Civil claim for the victims of rape

If you have been raped then you are entitled to bring a claim directly against your attacker. This will be a civil claim for assault.

There are a number of advantages of bringing a civil claim over bringing one to the CICA:

• you have three years from the date of the incident (or your 18th birthday if a minor when the assault took place) to bring your claim
• the level of compensation is usually higher than the tariff based awards of the CICA
• any claim for lost income is from day one whereas the CICA disregard the first 28 weeks in their calculations
• you can recover some of your legal fees whereas the CICA don’t make any contributions towards these.

There are some disadvantages to a civil claim:

• your attacker may not have funds to cover any award and your legal costs
• if there has not been a conviction they may well defend the matter forcing you to go to court

If you do chose to proceed with a civil claim against your attacker you will need to show on the balance of probabilities that the incident occurred. This is a lower burden of proof than is required for a criminal conviction, so you may still be successful with a civil claim even if the criminal prosecution failed.

Like any civil claim you will be able to claim for all and any injury you sustained as a result of the assault; this includes psychological damage such as stress, depression and PTSD. We will obtain a full report setting out the impact the incident has had on you as well as treatment required and prognosis for your recovery.

We will also look to recover your financial losses such as lost income, both past and future as well as any treatment costs, gratuitous care and all other losses arising from the incident.

For an overview of the levels of compensation that you may expect to recover please click here.

To see how we can help you claim the compensation you deserve, get in touch with us today. All calls and emails are in complete confidence and there is no obligation; you don’t even have to give your name.

We offer sympathetic but practical advice: