When time's up for justice

When time's up for justice

Paedophile William Goad is a multi-millionaire - but his many victims can't sue him because of strict time limits on launching compensation claims. Meg Henderson and Clare Dyer on a campaign to change the rules Tuesday June 28, 2005The Guardian William Goad, the man dubbed "Britain's worst paedophile", is thought to have abused as many as 3,500 boys - some as young as eight - over 40 years. Now serving a life sentence, he was described by prosecuting counsel as "a voracious, predatory and violent homosexual paedophile". Two of his victims committed suicide, others attempted to, and many more turned to drink or drugs. But few are likely to see a penny from him in compensation.

Goad, who dismissed his victims as "little junkies" chasing compensation, ran a chain of indoor markets and discount stores and is believed to have amassed a £25m fortune. But strict time limits on suing over assaults have barred claims by those victims who reached the age of 24 - the cut-off point - before they realised they could sue him. The result is that his wealth will go largely untouched, while the government forks out millions of pounds in taxpayers' money to compensate his victims under the criminal injuries compensation scheme - a situation described as "appalling" by Peter Garsden, vice-president of the association of child abuse lawyers. The association is mounting a campaign to try to persuade parliament to change the law on time limits, which is denying redress to thousands of victims of sexual and physical abuse. In England and Wales, the time limit for suing over a deliberate assault, including rape, is six years from when the incident occurs or, if later, from when the victim turns 18. There is an alternative route for those abused in children's homes or schools - suing the management of the institution or the council responsible for it for negligence for failing to protect the victims. Here, a different time limit applies: three years from the date the victims knew the incident caused them harm - or, for a child, three years after reaching 18. That time limit is extendable at the court's discretion, but lawyers say this is rarely exercised. In 2001, the Law Commission recommended a radical overhaul of the law on time limits in England and Wales. But for the past four years the government has sat on the report, while the courts tell victim after victim their cases have been brought too late. Jim Buckley's mother died in childbirth in 1951 when he was six. Patrick, the new baby, was cared for by a neighbour, while Jim and his brothers, Michael and John, were placed in a home run by the Congregation of Poor Sisters of Nazareth in Aberdeen."From the outset we were regarded as aliens and ostracised," he says. "The nuns separated us immediately, they always did. There's strength in unity and they didn't want that. Everyone had a number. You were never referred to by name. "The brutality started straight away. The nuns would hit you with whatever they had to hand, a broom handle, a chair leg, a chair even, and for no reason. "You were a small child, you had no idea what you were supposed to have done, and if you put your hands up to defend yourself six nuns would arrive and beat the shit out of you. And all the time you were told that you were there because no one wanted you, no one cared, so who would listen if you tried telling anyone? There was no one to tell anyway. We went to school outside Nazareth House, but we were told not to talk to or mix with 'outsiders', and so that no one saw the bruises we were either kept off school or given notes excusing us from gym." There was, he says, no medical treatment. "You were punished for being sick, but if they did accept it you were allowed to lie in bed. They didn't call a doctor or anything like that. When I was an adult I discovered I had rheumatic heart disease, caused by rheumatic fever in childhood. I remember being ill, but I didn't know that's what it was, and so far I've had three valve replacements. Dentists only appeared to remove teeth, and I never saw a social worker in the nine years I was there. My father didn't visit, but even if we'd told him what was going on, he'd have believed the nuns." There was a fixed regime of cruelty and abuse, he says, where bed-wetters were made to wear urine-soaked sheets around them all day, or wet underwear on their heads, and Buckley recalls a special punishment of connecting a rubber sheet to a battery with bullclips, so that if they wet the bed again the children received an electric shock. Tales of force-feeding are common, too, including forcing children to eat their own vomit. Buckley is one of a group of 500 Scottish former child inmates of Nazareth House establishments who want to sue over their claims. But this month a test case brought by three former residents failed to persuade a judge to extend Scottish time limits similar to those in England. Lord Drummond Young refused "without hesitation" to allow the extension because relevant evidence was likely to be lost, and because it would be oppressive, even "cruel", to the nuns to allow an action to go ahead so many years after the events. These days the Poor Sisters of Nazareth care for the elderly and Aids sufferers, prompting the judge to comment, "It does not appear to me to be fair that their current activities should be prejudiced because of acts carried out [up to] 40 years ago by individuals who are dead or no longer active ... It is clearly upsetting for anyone to have to think in detail about unhappy memories of childhood. I cannot accept that it is genuinely in the pursuers' interests to rake over those memories, especially where the individual nuns said to be responsible are either dead or elderly." Buckley says: "He patted us on the head and told us to just forget it and get on with our lives, but we had the effects for decades. I only started to remember when I read a newspaper article when I was 44, and I got in touch with Grampian police. A sergeant took a statement over three hours, then produced four files of other complaints, all very similar to mine. They were sitting on all that evidence and nothing had been done. I'm 60 now and I've been trying to get something done for 16 years." In Aberdeen in 2000 Marie Docherty, Sister Alphonso of Nazareth House, went on trial accused of 24 counts of child cruelty. She was found guilty of four, three were found "not proven", and the other 17 charges were not proceeded with. Glasgow solicitor Cameron Fyfe is appealing in the three time-barred test cases. "All my clients were bitterly disappointed," he says. "They've tried everything else to get justice and want their day in court. They're not interested in money but the only way they can have their say is by suing for compensation. They want someone to say sorry. They feel they've been slapped in the face by a technicality, and if their cases don't qualify as 'exceptional', I don't know what would." There are no time limits for bringing criminal charges, but those who have tried to have their abusers brought to justice in the criminal courts often face failure there too. As a 13-year-old at boarding school in England, Steve Foster (now 44) was sexually abused over three years by the school chef. When he left school he was found by the man at the age of 16 and again at 19, and blackmailed into further abuse with threats of showing his parents photographs. Foster, like most abuse victims, blanked his assailant out of his mind, but in his 30s plucked up the courage to go to the police. "They said if I couldn't remember his surname there was nothing they could do," he recalls. Through Friends Reunited he found former pupils who not only gave his name, but told stories of similar abuse. With other statements and witnesses, the police located the abuser, but charges were not brought because his ill-health meant he could die before trial. It would, police said, be a waste of money, but he did admit the offences and accept a caution. "Like a great many abuse victims, Steve Foster had tried the criminal justice route," says his solicitor, Jonathan Wheeler, a committee member of the association of child abuse lawyers. "They go through this process where the police don't want to compromise their star witnesses by advising them to seek compensation, so more time is lost. Steve Foster would also have been time-barred [for a compensation claim], but he's done everything he could to get somewhere with this, and the truth is, he hasn't". · Campaign details on www.childabuselawyers.com