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PRESS RELEASE IN RESPECT OF THE PTSD GROUP ACTION

HIGH COURT JUDGEMENT

Please click here to view the full judgement on the Courts Service website.

This case is about the suffering of Police Officers over the last 30 years as a result of their duties in protecting society from the scourge of terrorism. Service in the RUC was a matter of extreme pressure. We claimed that it obviously carried a risk of mental and psychological damage. For the Plaintiffs in this case that pressure was too much and they became broken in their minds. These Plaintiffs knew that they would get hurt but they got hurt and they stayed hurt because of their employer's negligence. They sought acknowledgment of that and compensation to do what could be done to put it right.

In the opening of this case the Court was told that even at that stage an acknowledgement and some offer of compensation could resolve the matter. The Plaintiffs did not seek a hearing for its own sake. No such offer was ever made. Neither this Chief Constable nor any other Chief Constable has ever attempted to acknowledge the wrong that was done to these officers. As a result the Plaintiffs had to endure a trial of 102 days. Many officers who were still suffering grievously went through the harrowing and difficult ordeal of giving evidence, being cross examined for days on end and reliving their horrific experiences in Court.

Their ordeal has not been in vain. We are delighted that the Court has accepted that the Chief Constable was guilty of a number of "systemic failures". The Judge found that:

There should have been an adequate system for training officers and their superiors in stress by 1987/88, he said "It is not easy to understand why training should be delivered to approximately 4% of the force but not to the remainder until approximately 6 years later especially when it related to a significant risk to mental health".

Even when the Force did design a package to deal with some of the problems the Judge found that there was a "further systemic failure" in delivering it to officers.

The Court also found that these failures in turn affected the Force's ability to change the culture of the organisation which discouraged acknowledgement of psychological problems and help-seeking.

A further failure of the Chief Constable was that the system of "Force Orders" used to communicate with officers was ineffective

The significance of these findings is that Police Officers did not obtain treatment for the conditions they suffered from. "Training and education would have ensured that probably by 1988/89 there would have been a much more widespread understanding amongst management and other ranks of the risk and the relevance of exposure to trauma together with the availability of the [Occupational Health Unit] and the services it provided. It would have demonstrated that this was not simply some notion of the medics contained in yet another Force Order."

The Court roundly rejected the key argument put forward by the Chief Constable that if police officers were injured in the line of duty he had no obligation to ensure that they received treatment for those injuries.

Equally the Court rejected the Chief Constable's view that there was nothing that could really be done to help the injured. The Plaintiffs have never suggested that there was a magic wand or pill that could make them better. They did say that the treatment that they could and should have been given would have made a material improvement to their lives. The Court agreed.

However we are dismayed by the finding that the Chief Constable neither knew nor ought to have known about the long term psychological consequences of exposure to trauma prior to 1986. We believe that much of the evidence in the case and the medical textbooks show that long term consequences have been known about for many years. We are also surprised that the Judgment has focused almost exclusively on PTSD when the case we made looked at the complete range of conditions, including depression and anxiety. This finding will exclude many of the Plaintiffs from recovering compensation for their injuries.

The Court found where persons place their health and their very lives at risk in the service of the State the state has a "formidable duty" to care for them by the provision of support, equipment and services. What we do not understand is that, having reached that conclusion, the Court then excused the Chief Constable for the lack of resources on the grounds that he was separate from the State. We will have to consider the impact of this on the positive findings of the Court for individual officers. We have instructed leading Queen's Counsel in London to advise the Plaintiffs on an appeal.

The reality of this case is that people are suffering decades after their service ended. They need treatment, care and security in their lives. Whatever the outcome of this case for officers generally the fact that some officers have had the door to treatment slammed in their faces brings shame to us all. It is still not too late for the Chief Constable to help those people.

For further information on behalf of Edwards & Co. please email damedia@btinternet.com

Note to editors

The action covered the period from the commencement of the Troubles in Northern Ireland but the main focus is on the late 1970s onwards. The plaintiffs alleged that by that stage, the RUC had knowledge of the potential problems facing a workforce that was being exposed to severe trauma on a daily basis. There was sufficient evidence to indicate that a substantial number of officers would come to psychiatric harm if systems were not put in place to protect them. The police service did nothing effective for too long. When they began to think about the problem, they took too long about doing it. When the group who had thought about it recommended a package of measures, only some of them were implemented, and they came too slowly. When an Occupational Health Unit was set up in 1986, it was allowed to operate under capacity for years, unable to meet even the expressed demand for its services.