Rape damages award causes row in U.K.

Press, 17 December 1985, Page 38

Rape damages award causes row in U.K.

By ROBIN CHARTERIS, London correspondent What price a rape? What financial damages should be awarded a rape victim? The answer given in the English High Court is £10,480 ($26,200), and it has created a furore. For the first time in English legal history, two sexual assault victims sued their assailants in court.

Miss D, aged 37, was raped, “trussed up, stabbed and left to die. She was awarded £10,480. Mrs Eileen Walsh, aged 36, mother of two, who underwent a degrading 5%hour sexual ordeal that S short of rape, j £7OBO ($17,700). Their assailant, Christopher Meah, aged 33, is now serving two life sentences in Wormwood Scrubs Prison for the offences. What adds fuel to the present uproar is that 18 months ago, he received damages of £45,750 ($114,375) for head injuries suffered in a car crash. The extensive injuries changed his personality and, a Court then found, led him to commit the sexual assaults and rape. The award of damages then, made by the same judge, was largely because of the changes to Meah’s personality. Meah has now been ordered to pay the damages to his two victims from the damages he himself was awarded.

The issues involved have provoked controversy anhong members of Parliament, lawyers, legislators and women’s rights groups. Why did the victims of rape and severe sexual assault receive far less compensation than did the offender for the car crash which turned him into a rapist? Where should rape stand in the scale of damages for injuries? Will the decision encourage more women to report rapes? Will the awards lead to

more such claims? Even before the awards, the Meah case had puzzled legal opinion. Why, if the crash changed Meah’s personality enough to entitle him to £45,000 damages against the driver of the car involved, was there no mitigating factor to give him less than the maximum possible sentence of life imprisonment? ~ The damages case is a Srecedent in English law in lat it is the first time such a case has been brought before a court, although the avenue to do so has always been there in common law, lawyers point out. While the awards made to the two victims are the first of their kind in an English court, the judge was told that a Canadian court last year awarded a rape victim damages equivalent to £ 20,000 ($50,000). Both women had already received awards from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. These will have to be repaid from their damages. Mrs Walsh received £lOOO ($2500) and Miss D (the woman raped) £3600 ($9000). The board uses £2750 ($7375) as its starting figure for awards in rape cases, the court was told.

Conservative and Labour members of Parliament have attacked the amounts awarded by the Court to the two victims, describing them as “a judicial scandal”, “eccentric and ludicrous”, and “a perfect example of a total lack of consistency.” A Women Against Rape movement spokesman said: “The very small amounts these two women received is unjust and is another illustration of how the law and judges undervalue women.

“When a woman has been mentally scarred by an ordeal such as this, it is not something abstract It is something which not only affects her subsequent relationship with men but af-

fects her everyday life at practical level.” Mr Justice Woolf, the judge who made the awards, said there was no direct precedent for damages in such a case. “It is only too easy to recognise that any sum of money the Court can award is not going to compensate then,” he said. It was important to relate the damages to awards made in more conventional actions for injury compensation, he said. “Although these ladies underwent terrible experiences, sadly, as a result of traffic accidents, others undergo experiences which are every bit as cataclysmic.” Mr Justice Woolf, in a rare defence of a judicial decision, answered criticism of his actions, saying it was not true that the damages he had earlier awarded Meah for the car crash injuries were excessive compared with those given the women.

It was because of his very serious injuries that Meah was now serving a life sentence for rape and sexual assault. It was unlikely he would see his money for a very long time, but in the meantime his former wife and child, now without a husband and father, would benefit.

It also meant that Meah now had resources from which his victims could recover damages against him, his Honour said when ruling that Meah and not the insurers of the driver responsible for his car accident should pay the damages. Reaction to the case has been widespread and diverse. The National Council of Civil Liberties sees it as a legal breakthrough, encouraging other victims of rape and serious crimes to sue their attackers in court.

Others have noted, however; that rape victims do not have automatic legal anonymity in civil courts and that many women may

still be too scared to sue for fear of identification or. of being forced to relive their ordeal yet again. Also, with convicted offenders usually in prison, the actual recovery of financial damages would be unlikely. The Court decision coincided with a report from the Women’s National Commission, a Government advisory body, which said that many women were frightened of reporting violent crimes against them because of the callous treatment they received from the police and courts. Comparisons have been made with the standard award for rape of £2750 ($7375) and the £12,000 ($30,000) for loss of an eye.

Recent court awards have included £12,000 ($30,000) for a man whose leg scars prevented him from wearing shorts, and £24,000 ($60,000) for a woman whose scars meant she could no longer wear a bikini.

Even one of Britain’s most respected legal figures, Lord Denning, former Master of the Rolls, has entered the argument. The damages should have been higher, he told the “Daily Express.” Lord Denning suggested the controversy could be alleviated by having damages in such cases assessed by a jury, or the matter referred to the three judges of the Court of Appeal. “In view of the storm which has arisen, it would be right and proper and desirable to learn the view of the Court of Appeal,” he said.

Whether this case does go there, however, may depend more on the views of the two women involved.

One, Miss D, who was raped, tied, stabbed and left for dead, says she just wants to be left alone. “The case has been a hard strain, but if it helps other women to do the same as me, it will all have been worth while,” she said.