Appeal court rules against public naming of deceased child.

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

I see that a man has been arrested over the stabbing of Josh Dunne, and Josh is named in all the reports. If this man is charged, will papers be unable to name the victim at that stage?

Yes, that's right. Unless and until s. 252 is amended.

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

https://www.buzz.ie/news/man-35-charged-in-connection-with-killing-of-dublin-teenager-415194



How long before this law is changed?

The judge was apparently challenged twice by a news editor as to what law this was under he had ordered the ruling and refused to answer before leaving the bench

Gatling wrote: »

The judge was apparently challenged twice by a news editor as to what law this was under he had ordered the ruling and refused to answer before leaving the bench

It was legals on behalf of a newspaper , which is normal ....is it's normal enough for a judge when challenged to ignore it and walk off the bench ? I have only ever witnessed it when the challenge was some sort of Freeman/strawman type argument.
I have witnessed legals threaten judges with JR if they continue to ignore.

Am I correct or wrong when I say that I believe the section applies to the deceased being known to the accused (ie. A relationship parent/child) and is/has been misinterpreted recently.

Peregrinus wrote: »

I am very sceptical of this claim; on the face of it it looks like rubbish. News editors don't hang around in courtrooms waiting to leap to their feet and harangue judges on the bench about orders just made; they have actual jobs to do. And if any of them tried it, the resulting imprisonment for contempt would be front-page news.

Can you give us a source for this? Are you sure you didn't just credulously fall for some sh!te on a freemannish website somewhere?

The solicitor was present probably on the instruction of the newspapers legal advisors. Having been brushed off by the Judge they now have cause to go to the High Court to try and get the decision overturned.

political analyst wrote: »

Interestingly, the appeal court judgement doesn't prevent newspapers from naming the victim, who has waived her anonymity, in this case. She was also interviewed for this week's Sunday World, which shows a picture of her and her first name with a surname different from the one shown on the following page.

https://www.thejournal.ie/bernard-maguire-jailed-oral-rape-half-sister-5338373-Jan2021/

The Journal report doesn't say so, but in that case I believe an order was made permitting the victim to be identified (and part of the reasoning for making the order was that the victim was now an adult and wished to be identified).

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm still not seeing any actual source for this story.


The section is designed to protect the identity of the child victim. It prohibits the publication of the victim's name, etc, or of anything which would tend to identify the victim. A huge proportion of crimes against children are committed by people related to or known to the child, so identifying the offender will frequently tend to identify the victim also.

But, yeah - if you had, say, a motoring offence which resulted in the death of a child pedestrian who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time but had no other connection to the offender, naming the offender would not tend to identify the victim, and the media could safely name the offender.

I'd imagine though, that in this case, the judge realises that to identify the accused would identify the victim even though they're unrelated; in this case it's due to the notoriety of the incident & the anger out there.

His name & face were already put on a tabloids front page (reminds me of one, possibly same one, that did the same with TH back in around 2011); the long term implications of this are the fair trial argument & the hope his name will be forgotten by when this comes to full hearing in 2022 sometime; I know the victims name but other than nationality & assumed occupation of defendant I know nothing.

Trouble is when this goes to a full hearing it's unlikely a jury member won't know some of the details; that's the problem with the social media age.

Those that named Boy A & B; some've been charged; surely it should be same in cases like this til 252 is resolved.....whenever that happens to be.....

I'm a bit confused. I think a number of posts have been removed from the thread, and as a result of this you and I may be discussing different cases.

I was responding (I thought) to posts about a case in which the judge had made made an order under s. 252 allowing publication of material which would ordinarily be prohibited by that section. The news media would have no reason to challenge an order allowing publication (unless, perhaps, to argue that it did not go far enough). That was a case in which an older sibling had sexually abused a younger sibling (who is now an adult, and wishes to be named). You're evidently talking about a different case involving child pornography. Possibly the newspapers wish to argue that publishing the name of the offender in that case is very unlikely to lead to the identification of the child depicted in the pornography.

It's not crazy at all that the courts view a dead child as having different rights from a living adult. The salient difference here is not so much that one is a child and the other an adult as that one is dead and the other alive. Fairly obviously, dead people can't have rights or interests in the way that living people do.

The problem here is that s. 252 says that (1) a child victim can't be identified unless the court makes an order allowing it, and (2) the court can only make that order if it is satisfied that it is in the interests of the child victim to do so. As a dead child can't have any interests, the court can't ever be satisfied about that it's in a dead child's interests to be named, and so it can't ever make an order allowing identification.

This may be an unfortunate result, but it's not the job, or within the powers, of the courts to ignore or override legislation simply because they think the legislation has an unfortunate result. The problem has to be rectified by a legislative amendment, which is a matter for the Oireachtas.

You're right to say that all this gives child victims a greater protection against the reputational harm that can accrue from being known as the victim of a salacious crime than adult victims enjoy. But we shouldn't be excessively suprised about this; we generally recognise children as a class that deserves and should be given a higher degree of protection than adults get in a range of areas. The fact that the memory of adult victims who are dead might suffer post-mortem reputational harm may be unfortunate, but it's not really an argument for saying that the memory of child victims should be exposed to the same harm.

On the issue of naming the offender, there's no explicit ban on this in the Act; just a ban on publishing "any particulars likely to lead to [the child victim's] identification". This will very often prevent publication of the identity of the offender but, logically, it need not always do so, and I'm not aware of a court ruling that say that, in practice, it always does. (That's not to say that there's no such ruling - just that I don't know about it). If there were such a ruling, it would presumably only be relevant to cases involving living victims since, as already pointed out, the legislation currently prevents the identification of child victims.

My guess is that (a) there is no general ban on naming adult offenders in relation to crimes against children, but (b) the newspapers feel that they are always at some risk in naming adult offenders, however unconnected they seem to be to their child victims, and (c) they would like some court ruling that gives them clearer guidance about when it is, and when it is not, forbidden to identify offenders against children. And they are looking for a case which they can take to the court of appeal to test the question.

Victor wrote: »

I'm wondering, is it actually good for child murder victims to be named? The last thing the family needs is a media circus each time there is interest from the media.

It's a good point. But I don't think anybody wants a free-for-all; I think the suggestion is to amend the current law so as to allow a judge to make an order allowing the identification of a deceased child victim, if some test is satisfied. And that test could well have regard to the wishes and/or interests of the victim's family.

We're having this debate partly because there are families of child murder victims who want to talk to the media about their children. They don't want the public memory of their child to be just of a nameless victim of a horrible crime.

Victor wrote: »

Are we certain? I'm not sure how to phrase it, but surely it is in the interest of a child (and children generally) to know their future murderer would be exposed?

Current law looks only to the interests of the child victim of the particular crime concerned, not to the interests of children generally, or to the interests of victims of other crimes or of potential victims of possible future crimes. And if the child victim of the particular crime is dead, he or she doesn't have any interests. It's brutal, but I think that legally speaking it's correct.

Have seen the childs name from yesterdays case named on a Far Right online publication in comments section; that's the difference between normal/traditional media who have to respect such things as oh, you know, the law and the Wild West of social media.

Would imagine naming the child in this or any other cases until Section 252 is changed or allowing him/her to be so named (publish or so published) would be in contempt of court?

Legit couldn't place the incident yesterday til I saw his name in print but also the Detective named in the court report also brings up the initial court reports & the names of botth victim & defendant.

In relation to what the Star did Saturday they were within the law; by that stage he'd merely been arrested & not charged; the notoriety & freshness of the situation means if he's named (and, again, on social media he was which has led to copy cat attacks on Deliveroo cyclists increasing & warnings to avoid certain areas as they could also be being set-up.....) people would know the victim immediately.

techdiver wrote: »

I'm confused here. Does this law make it an offense for a parent to name their own murdered child?

No. It doesn't restrain the parents at all. It restrains the news media.

Where (a) there are court proceedings in relation to a criminal offence, and (b) a child is either the victim of that offence or a witness in the proceedings, the law prohibits the media from publishing or broadcasting reports or pictures relating to the proceedings which are likely to lead to the identification of the child victim/witness.

There's a provision in the legislation allowing the court to make an order allowing the media to identify the child victim/witness, if it's in the interests of the child to be identified. But that provision doesn't apply in cases where the child victim is dead.

Peregrinus wrote: »

No. It doesn't restrain the parents at all. It restrains the news media.

Where (a) there are court proceedings in relation to a criminal offence, and (b) a child is either the victim of that offence or a witness in the proceedings, the law prohibits the media from publishing or broadcasting reports or pictures relating to the proceedings which are likely to lead to the identification of the child victim/witness.

There's a provision in the legislation allowing the court to make an order allowing the media to identify the child victim/witness, if it's in the interests of the child to be identified. But that provision doesn't apply in cases where the child victim is dead.

Clearly the "MSM" or traditional media are hamstrung here; saw the childs name repeatedly named in comments section under a Liberal (I know!!) article though; social media is the Wild West clearly; we saw that in Boy A & B case too; trying to identify who named them was like Whack a Mole; lots of people got away with it than were charged.

Same with naming the guy once he'd been charged last week; the Star broke no rules on Saturday morning because he wasn't charged by then; just arrested; again the comments under the Liberal (and elsewhere) named & pictured him.

Now I'd regard that as contempt of court also but I don't think, since this is supposed to be only a temporary issue (temporary since October....) there's no DPP appetite to prosecute those who publish the name/s or allow it/them to be so published.

Judge allows defendant to be named (survivor isn't) > https://www.sundayworld.com/crime/courts/ex-teacher-who-groomed-girl-13-for-sex-can-be-named-says-judge-40058566.html