Historic sex abuse claim against a Catholic Church school
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This is a real life case study of a successful historic sex abuse claim against a Catholic Church school.
Our specialist sex abuse team have successfully recovered compensation for a man who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest when he was a pupil at a prestigious private Catholic Church school.
The man’s compensation claim was funded by us under our popular No Win, No Fee scheme.
It was a historic abuse claim, involving sex abuse which had taken place in the 1980’s. The abuse perpetrated by the priest went unpunished at the time. However, following a criminal investigation many years later the man was convicted of his crimes and sent to prison.
Although the priest had been brought to justice and a criminal conviction had been achieved, it was over a decade prior to the compensation claim being made and therefore ‘limitation’ still presented a challenge in this case.
We made the claim against the school on the basis that the school was legally responsible for the abuse as the priest had been their employee.
The sexual abuse had a significant impact on our client and it was clear this needed to be explored in detail to ensure he received the correct amount of compensation. As is often the case in abuse claims, it had affected both his career prospects and his relationships. He only felt able to come forward and consider a legal claim after receiving extensive counselling which was aimed at addressing the psychological difficulties he had faced over many years.
We had to identify and locate relevant records, which is always a challenge in historic sex abuse cases because paperwork is often lost or destroyed. However we were successful in obtaining some highly relevant and useful material.
Specialist medical evidence was obtained to enable an accurate valuation of the claim to be made. The expert made recommendations for further treatment. The cost of this treatment was included in the compensation claim.
Once the case had been thoroughly investigated and the evidence pieced together we presented the claim to the the Catholic Church school. This led to negotiations taking place, resulting in offers and counter offers being made by both parties. Eventually an out of court settlement was agreed, with our client receiving a substantial compensation payment.