Terror attack victims slam UK compensation scheme

LONDON: Terror attack survivors in the UK have said the compensation scheme provided by the government is “broken” and had treated people in a “shocking” way.

In a new report published by Survivors Against Terror, 130 victims from 11 attacks gave their feedback on the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, with more than two-thirds of respondents calling it “unfair and unreasonable.”

Sixty percent of respondents said it was not easy to submit compensation claims, 62 percent said they did not feel they were treated with respect or empathy, and over half said they did not feel they could talk to someone at CICA for assistance.

In one case, a woman caught up in a deadly mass shooting in Tunisia was told to pay back money she had been awarded.

The woman, who received £5,000 ($6,545) from CICA after her husband was shot by a Daesh gunman at a resort in 2015 — less than the amount spent to repatriate his body to the UK — was told via “threatening letters” to return the sum “within 30 days” after she also won a compensation claim against the company that organized her family’s holiday, TUI.

“I was shocked,” she said. “To be asked to pay back the money I had used to help pay for my husband’s funeral was just so upsetting, I couldn’t believe it.

“I feel like I am being accused of doing something wrong rather than being treated like a victim or a survivor.”

Brendan Cox, whose wife, Labour MP Jo Cox, was murdered by a far-right terrorist in 2016, described CICA as “broken.”

Cox, a co-founder of SAT and co-author of the report, said: “An organisation that is supposed to be helping survivors recover and rebuild is instead consistently doing them harm.

“If the organisation had poor processes and procedures but scored well on other areas, there would be hope for reform. There is not.”

SAT added that a new Survivors’ Charter, promised by the government in 2019 to guarantee the rights of survivors to mental health and legal support, had not been established. 

The group’s report called for a new compensation scheme to be established, with greater transparency as to how payouts are awarded.

Some respondents said they had yet to receive compensation. One survivor of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing said: “After five years I am still waiting for CICA to settle my claim, they lost all my notes.”

Another said her mother had “received more for a whiplash claim than I received for getting blown up in a bomb at my first concert.”

Joanne McSorley, another survivor of the bombing, said she was offered just £25,000 despite being left with permanent, life-changing injuries.

“I am housebound, really. I can’t even put my own shoes on, or my coat. It is a life that’s very, very different,” she said.

“I put my faith in the systems and in the government. This was a terror attack, so I thought, well of course we’ll be looked after. But that didn’t happen.

“I feel totally degraded by the process because you’re having to prove all the time you are still in that state.”

She added: “I feel like I am being punished. I don’t think you should have to apply for something. It should just be there. No one has got in touch to ask me, ‘How are you?’ They don’t care. It’s just not fair. No one cares.”

Darryn Frost, who fought off a terrorist in London Bridge with a narwhal tusk in 2019, told the BBC that CICA is “a paper-based postal system, where you’re in total darkness, you don’t know where you are in the process … And they keep asking for more evidence. You feel like you’re on trial or scrounging.”

The UK government said 836 of the 859 applications in relation to the Manchester Arena attack had been resolved, adding that it is “right survivors get the support they need, including through the publicly-funded Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme that has paid out more than £158 million to victims of violent crime in the last year alone.

“But we know more must be done, which is why the government is reviewing the support available, to better address victims’ needs.”