Soldier's compensation bid fails
1:02pm Wednesday 2nd July 2008
A BATTLE scarred ex-soldier who claimed Army negligence in dealing with his trauma left him suicidally depressed and unemployable today failed in a million-pound compensation bid.
Mr Justice Owen told London's High Court it was impossible not to feel sympathy for Stephen Hibbert, 40, of Kidderminster, who served his country loyally through tours of duty in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, where he was exposed to the full horrors of war.
However, he rejected claims that his treatment by an Army psychiatrist had been negligent and ruled that he was not entitled to a penny in compensation from the Ministry of Defence.
The judge was told that Mr Hibbert, 40, of Shrubbery Street, was "a mature and confident soldier" who "loved" the Army, joining the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment, based in Worcester, aged 16, after a boyhood spent in the cadets.
He rose to become a Lance Corporal and served with the Cheshire Regiment - based in Chester - in Northern Ireland and as part of the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia in the early 1990s.
It was during those tours of duty that he suffered the mental scars which have reduced him from "a reliable soldier with above average discipline skills," to a wreck of a man who is so haunted by his past that he will never work again and finds it difficult even to leave his home, the court heard.
While on his first tour of duty in Ulster, his accommodation block came under mortar attack by the IRA. While he was on secondment with the Cheshire Regiment in Bosnia in 1993, he witnessed the slaughter of innocent civilian around the village of Vitez.
All the time exposed to small arms and mortar fire, he could do nothing to protect the civilians as his "standing orders" dictated he must not return fire. He and his unit were later detailed to recover the bodies, including those of women and children, some of them horribly mutilated.
On his return to the UK, none of his friends could understand the horror of what he had witnessed and he sank into isolation and depression, suffering nightmare flashbacks to Bosnia.
He was sent on a second tour of duty to Northern Ireland in 1994, but "broke down" within days and was so disturbed that he had to be evacuated by helicopter during a reconnaissance mission.
At the High Court, Mr Hibbert's legal team argued his psychiatric condition was left undetected and untreated for so long that it became "entrenched" and was now untreatable. The particular target of their criticisms was consultations with an Army psychiatrist in May and June, 1994.
Dismissing his million-pound damages claim, Mr Justice Owen said Mr Hibbert's had been a difficult case and ruled there had not been "any culpable want of care" on the psychiatrist's part.
The judge concluded: "One cannot but have the greatest sympathy for Mr Hibbert, who loyally served his country, earning respect for his determination, enthusiasm and leadership on operational tours of duty in Northern Ireland and Bosnia.
"He is now suffering from a severely disabling psychiatric condition for which the prognosis is very poor.
"But, sadly, he is the victim of stresses to which serving soldiers on operational tours of duty can be exposed, not due to any culpable want of care on the part of the Ministry of Defence.
"His claim must be dismissed".