A MOTHER has accused the government of telling her she was “raped at the wrong time” after being given the green light to bring a High Court challenge on the two-child benefit limit policy.
Two women are taking legal action against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), arguing the policy breaches their human rights.
Both women, who remain anonymous, became pregnant with two or more children non-consensually in abusive teenage relationships, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) said.
The charity, which is providing their legal representation, said the women are challenging the rules on exceptions to the two-child limit for universal credit (UC), as they are “discriminatory and irrational.”
The two-child limit, announced in 2015 and enacted in 2017, restricts child tax credit and the child element of UC to the first two children in most households.
The non-consensual conception exception, sometimes known as the rape clause, only applies to third or subsequent children.
One of the women, known as EFG, conceived her first two children through rape in a violent and coercive relationship.
She has been told she cannot claim the benefit for her third and fourth children, both of whom were conceived consensually in a later long-term relationship.
Speaking through the CPAG, she said: “If I had been raped after my first two children were born, the exceptions would be applied, so basically [the DWP] are telling me that I was raped at the wrong time.”
The other woman, a mother-of-six referred to in the case as LMN, missed out on support for years despite suffering domestic abuse.
Each woman could have missed out on thousands of pounds of support because of the current policy.
CPAG chief executive Alison Garnham said: “The families in this case are trying to rebuild their lives after many years of abuse.
“But their task is made all the harder by inhumane benefit rules that pile more pain on those they should be protecting.
“Social security should provide stability and support at times of need, but the brutality of the two-child limit is plain to see in what these women and children have been through.”
A DWP spokesman said: “We cannot comment on ongoing legal cases.”
