Introduction
Under the New Tariff Scheme victims of abuse have found it more difficult to make an effective claim because of the rules concerning previous convictions. When an applicant is rejected by the CICA because of his character/convictions, he usually feels he is the victim of the same sort of abuse that he suffered whilst at the children’s home, and becomes angry once again. The CICA claim that they are bound by their guidelines. We co-ordinated a chapter of appeals at the end of January 1999 which resulted in some general written guidelines as to how the CICA handle these types of cases. Cynically, one might argue that the guidelines followed several applications for Judicial Review, which are presently going through the Courts.
