Paedophile victim's award condemned

12 April 2012

A schoolgirl who was assaulted by a paedophile as a toddler has been awarded £9,000 damages, it was reported.

The girl was three-years-old when Craig Sweeney, 26, abducted her from her Cardiff home before subjecting her to a sexual assault in January 2006.

She was then driven away down the M4 in an ordeal that only ended when the car crashed.

The mother of the girl, now who is now six, on Monday dismissed the award as "lousy". She told the Sun: "There's been no justice for our baby and for us. From the minute she was abducted everything has gone wrong. The police let us down, the court let us down - now this. Our daughter's ordeal was worth a lousy £9,000."

The woman said her daughter is "not a normal six-year-old", and that she does not sleep properly, but spends her nights whimpering. She told the newspaper the girl locks herself in her room for two hours after school each day, banging a teddy bear against the wall.

A Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) spokesman would not confirm the amount of compensation on Monday.

He said: "We cannot comment specifically on applications made to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, in order to protect applicants' confidentiality.

"CICA operates under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2001, as set down by Parliament. The scheme sets the levels of compensation depending on the injuries sustained.

""We pay awards under a tariff system that assigns each specific injury a fixed amount of compensation. Awards under this tariff range from £1,000 to £250,000."

Convicted paedophile Sweeney was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2006 after admitting kidnapping and sexually assaulting the girl. Judge John Griffith Williams told him he was a "devious" man and that he would spend a minimum of five years and 108 days in prison.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT