A 12-year-old girl was raped after an adult man plied her with alcohol in the woods. She did not know the man but trusted him as she was with friends and he was accompanied by a man her father knew. The man was convicted of unlawful sexual intercourse and sentenced to 12 months’ jail. In 2000 she was refused compensation. The CICA ruled that as a child of 12 she had consented – even though the legal age of consent is 16. They say they are not bound by the age of consent and instead consider whether the child was in fact consenting – they refuse to be drawn on whether this would apply to a 6-year-old as well and if not at what age it begins. They also condemned her partly on the grounds of her so-called ‘unlawful conduct’: drinking. She appealed with WAR’s help. There was a delay of about a year while the Carl August case went to the High Court (man claiming compensation for his acts of child prostitution/abuse as a boy). The August case was lost and WAR represented Ms C at her appeal hearing. The CICA refused to take account of her age, compared to that of the offender. The all white, middle aged, well-do-do Panel clearly lived in a different world from this Black teenager from a council estate. They pressed for humiliating and graphic descriptions of an earlier unconnected sexual experimentation with a child her own age. This was held up as important evidence against her. Delivering the Panel’s verdict, the CICA said that there had been ‘no physical violence’, and ‘no evidence’ that the man had manipulated her; she was unreliable as she had ‘lied to her mother before and after the incident’ (she had not told her mother about going to the woods and what had taken place there).

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