JXL & Anor v Britton

In assessing damages for childhood rape, the court should compensate the whole injury proved by the evidence. It is unnecessary and often unrealistic to separate the immediate effects of the rape from its psychiatric consequences. Awards may fall towards the upper end of the relevant guideline bracket because rape involves a serious physical violation, but the assessment remains compensatory rather than punitive. Aggravated damages may be awarded separately for injury to feelings, humiliation, loss of pride and dignity, anger or resentment. The court must avoid double recovery and review the total award for proportionality. Abuse of trust may be relevant, but awards must be based on evidence rather than assumptions about the relative impact of familial or other relationships.

The claimants, sisters who had been raped by the defendant as children, obtained judgment in default on liability. The assessment concerned general damages for the sexual assaults and resulting psychiatric harm, aggravated damages, special damages for lost earnings and treatment, interest and costs. The defendant appeared by videolink, denied liability and raised earlier family difficulties as potentially relevant to causation. The court determined how far he should participate in the assessment, whether oral evidence and cross-examination were necessary, and the proper approach to valuing overlapping physical, psychiatric and aggravated loss.

1. Conduct of the hearing. The defendant had deliberately failed to participate and had not served a witness statement or written questions for the psychiatrist. The court could nevertheless conduct the assessment fairly without oral evidence. Under CPR 32.1, it controlled the issues and form of evidence and limited cross-examination. The defendant’s denials of liability could not be reopened while the default judgment stood. Cross-examination of the claimants would have served little useful purpose; any necessary questions could have been put by the judge.
2. General damages. The court rejected the proposed threefold division between damages for the rapes, psychiatric consequences and a separate aggravated element as liable to produce double recovery. General damages for pain, suffering and loss of amenity were assessed as a whole. There was no requirement to draw a firm line between the immediate effects of rape and its psychological consequences. The principal guide was the psychiatric evidence and the evidence of the lasting effect on each claimant.
3. Child rape involves physical pain and often lifelong psychological consequences. Awards may properly be placed higher within the relevant Judicial College Guidelines bracket than awards for comparable psychiatric harm in ordinary personal injury cases. This reflected the seriousness of the physical violation and the harm proved, not punishment. Abuse of trust could be relevant, particularly to aggravated damages, but the court had to avoid assumptions that rape by a family member or trusted adult was necessarily more distressing than rape by another offender.
4. Aggravated damages. A separate compensatory award was justified for distress and humiliation connected with the offences and the claimants’ subsequent experience. The court excluded from the general damages assessment any element represented by aggravated damages and checked the overall award for proportionality. It awarded £15,000 to JXL and £25,000 to SXC.
5. JXL received £32,500 for general damages and £84,174 special damages. SXC received £40,000 for general damages and £167,360 special damages. The resulting judgments, excluding interest, were £131,674 and £232,360 respectively. Interest was awarded, and the defendant was ordered to pay the proceedings’ costs subject to detailed assessment if not agreed. His ability to pay was relevant to enforcement, not to the assessment of damages.

First-instance assessment of damages following judgment entered in default on liability. No earlier court decision is stated in the judgment.