Historic Sexual Assault Client Case

Background

This client contacted us to make a claim because she had suffered a serious sexual assault in 1991, which she immediately reported to police.  At that time the police were unable to locate the offender, and it wasn’t until he was arrested on an unrelated charge in 2007 that he was linked to her case via DNA, at which time police re-opened our client’s case.  The offender was sentenced to ten years imprisonment.

Progression of Case

Due to the amount of time which had passed since the case was re-opened, the client was out of time to submit a claim to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA).  However, due to the impact of this serious incident on our client, she was able to obtain evidence of Exceptional Circumstances (EC) from her GP which enabled us to submit a Criminal Injuries claim on her behalf in April 2021.  Once this claim was submitted to the CICA, the CICA then requested the initial report of the incident from the police, which the police provided after some months – unfortunately delays in the police providing information requested by the CICA are not uncommon.  When the CICA received police evidence and this was assessed, they then contacted us to request medical evidence of our client’s injuries.  We contacted the psychiatrist who had treated her, requesting a report.  Due to the number of years which has passed since our client’s last contact with this psychiatrist they were unable provide a report, suggesting instead that we request our client’s medical notes and arrange for her to have an appointment with an independent psychiatrist who could use our client’s medical notes to complete a report.  

In March 2022, the CICA advised that they were awaiting further police evidence. We discussed this with our client who promptly provided us with a letter from the Criminal Justice Service (CJS) advising the outcome of the trial, in which she had been a witness, stating that the offender had been sentenced to ten years imprisonment and placed on the sex offender’s register indefinitely.  We immediately forwarded this to the CICA.  However, the following month the CICA informed us that the claim was rejected due to a lack of police evidence substantiating this claim.  We contacted the CICA to advise that we had provided a letter from the CJS regarding this case and was informed that the claim had been assessed prior to their receipt of the CJS letter.  Due to this the CICA advised that we now submit an Application for Review (AFR), attaching the CJS letter, which we did, also attaching an EC letter from our client’s GP.  The CICA then requested our client’s GP records three years prior to the incident, which we duly obtained and forwarded to the CICA.  The CICA then requested a diagnosis and prognosis letter confirming our client’s mental injury from a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist.  We then instructed a clinical psychologist to prepare a report confirming our client’s disabling mental injury.

Outcome

This was an extremely complex claim, with the CICA requesting medical evidence stretching back to 1988 in order to correctly assess the level of compensation to which our client was entitled.  We were able to obtain all evidence requested, including evidence of the crime which police were unable to provide, with the result that, though it was an extremely lengthy process, our client who was the innocent victim of a serious historical sexual assault, was fully compensated at the correct levels for the injury she sustained.