Health Minister in Jersey, Senator Andrew Green, accepted the siblings should have been placed into care sooner but believes the pair should only be paid £14.5million
Two children subjected to incest, neglect and forced to eat off the kitchen floor have launched the largest personal injury claim in British legal history worth £238 MILLION.
The siblings, referred to only as Plaintiff Two and Plaintiff Three, were said to be highly sexualised and lacked basic life skills such as knowing how to wash, a court was told.
Neither of the pair will ever recover from the horrific abuse they suffered while living in the family home, a court heard.
Plaintiff Two, who is currently sectioned in a UK facility, and Plaintiff Three, who lives in a ‘highly supported’ environment, are now suing the Health Minister in Jersey for a staggering £238 million.
Senator Andrew Green MBE, Health Minister in Jersey, has accepted that the pair should have been placed into care sooner, but disputes the amount in damages the plaintiffs are seeking and instead believes a total of £14.5 million should be awarded.
Giving evidence at the Jersey Royal Court, consultant clinical psychologist Dr Miriam Silver described it as one of the most striking and complex cases she has ever dealt with.
She said that Plaintiff Two killed a cat in the family home, adding that research showed that ‘very distressed’ children were cruel to animals.
She later described her evaluation of Plaintiff Three as one of her ‘most disturbed assessments’.
Dr Silver said there was evidence of ‘long-standing and chronic neglect of the children’, as well as ‘examples of emotionally abusive parenting’. She added that the siblings were ‘very sexualised’, aggressive in their play and lacked empathy towards other children.
She added: ‘Some of the examples I picked out of emotional harm were particularly the mother referring to the children as muck.
‘Her talking about suicide. Her showing self-harm in their presence, exposing them to violent materials and appearing to be generally uninterested by their needs.
Jersey Royal Court (above) heard how the pair of siblings suffered incest and horrific abuse at the hands of their family
‘She would respond to their needs with smacking and criticism. There was a poor relationship with food – not feeding them regularly and appropriately. There were descriptions of the children eating from the kitchen floor.’
She added: ‘I believe I said at the time they were in the top five children I had seen in terms of the severity and complexity of their needs, which is still the case.
‘That is very striking, as I have worked with a whole county of looked-after children and covered 250 care hearings. These children still stand out as being in my top five.’
Dr Silver told the court that during her assessment she gave Plaintiff Three dolls to act out stories of family life.
She added: ‘It is a horrifying level of insight into what was going on in this family. (Plaintiff Three) kept playing out repeatedly lots of different variants of incest and sadistic cruelty.
The pair who were only referred to as Plaintiff Two and Plaintiff Three, were neglected and forced to eat off the kitchen floor
‘It was a really disturbing experience. It stood out as one of my most disturbed assessments. That would still continue to be the case.’
The court heard that Attorney General Robert MacRae has now written to the lawyers for the plaintiffs and defence to find out whether a periodic payment order – an order that has never before been used in Jersey and allocates damages payments in set intervals rather than in a lump sum – could be considered.
It is not known whether the Royal Court has the power to impose such an order.
But Advocate MacRae’s potential intervention was fiercely criticised by Advocate David Benest, the siblings’ legal counsel, who told the court that the Attorney General had thrown a ‘missile’, disrupting the case and added that he ‘should not poke his nose in where it is not wanted or needed’.
At the beginning of the trial, both the defence and the plaintiffs’ counsels said they wanted a lump sum to be awarded.
Then on Wednesday, defence counsel Advocate Lee Ingram told the court that a PPO was a ‘live issue’, as there was now ‘greater certainty’ about what care the siblings would require in the future.
Commissioner Pamela Scriven QC, who is presiding over the trial, has now asked Advocate MacRae to apply to the Royal Court within seven days if he intends to intervene in the case.
Advocate Benest, who said he opposed the defence seeking a PPO, argued there was no certainty about the care the plaintiffs would need in the future.
He told the court that it was ‘very late in the day’ for Advocate MacRae to intervene, adding, ‘he should not poke his nose in where it is not wanted or needed’.
The siblings are seeking £121 million and £117 million respectively.
The Health Minister is offering Plaintiff Two £10.289 million and Plaintiff Three £4.25 million.
The trial continues.
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