Aunt brands Damilola pay-out 'an insult'
The £10,000 compensation pay-out that the family of murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor will receive has been branded an "insult" by his aunt.
Damilola's parents Richard and Gloria Taylor will get the amount from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA).
It is the standard amount of compensation paid to parents who have lost a child at the hands of criminals and is the same amount as a victim of crime receives for partial loss of vision or loss of sense of smell.
Damilola's aunt said: "No amount of money can bring the child back, but that is an insult.
"Gloria and Richard haven't mentioned this to me and it's not the first thing on any of our minds - we just want to find the killers.
"But this amount of money is far too small to offer for the life of a child. "
The 10-year-old died on November 27 last year after he was stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle. He crawled 100 yards before bleeding to death in a stairwell on the North Peckham estate in south London.
In recent years there has been growing criticism about the disparity between awards made to victims of crime by CICA and civil compensation payments made in the courts for conditions such as stress.
When she went to CICA, nursery nurse Lisa Potts, who suffered injuries in protecting children from a machete attack in 1996, was told she was entitled to £49,000 and one of the child victims got £7,950.
But in the civil courts there have been a series of huge awards. Earlier this year retired policeman Martin Long, who was on duty at Hillsborough in 1989, received £330,000 when he sued South Yorkshire police for delayed post-traumatic stress.
