Payouts slashed for rape victims who were drunk

Ministers have ordered an inquiry after it emerged that rape victims have had their state compensation slashed because they were drunk at the time.

Officials at the Criminal Injury Compensation Authority told women their drinking was a ' contributing factor' in their ordeal.

The standard taxpayer-funded payouts of £11,000 were cut by as much as a quarter.

The rules of the CICA scheme allow payments to be reduced in cases where victims are partly to blame  -  such as by provoking an attacker.

But revelations that the rules have been applied to at least 14 rape victims in the past year alone drew furious protests yesterday, with lawyers branding the approach 'appalling'.

Justice Minister Bridget Prentice called on the CICA to carry out a full review of all such cases, without victims having to go through the formal appeal process, and to ensure that full compensation is restored promptly.

Last night the authority agreed to stamp out the practice, insisting the cases identified so far had been isolated errors.

But officials could not say how many similar blunders had been made in recent years, and there are fears that the news could prompt a flood of legal challenges from other victims.

The issue came to light after one rape victim, referred to only as Helen, received a letter from the CICA saying her compensation was being cut from £11,000 to £8,250.

It said: 'The evidence that we have shows that your excessive consumption of alcohol was a contributing factor in the incident'.

She said the letter 'felt like a slap in the face', adding: 'It felt like I was being punished for having the audacity to step up and say "I don't think this should have happened to me". It was like going back to the 1970s, saying "she was asking for it".

'How else could you read the letter but as saying it's my fault I was raped?'

Helen was raped four years ago, when she was 25, after a night out in London's West End during which she believes her drink was spiked.

She told the Guardian the cut in compensation 'was just so cruel and unthinking and so wrong because there is nothing you can do to prevent yourself being raped.

'It is not illegal to go out and have a drink, it is illegal to rape somebody.'

Her lawyers successfully overturned the CICA decision and she has now received the full £11,000.

The CICA admitted that 13 other rape victims had their payments reduced for the same reasons last year.

Officials have cut their standard pay-out of £11,000 by as much as a quarter because they were deemed partly to blame (picture posed by model)

Officials insisted the decisions were mistakes and represented just 1 per cent of rape claims.

A spokesman said the fact that a victim of a crime was drunk can lead to lower compensation, but only if they also contributed to their ordeal in another way  -  such as by starting the fight in which they were injured.

In the case of rape, however, there is deemed to be no way of 'provoking' an attack, so a victim's drunkenness should be irrelevant.

Sandra McNeill of the Campaign to End Rape said: 'They seem to think all women should live like middle-class housewives of the 1950s. Nobody lives like that anymore.

'They are simply silly, silly prejudices.'

The outcry highlights the fraught issues over alcohol and rape. Ministers have made repeated unsuccessful attempts to reverse a dramatic fall in the number of rape complaints which lead to a conviction.