[ad_1]
The Court of Appeal’s decision that the media cannot name a deceased child a victim of crime, due to a provision of the 2001 Children’s Act, is likely to create some surprising anomalies going forward.
The judgment is enforced, or triggered, through court proceedings, in the sense that it only comes into force once a person is charged.
Now it seems that if the entire nation is talking about a murdered child, the publication of his name will suddenly stop once one person has been charged.
If the circumstances of the crime are such that the identification of the accused person could, in turn, identify the victim, then media reports on the charge would also be forced to omit the identity of the accused person.
It seems that now you can name a child’s strangers who are convicted of killing him, but not people who are close relatives, so that their identification can in turn identify the victim.
The prohibition on naming the child victim persists beyond the completion of the judicial process.
In the case of Ana Kriégel, for example, the media would have had to stop naming her once the children who were convicted of killing her were charged, and they would still be prohibited from naming her.
The media would not have been able to give the coverage that they did to Ana’s parents, Geraldine and Patric, who did so much at the end of the trial to explain their love for her, thus providing a counterweight to the darkness of a murder she had had. . caused such widespread distress.
Another case in which the ruling is likely to change the way the media operates appears to be when an adult who was raped or sexually abused as a child by a family member and wants to allow his identity to be revealed, so his abuser can also be identified.
It now appears that doing so would be a crime, although the perpetrator’s public name might be something desired by the victim and could be helpful to others.
None of this is to criticize the Court of Appeal. The three judges who handed down the ruling enjoy great prestige.
Barring a successful appeal to the Supreme Court, the ball is back on the court at Oireachtas. You can amend the 2001 Act to change what was presumably an unintended consequence of its wording.
But the media’s confidence in the Oireachtas’ ability to rapidly advance the necessary legislative reforms in its industry is quite low.
[ad_2]