The CICA Practice of ‘Victim-Blaming’

In a landmark case earlier this year, Daryll Rowe became the first person in England to be convicted of intentionally spreading HIV.

In 2015, he infected six men and attempted to infect more. The hairdresser from Scotland had entered into sexual relationships using online dating applications, but failed to disclose his medical condition.

Rowe, 27, then either refrained from wearing a condom or sabotaged it before engaging in sexual intercourse with numerous males in an attempt to deliberately infect others with the virus.

After the act, Rowe then proceeded to send abusive and mocking messages to his victims. As a result of his actions, he was jailed for life. DCI Martin MacLean of Police Scotland described him as ‘a devious and deceptive predator’ who showed ‘absolutely no remorse for the extensive suffering and distress he has caused his victims.’

One of these victims – referred to as ‘Matthew’ – applied to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) for remuneration for the horrendous crime he had suffered. Under the scheme, he was entitled to £22,000 because of his contraction of HIV. However, upon applying to the CICA, he was told that he was ineligible for any pay out.

The reason being that he heckled a Conservative politician in 2012 for which he was convicted of threatening or abusive behaviour under the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act. He received 100 hours of community service which didn’t become a spent conviction until 2017.

Unfortunately for Matthew, an application for a CICA claim must be brought within 2 years of the incident date (barring exceptional circumstance) and the conviction continued to be unspent past the deadline.

Once the original article broke on internet media and news company Buzzfeed, Matthew was met with an outpour of support. The supporters included Scottish Conservative party leader Ruth Davidson and former UK Justice Secretary Lord Falconer, both of whom have written to the CICA pleading with them to rethink their decision.

Lord Falconer appeared on BBC’s Good Morning Scotland saying: “What happened to Matthew was that in 2012 he attended a meeting of a politician and did a one-man protest against austerity shouting things like ‘no ifs, no buts, no public service cuts’.” He went on to describe the verdict as an “injustice”, noting that Matthew was “disruptive but not violent.”

With such a plethora of supporters there is hope that the CICA will reassess Matthew’s claim, however, not all cases garner as much publicity. The Independent carried out an enquiry in October 2017 in which they found that, since January 2015, at least 398 victims of sex abuse had been refused payments due a previous conviction. In their investigations, The Independent spoke to a woman who was raped by a minicab driver.

She had her CICA payment reduced by 30% due to a conviction of drink-driving a year previous to the attack. The woman pointed out the lack of correlation between the conviction and the incident: “It was another knock down…How does that relate to what happened to me a year before?”

Matthew and the numerous other victims have been let down by a system which was designed to assist them with their rehabilitation and the impact that this can have should not be understated. Due to the rejection, Matthew has had to divulge his condition to people he originally would not have had to in an attempt to get the decision overturned. This had, according to him, added “more layers of humiliation”.

In his victim impact statement to the Edinburgh High Court, he wrote that he has frequently considered suicide. Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon perhaps poetically summed up the overarching opinion of the CICA’s stance on the rejection of serious sexual offences due to previous convictions as “another example of victim-blaming.”

At Oakwood Solicitors, we have come across instances of our own where the CICA have initially rejected claims for what some may feel are trivial reasons. Our experienced team have been successful in overturning many of these initial rejections on numerous occasions, referring to their discretion to reduce the award, rather than completely rejecting it.

We feel it is important that decisions that appear to be unfair are challenged and, despite the provisions set out in the scheme, the CICA rules that currently govern previous convictions are unjust and exploited.

Guardian Source

Buzzfeed Source

BBC Source

Independent Source

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