Acting by his litigation friend, the Official Solicitor, the claimant alleged serial sexual abuse by an assistant priest in the Archdiocese of Birmingham during the 1970s. The priest disappeared in 1992 and his current whereabouts were unknown. The judge found that the archdiocese did not make sufficient enquiries about the actions of the priest in question when the allegations first came to light and that this fact, combined with the claimant's disability, meant that the claim was within time and not statute barred. While the archdiocese did not accept that the priest had abused the claimant, the judge was nevertheless satisfied that sexual abuse had occurred over a prolonged period. The judge rejected the contention that the defendant could be held vicariously liable for the abuse. He reviewed the law on vicarious liability and concluded ‘that the assaults which [the priest] carried out on the claimant were not so closely connected with [his] employment or quasi-employment by the Church that it would be fair and just to hold the Church liable’. Applying a similar test, he also found that the defendant could not be held liable for the inaction of the priest in charge of the parish in not investigating the complaints made against his assistant. [WA]
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