How the Government’s response to IISCA’s recommendations affect child abuse CICA cases

The Government’s response to IISCA’s recommendations on changing the CICA scheme to remove barriers for survivors of child sexual abuse. 

How does this affect a child abuse CICA case?

Disappointingly, the Government have decided against implementing the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA’s) recommendations and subsequent consultations to make changes to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) scheme.

The Justice minister Alex Davies Jones acknowledged calls for change but decided not to implement any of the recommended changes.

One of the main barriers faced by survivors of child sexual abuse is consideration by the scheme of an applicant’s criminal records to assess eligibility.

Our view is that an applicant’s criminal record should not be taken into consideration when assessing the claim. This is to prevent survivor’s awards being automatically rejected in circumstances where an applicant’s criminal convictions are likely to be linked to their child sexual abuse. 

In contrast the Government’s view is that removing the barrier of unspent convictions would breach the universality principle of the scheme and would treat victims of different crimes differently.

Failure to adopt this change means that a significant number of applicants will not qualify for an award.

Another recommendation for change is that the scope of the scheme is expanded to include online facilitated child sexual abuse or grooming.

The Government’s response was that changing the scope of scheme would fundamentally alter the purpose of the scheme by enabling eligibility for compensation for offending, which is not violent, does not involved physical touching/contact and does not involve the threat of violence. 

They believe that the current scope is wide enough, and change could lead to a significant increase in the number and complexity of claims, which would mean that all victims claiming compensation through the scheme would need to wait longer than presently for their claim to be determined.

There is a clear argument that these types of cases should be included within the scheme. There is no other redress scheme available for survivors to access and the threat and injuries that people suffer from this type of criminal activity is real.

In the recent case of RN -v- CICA 2023 the Court of Appeal held that “RN was subject to a crime of violence. Paragraph 2(1) (c) is to be interpreted in line with the criminal law of common assault which states there is no requirement in common law that there be no intervening physical space of lapse of time between the threat and fear of immediate violence.”

In this case RN met his abuser who was working at a gaming club he attended. RN added the abuser as a friend on Facebook and they began messaging. The abuser initially posed online as a girl of 14, then began a campaign of serious online sexual grooming and abuse. When RN realised that the identity was false, he became scared. The abuser knew where RN lived and where he went to school. He made threats towards him and RN feared for both his own and his family’s safety. There has been no physical contact at any stage.

After RN’s family reported the abuse to the Police, his abuser was prosecuted and convicted of attempting to cause or incite a child to engage in sexual activity and attempting to meet a boy under 16 following sexual grooming. He was sentenced to 2 years and 4 months imprisonment, with a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

At present an applicant has a period of two years from the date of the incident to make an application and where the applicant was a child under the age of 18 on the date the incident occurred the application must be received by the CICA, if reported before their 18th birthday by the age of 20, or if reported after their 18th birthday within two years of their report to the police.

It is important for this time limit to change because survivors of sexual abuse for several reasons. Firstly, the length of time that it can take survivors of sexual abuse to be able to disclose their experiences, this type of abuse is likely to be ongoing rather than an isolated event and because many survivors want to wait until after their criminal proceedings have concluded before making a claim for fear that their application to the scheme will be used against them at Court.

IICSA recommended a period of 7 years was a reasonable time limit.

It is the view of the Government that their current time limits allow most applicants to make a claim and to have explored other routes of compensation and the scheme’s discretion in certain circumstances to extend this time period is working well.

In announcing the Government’s decision, Ms Davies said, “A core principle of the scheme is its universality. It ensures that all victims can equally access the scheme regardless of the nature of the violent crime that they were injured by. I consider this fundamental principle of fairness to be crucial to the scheme’s role. Expanding the scheme’s scope and making changes to its time limits and upsent conviction rule as the inquiry recommends would undermine this principle, given that these changes would only apply to victims of child sexual abuse. This could in my view be detrimental to other deserving victims of crime.”

It is our view that the Government appear to have just dismissed IICSA’s recommendations out of hand, without properly considering the evidence gathered by the inquiry. 

It is an additional burden of uncertainty to have to rely on CICA’s discretion to allow a claim to proceed outside of the time limits and this uncertainty will prevent survivors of abuse from pursuing a claim and obtaining the compensation that they deserve.

To conclude, it is our view that the needs of survivors of child sexual abuse have been ignored by the Government failing to recognise the importance of IICSA’s recommendations.