UNITED KINGDOM
Sky News
Sky News Reporter
A former City lawyer who said his life had suffered as a result of sexual abuse he endured at the hands of a Roman Catholic priest has been awarded £54,923 in damages by the High Court.
Patrick Raggett, 54, had been asking for £5m, claiming that he had lost earnings as a result of what happened to him as a schoolboy, and although Mrs Justice Swift said he had been the victim of an “insidious form of abuse”, she said he was not entitled to such a large amount of money.
The High Court hearing in London had been told how Mr Raggett was sexually abused between the ages of 11 and 15 by Father Michael Spencer, a priest at a Jesuit training college in Preston, Lancashire, who died 12 years ago, aged 76.
Between 1970 and 1974, Father Spencer, who was Mr Raggett’s form tutor and football coach, watched him naked, filmed him, photographed him and touched him, although he never carried out any penetrative act or physically harmed him.
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