Two decades after being dragged into bushes and sexually assaulted as she took a daylight stroll through a Leeds park, Mrs A still suffers nightmares. Now in her late 70s, Mrs A has said that the brutality of the attack destroyed her confidence and left her with lasting psychiatric injury.

She has always lived a respectable life, in contrast to the 20-year offending record of Hoare, and says that her battle for compensation — through the High Court and then Court of Appeal — is not about the money. She said last year: “I decided to take this claim forward in order to fight for justice for myself but, far more importantly, for others who will also face similar injustice in the face of an unfair and out-of-date legal statute.”

During Hoare’s trial the QC described the assault as “vicious and disgusting”. Hoare had wrapped his arm around Mrs A’s neck and whispered obscenities into her ear before tearing her clothes off and brutally sexually assaulting her. After she had summoned the courage to give evidence, Hoare was jailed for life.

By this time Hoare had committed multiple attempted rapes and sexual assaults during the 1970s and 1980s. He was jailed in 1973; and again in 1983, including a conviction for rape. He was released in 1987 but his attack on Mrs A the next year put him back in prison in 1989 for a horrific catalogue of rape, two attempted rapes and three indecent assaults.

His life was that of a normal prisoner, with “no means to buy anything other than a packet of cigarettes or crips”, a QC said.

Then, just as Mrs A’s fortunes were dramatically and abruptly to change, so too did Hoare’s — in his case for the better. Ironically, his arrest had come after he was identified from a photograph he had sent to a TV station in an effort to be chosen as a contestant for the Jimmy Tarbuck Winner Takes All quiz show.

Now he was to be that winner. In 2004 he was out on weekend bail at South Bank Bail Hostel, Middlesbrough, when he bought a lottery ticket. His numbers came up, netting him £7,039,469. News of his scoop prompted outrage and campaigns for a change in the law to prevent him keeping the money. He had to be moved to a closed prison again for “security and his own safety.”

Only nine months later he was out and able to enjoy his new-found millionaire lifestyle. Originally from Leeds, Hoare — now in his mid-50s — is reportedly now living in Northumberland, where he is said to have a mansion and to be spending much of his time buying art and antiques.

When Mrs A heard about his lottery win it prompted her to pursue a claim for compensation. She had the support of her grown-up children but fell at each hurdle because of the law that said her claim was time-barred.

The legal costs would have been prohibitive without her “no-win, no-fee” lawyers. A victory in the Lords is not the end of the road: she still has to go back to court to see whether the courts will allow a claim to proceed.

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