UNITED KINGDOM
Legal Week
Author: Patrick Raggett
25 Jan 2013
City litigator Patrick Raggett recounts the turmoil and ultimate vindication he faced in pursuing a damages claim against the Catholic Church for abuse suffered as a schoolboy
I litigated for seven years against the Catholic Church and its insurers, Zurich. In doing so, I wore several hats – as former litigation partner with Pinsent Masons, as the client in a high-profile action, as a sexual abuse victim and latterly as a mentor to other claimants.
Over the years, I had to draw heavily on my 16 years doing commercial cases.
Finally, in November 2012, after two trials totalling 15 days, one appeal and several interlocutory applications, I was awarded £55,000 damages by Mrs Justice Swift arising from sexual assaults by a Jesuit priest in the 1970s.
The same judge, in finding at the first trial on liability in March 2009 that I had been sexually assaulted more than 200 times over four years, found my evidence “entirely compelling”.
At the second 11-day trial on causation and damage, Swift found the psychological effects had somehow evaporated by the time I was 21, just five years after the attacks ended, thus ruling out my loss of earnings claim.
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