DRCC Submission on Compensating Victims of Crime (Apr 2022)

Submission to the Law Reform Commission on Compensating Victims of Crime 

DRCC welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Law Reform Commission’s (LRC) consultation paper on compensating victims of crime. The paper provides an important and detailed narrative about the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (CICT) and compensation to victims of crime which has been most useful to us as we respond to the LRC. Our engagement with and experience of the work of the CICT within the context of the work that we do is limited, owing to a number of limitations to the scheme. The principal ones are that damages cannot be claimed for general pain and suffering and, until its recent removal, the ‘same roof rule’. This exclusion significantly impacted on victim/survivors of sexual abuse, especially in cases of intimate partner abuse1 or familial child sexual abuse2. Our submission will only address those questions we feel are most relevant to the LRC from the perspective of the work we do with victim/survivors of sexual violence and through the lens of accessing justice for them.