Name: Woman denied compensation following sexual assault on plane | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-08-20T12:47:03.000Z
Duration: 2 min 49 s
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A British woman who was sexually assaulted on a flight from Doha to London, Gatwick, is calling on the government to change its criminal injuries compensation scheme after she was refused damages because she was flying with a foreign airline.

A perpetrator was convicted of the crime in a British court and is serving a several-year prison sentence.

She's given her first interviews to our senior UK correspondent Seema Kotecha.

To warn you, the report does have details you may find distressing.

I haven't been out in almost a year to events, summer parties with my friends.

Last September, Kelly was on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to London, Gatwick airport.

She was sleeping when the man sitting next to her sexually assaulted her.

We've changed her name and blurred her face.

And that just made me get up straight away.

The attacker was this man, 66-year-old Mahmoud Jassab.

In May, he was found guilty of sexual assault by penetration and is now serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence in prison.

She's now fighting for compensation under the government's Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, which compensates victims of sexual abuse.

But her application's been rejected twice.

The reason, she's told, is because the attack happened on a foreign airline.

The current rules of the compensation scheme say an aircraft is only considered a relevant place if it's British-controlled, something her lawyers say is unfair.

Had she been assaulted on a British Airways flight to the UK in the same circumstances, on a reading of the scheme, she'd be entitled to compensation.

Because it happened to be on a Qatar Airways flight, she's not.

And that creates what we see as a two-tier justice.

The government says the rules that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority follows and the of payments for injuries are set by parliament.

Other routes are available for victims to receive support.

In 1996, the Civil Aviation Act was changed so that crimes committed on foreign airline flights going to the UK could be prosecuted in the UK criminal courts.

Kelly says this alteration needs to be reflected in the compensation scheme.

I just want to be compensated for what I've been through.

I want to feel like I've been heard and that's really all.