Jailed child rapist wins #50K legal fight to be allowed to eat chocolate

LONDON - A child rapist in Scotland has won a 50,000 pound case funded by taxpayers’ money to be allowed to eat chocolate and guzzle fizzy drinks while he is in jail.

Clifford Lyons, 37, complained that a ban on snacks at the mental hospital where he is detained breached his human rights, and judge rules in his favour.

State Hospital in Carstairs, Lanarkshire, had wanted the ban because 80 percent of its inmates were either obese or overweight.

But Lyons, who was sent to the secure hospital in 1990 after raping a 10-year-old girl in Glasgow and while on bail for molesting a boy of 12, argued that he needed Lucozade and high-protein chocolate for his fitness regime.

The keen weight lifter demanded to be able to continue to buy them in the hospital tuck shop and to send away for them online.

Following a hearing last month, Judge Lady Dorrian ruled at the Court of Session in Edinburgh that patients can continue to have their favourite snacks, including sweets.

She said that patients were “vehemently opposed” to the ban and also wanted to continue to receive food parcels from outside the hospital.

The judge said it seemed that patients were not properly informed about the plan, and that this lack of consultation was enough to make a ruling in Lyons’ favour.

But the ruling provoked anger among politicians and victims groups last night.

“He has ruined a child’s life and this is another insult to her,” the Daily Express quoted Justice for Victims campaigner Margaret Watson, whose teenage daughter Diane was murdered outside a Glasgow school 20 years ago, as saying.

“The courts were never intended for insignificant, petty issues like this. The public is being forced to pay hundreds of thousands for these cases,” she stated.

Legal sources put an estimate of 50,000 pounds on Lyons’ court challenge as it involved two QCs, as well as the judge and other court staff, and background work. (ANI)