High Court dismisses historic care home abuse claim in KHX v Isle of Wight Council

The High Court has dismissed a claim for damages brought by a former resident of a children's home against the Isle of Wight Council, while providing the first judicial interpretation of a newly enacted limitation regime for child sexual abuse claims.

In KHX v Isle of Wight Council [2026] EWHC 1949 (KB), Ms Justice Obi rejected allegations that the claimant, referred to as KHX to protect his identity, had been physically abused by a care worker and sexually abused by another member of staff during his residence at Richmond Row children's home on the Isle of Wight during the 1980s, finding that the evidence did not establish either set of allegations on the balance of probabilities.

The claim raised a preliminary question of statutory construction concerning sections 11ZA and 11ZB of the Limitation Act 1980, inserted by the Crime and Policing Act 2026 only weeks before trial, which remove the ordinary limitation period for personal injury claims attributable to child sexual abuse. The claimant argued that because his proceedings included allegations of sexual abuse, the new regime should extend to displace limitation for a separate allegation of physical abuse pursued in the same claim against a different member of staff, who had since died. The judge rejected this argument, holding that the statute's three cumulative conditions, and in particular the requirement that the injuries be attributable to conduct constituting sexual abuse, meant that distinct non-sexual allegations could not be brought within the new regime simply by virtue of being pleaded alongside a sexual abuse claim in the same action. The physical abuse allegation accordingly remained subject to the ordinary discretionary regime under sections 11 and 33 of the Act.

Applying that discretion, the judge found that although the claim was brought some 29 years after the primary limitation period expired, and the death of the alleged perpetrator before trial had caused genuine forensic prejudice to the council, it remained equitable to allow the claim to proceed. The allegations had been reported to police as early as 1998, generating a substantial contemporaneous record, and the judge accepted that the nature of historic abuse litigation, along with the interrelated character of the physical and sexual abuse allegations, provided some explanation for the delay.

Despite disapplying limitation, the judge ultimately dismissed the physical abuse claim on the facts, finding that while the core allegation had been raised consistently over many years and was not a recent invention, significant aspects of the claimant's account, including when the alleged abuse began and the precise mechanism of a scalding injury central to the claim, had developed in ways that could not be explained by the ordinary fading of memory and undermined confidence in the account as a whole.

The sexual abuse allegations, which faced no limitation defence, were dismissed on similar grounds. The judge found the accused care worker a credible witness and identified specific, material inconsistencies in the claimant's evidence, including his account of a conversation with a fellow resident said to corroborate the abuse, which could not be reconciled with his earlier statements to police. The judge emphasised that her conclusions rested on evidential reliability rather than any finding that the claimant had deliberately fabricated his account, but concluded that the cumulative difficulties left her unable to be satisfied that either set of allegations had been proved.