What were the effects of repeated sexual abuse at the hands of a schoolteacher?

 

Commentary

This case illustrates a number of difficulties for the adult victims of childhood sexual abuse. Diagnoses of psychiatric disorder in childhood have to be made retrospectively. Contemporaneous records may be missing, incomplete or insufficiently detailed. Even where the only adverse childhood experience is the sexual abuse, it is difficult to prove that the victim’s subsequent trajectory in life has been any different to what it would have been but for the sexual abuse.

This case also illustrates how the court relies not only upon the evidence of witnesses, including expert witnesses, but also how the claimant/pursuer/plaintiff presents to the court. In this case, how the pursuer came across when giving evidence in court assisted the judge in reaching a conclusion as to why one of the experts had not elicited symptoms as severe or significant as those elicited by the other experts. This expert’s report contained factual errors which the judge attributed to communication difficulties between the expert and a pursuer who was reticent in speaking about his emotions.

Learning points:

•               Factual errors, however they have arisen, can affect the weight given to an expert’s evidence.
•               Have regard to the difficulty that a subject may have in talking about their emotions.

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