Court orders council to pay £1.3m to man abused by foster carer
Scotland’s largest council has been ordered to pay more than £1.3 million to a man who was abused for years as a child by his foster carer.
The Court of Session has ordered Glasgow City Council to pay out £1,339,185 to the unnamed man.
However the final amount paid out could be larger when interest is determined by the court at a later hearing.
Judge Lord Brailsford said in his ruling there was “no dispute” that the man involved had been “the victim of serious sexual abuse”.
The foster carer, who is not named in the court ruling, was “convicted of offences involving the pursuer and sentenced to a period of 10 years’ imprisonment”.
The man took legal action against the council for the “loss, injury and damage sustained by him as a consequence of abuse he suffered
at the hands of a foster carer” between 1983 and 1988.
Lord Brailsford said he was “satisfied on the balance of probabilities” that difficulties the man suffered both in his employment and in his personal life “have been proved to be causally linked to the childhood sexual abuse” he suffered. As a result, he said Glasgow City Council was “vicariously liable for the consequences of that conduct”.
An expert report submitted to the court found the man, now aged 50, “has suffered throughout adulthood, from PTSD, psychosexual problems, anxiety and personality related difficulties”.
The court judgment told how he had been taken into care at the age of 21 months, living in two children’s homes and then with two separate foster families. At the age of 12 he was placed with the foster carer who went on to abuse him.
He has said of his time there that he was “consistently seriously abused”, adding he was “raped and molested and subjected to daily threats of physical violence”. He said: “Severe abuse and rape was a regular occurrence.”
The judgment said at this point he was “a vulnerable child needing reassurance, love and protection”. But it added: “This need was then contrasted with the long period, a number of years, in the care of those persons when the pursuer sustained years of sexual abuse.” The judgment said the man “thinks that his childhood was ‘stolen’ from him”.