Raggett v The Society of Jesus Trust 1929 for Roman Catholic Purposes & Anor

A claimant may recover damages for psychiatric injury caused by abuse only to the extent that the alleged condition and its consequences are proved on the balance of probabilities. A diagnosis of enduring personality change after catastrophic experience requires a sufficiently extreme experience and a permanent, materially different pattern of personality and behaviour. Evidence of later improvement during therapy does not itself establish that the claimant previously suffered from a trauma-related psychiatric condition. Where competing causes, including personality traits, alcohol misuse and subsequent life events, more probably explain the alleged loss, damages must be confined to the effects causally attributable to the abuse.

The claimant had already succeeded on limitation and liability following sexual abuse by a teacher at Preston Catholic College. The court then heard evidence on causation and quantum, principally concerning alleged enduring personality change, alcohol-related disorder, sexual dysfunction, loss of earnings and other psychiatric consequences.

The claimant relied on psychiatric and child-psychiatric evidence to attribute long-term personal and professional difficulties to the abuse. The defendants contended that any lasting problems were principally attributable to personality traits, harmful alcohol use, family circumstances and later events. The central issue was the extent, if any, to which the abuse caused lasting psychiatric injury and consequential financial loss.

1. Immediate effects. The abuse caused significant distress during the period of abuse and for a limited period afterwards. It also caused withdrawal from family life, difficulties with some peers and some deterioration in school work. Those effects did not, however, produce a quantifiable loss in the claimant’s later career.
2. Enduring personality change. The court applied the diagnostic criteria for ICD-10 F62.0. The experience had to involve catastrophic stress, viewed objectively, and the claimant had to show a permanent and materially different pattern of perceiving, relating to or thinking about the world and himself. The non-penetrative and non-painful abuse, although serious and distressing, did not meet that threshold. The absence of contemporaneous evidence of catastrophic psychological disturbance was significant.
3. The evidence did not establish the required continuing features. The claimant’s difficulties with authority figures were better explained by his tendency to criticise people whose abilities or views he disliked. His risk-taking conduct occurred principally when he was drinking or taking drugs. The evidence did not show persistent social withdrawal, estrangement, hostility or mistrust of the world.
4. Competing causes. The claimant’s narcissistic and other personality traits were constitutional and would have existed without the abuse. His harmful use of alcohol was a social pattern which began after the abuse had ended and was more probably attributable to temperament, social factors and distress following the breakdown of his first marriage. The same conclusion applied to his drug use and most relationship and employment difficulties.
5. Therapy had helped the claimant reduce his drinking and deal with distress, grief and aspects of his personality. Improvement during therapy did not prove that the therapy had cured an abuse-related psychiatric disorder. The unusually extensive therapy might also have encouraged continued rumination about the abuse.
6. The claimant recovered £40,000 for pain, suffering and loss of amenity and £10,579.03 for special damages and interest. No damages were awarded for past or future loss of earnings, handicap on the labour market or pension loss. The total award, including interest, was £54,923.03.