Dozens more rape victims have had their compensation payments cut because they had been drinking when they were attacked, it emerged yesterday.

The disclosure came as ministers called on the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority to give full payouts to 14 rape victims whose awards were reduced last year.

Although a full trawl of awards to rape victims in recent years has not been completed, The Times has learnt that the final figure for victims whose compensation was cut because they had been drinking is expected to increase, though it is thought to be under a hundred.

Bridget Prentice, a junior Justice minister, called for automatic reviews of the payouts to the 14 after one woman had her £11,000 compensation cut by 25 per cent because the authority ruled that excessive drinking was a contributory factor. Ms Prentice said that the authority should review automatically cases where women had been told that their alcohol consumption had contributed to the attack.

She said it was absolutely clear that that should not have happened. “As far as we in the Government are concerned, a victim of rape is not in any way at all culpable due to alcohol consumption.

“I hope that the compensation authority will look at these other cases that they believe may also have had the guidelines misinterpreted and review them, without the victims themselves having to go back and ask for that review.”

The authority was resisting government pressure, insisting yesterday that a request for a review had to be made in writing by the applicant within 90 days of receiving the compensation decision.

A statement from the authority said: “The mechanism is in place for all applicants to express that they are not content when their decision letter is sent to them. All requests ... must come from the individual applicant concerned.”

The row erupted after one woman, who believes that she was raped four years ago after her drink was spiked, successfully overturned a decision to award her less money because she had been drinking. She said that being told that the award would be reduced “felt like a slap in the face”.

The woman said: “When I read the [authority's] letter I just had no words. I could not take it in. It felt like I was being punished for having the audacity to step up and say, ‘I don't think this should have happened to me'. It was like going back to the Seventies, saying, ‘She was asking for it'. How else could you read the letter but as saying it's my fault I was raped?”

The authority admitted that its compensation scheme was “originally applied wrongly” but the mistake was corrected and the award paid in full.

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