City litigator Patrick Raggett recounts the turmoil and ultimate vindication he faced in pursuing a damages claim against the Catholic Church for abuse suffered as a schoolboy

I litigated for seven years against the Catholic Church and its insurers, Zurich. In doing so, I wore several hats – as former litigation partner with Pinsent Masons, as the client in a high-profile action, as a sexual abuse victim and latterly as a mentor to other claimants.

Over the years, I had to draw heavily on my 16 years doing commercial cases.

Finally, in November 2012, after two trials totalling 15 days, one appeal and several interlocutory applications, I was awarded £55,000 damages by Mrs Justice Swift arising from sexual assaults by a Jesuit priest in the 1970s.

The same judge, in finding at the first trial on liability in March 2009 that I had been sexually assaulted more than 200 times over four years, found my evidence "entirely compelling".

At the second 11-day trial on causation and damage, Swift found the psychological effects had somehow evaporated by the time I was 21, just five years after the attacks ended, thus ruling out my loss of earnings claim.

In doing so, she rejected the evidence of three of four experts and relied on the remaining expert: someone who had also maintained that the relationship with the priest who treated me as his plaything had contained "positive factors".

My legal experience meant I knew the strength of will required. I knew how attritional and intransigent a global giant like Zurich would be. My litigation expertise also meant I could remain reasonably objective as the case unfolded.

However, the extremely personal nature of the content tended to disrupt such objectivity.

As did the huge gap between the public utterances of the Catholic Church on the scandal of sex abuse by priests, the rather tepid expressions of regret, and the gimlet-eyed way it behaves in litigation, taking every single point and using dubious tactics in the same way a dodgy offshore company would.

That was an unpleasant surprise, but contrition and penance do not operate here.

A shocking reminder

I decided to seek justice after suffering what psychologists call an eruption of awareness in April 2005, when memories of the sexual abuse engulfed me one Sunday afternoon following a family lunch.

For several decades after leaving school, I had no conscious idea I had been abused.

This may sound unlikely, but repression and denial are well-known psychological defences; the mind's way of protecting itself from horror.

I regarded my deep unease around authority figures, my hyper-vigilance, my continuous extreme state of tension and anxiety as fairly normal.

Being interviewed by four expert child and adult psychiatrists was both embarrassing and excruciating, having to talk about such painful episodes, and a relief, to learn there is a well-documented pathology – albeit one the judge chose to ignore ultimately, deciding that the years of weekly therapy I underwent from 2005 was part of an honest but mistaken belief that the sexual assaults had had a lasting impact.

My legal fight was characterised by constant delay and what appeared to be increasingly obfuscating and oppressive tactics by the Catholic Church and Zurich in the hope I would give up. They know many do; some even kill themselves.

Fortunately, I got a lot of support. US law firm McAllister Olivarius, for example, sent a representative daily to last summer's trial, even though unconnected, and my own legal career had left me battle-hardened to a degree.

It took almost two years for the defendant to identify itself. Previously, the Jesuits denied they ran my school despite one being the headmaster. In these cases, the action has to lie against one of the trusts beneath which Jesuit schools shelter. Identifying these is problematic.

The defendants' tactics also included a demand for details of all my girlfriends going back 30 years, and an allegation of fraud made during an interlocutory hearing based, bizarrely, on an unpublished novel I had written, tracked down by their enquiry agent.

They joined my 82-year-old mother just days before the second trial on a seemingly spurious disclosure point, thus compelling her to be separately represented, and then cross-examined her for three hours about her medical history in what seemed the most invasive manner, besmirched my dead father and conducted ceaseless personal attacks on me.

Any one of the bewildered tourists wandering into court would have imagined I was the transgressor.

On top of this was game playing with part 36 offers. (One reform needed is that, once a part 36 offer is made in an action of this nature, defendants should not be permitted to withdraw it). Patience and forbearance were needed.

When I won the first trial on liability, the defendants got leave to appeal at the third attempt. As a lawyer, I felt that their grounds for appeal – the judge had addressed four relevant questions in the wrong order – were artificial.

The appeal was eventually dismissed, but not before another 18 months had elapsed. This gave me a direct insight into the profound anguish delay causes for clients.

Battling on
Once it became clear that there was no option but to fight on, I was determined to have all the issues aired and fight both defendants to the finish, unless an offer consistent with the merits arrived.

There was much soul searching. I was mindful of the pressure on my many witnesses: my family, half a dozen leading lawyers (former colleagues), old friends and the experts. I salute them all for their courage and selflessness.

My disclosure included my personal, handwritten diary from 1976. Imagine having to disclose your diary to anyone, never mind an opponent determined to use it to attack every facet of your life and character.

As Swift remarked in her second judgment, perhaps nobody would emerge from such a piercing level of scrutiny unscathed.

Being cross-examined on the deepest recesses of one's personal life – not just the gory, granular detail of the sexual assaults, but school reports, medical history, sex life, divorce, etc – is a searing experience. Standing in the witness box, hour after hour, day after day, feels like being spat at.

On both occasions, I found my litigation experience was no help at all. I was so stressed, I could not think straight nor eat. Only the odd banana, tasting like wool. Each lunchtime, the Law Society was a haven where I had a cold shower.

None of it really helped in dealing with wave after wave of attacks. Almost five days of cross-examination over the two trials took me to the limits of endurance.

And sitting there powerless as my elderly mother was cross-examined is not something I would wish on even the retired Jesuit contemporaries who were served Civil Evidence Act notices and were thus absent.

Lifting anonymity

There were highs amid the attrition. I lifted anonymity on the first day of the 2009 trial. I walked into chambers for a pre-match briefing and was told that, following an anonymised paragraph in a paper the previous Friday, six men from my school had come forward over the weekend. Their statements were imminent. My QC gave me minutes to decide whether to break cover or not – it was a pivotal moment.

Naively, I had thought until then that I was the only one at my school. Now there were likely to be dozens, by extrapolating from these men and the length of career of the perpetrator.

I wanted to remove the stigma from the victims, so I agreed to lift the protection afforded to sex abuse claimants. I knew the consequences. I knew it would polarise opinion about me.

But I also knew how liberating it would be for others, too. As I crossed Fleet Street, a kind of fire went through me, a clean feeling that comes from doing the right thing, no matter what the personal cost.

As a litigator, I knew the risky journey I was setting out on when I began my legal claim. I knew the odds were stacked against me, but I also knew I had to try and call the Jesuits to account publicly. Thankfully, their irreversible shame is now a matter of record.

In deciding the effects were so time-limited, Swift went against not just the unanimous testimony of victims, but the weight of accredited literature. So, as Lady Butler-Sloss remarked recently, questions remain regarding the extent of society's apparent concern.

As for the Catholic Church, it has had dozens of Jimmy Saviles, and proven cover-ups as it flexes its vast, silent power – so where is the inquiry?

Patrick Raggett was awarded £54,923 in damages in the High Court in November 2012 for suffering for sexual abuse as a child at the Jesuit-run Preston Catholic College in Lancashire. The college closed in 1978.