of ten offences, incl including indecent assault, gross ind indecency with a child and child c cruelty. Nick said: “It fell under the remit of a historic historical case because of the previous complaint, yet Moscrof Moscroft had been conv convicted. ““It feels like this is a loophole for the Government to save money.” Nick said he was “haunted” by