A VICTIM of lottery-winning rapist Iorworth Hoare will bid again next month to claim compensation from the multi-millionaire.

The woman known only as Mrs A - has won permission from the Court of Appeal to challenge a High Court ruling which prevented her from seeking damages.

The High Court ruled against Mrs A in October because the law says a compensation claims for an injury caused by an attack must be made within six years.

Mrs A, now aged 76, was a 58-year-old teacher when she was attacked by Hoare in Roundhay Park in Leeds, in 1988.

Hoare - who had a record of sexual assaults and attempted rapes on four other women - had no money and his victims saw no point in suing him after he was convicted.

But in 2004, he won £7m with a Lottery ticket he bought from a supermarket during a day out from a bail hostel in Middlesbrough just before he was released from prison.

Hoare, now 52, went into hiding but was revealed to be living under a new identity in Sunderland last September - at an estimated cost to taxpayers of £10,0000 a month.

His former wife from Middlesbrough, Irene, divorced him following news of the jackpot win and was given a £150,000 settlement.

But Hoare's victims were told they could not seek damages because they had waited too long to make a claim.

Two successive Home Secretaries, David Blunkett and Charles Clarke, have promised to change the law but it is not clear when and how that will happen.

The High Court ruled last June that Mrs A's compensation claim should be struck out, and the original decision was upheld when the former teacher appealed against it in October.

But now it has emerged that the Appeal Court has given Mrs A permission to challenge the ruling at a hearing scheduled for early February. Mrs A's lawyers, Leeds-based DLA Piper, say they will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.

Hoare, the son of a coalminer from Leeds, committed a series of sex acts in his 20s and was sentenced to a total of 18 years in jail between 1973 and 1987, finally being jailed for life in 1989 for rape, two attempted rapes and three indecent assaults.

He was freed last March and changed his name to Edward Thomas.