Child Pornography in UK Law

This is the only evidence of leaks in the intervening period of now nearly three years. He states that he has been unable to continue his investigative work at the hospital. He cannot make information available unless he can guarantee the protection of his sources.

In our judgment it is impossible to over-emphasise the importance to be attached to the ability of the media to report criminal trials. In simple terms this represents the embodiment of the principle of open justice in a free country. An important aspect of the public interest in the administration of criminal justice is that the identity of those convicted and sentenced for criminal offices should not be concealed.

Innocent parents suffer from the criminal activities of their sons and daughters. Husbands and wives and partners all suffer in the same way. Such an order cannot begin to be contemplated unless the circumstances are indeed properly to be described as exceptional.

It is true that the making of the images found appears to have been in 2008 or thereabouts and that that was some years after the two complainants had ceased to live with the defendant and thus when any offences could have been committed. But a sexual interest in young children is a characteristic which is unlikely to change over years.

As already indicated, however this question falls to be answered, the answer cannot avail Dr Atkins because the Magistrate found that in any event he was not conducting "honest and straightforward research into child pornography". We are nevertheless invited to consider the question so that courts may have some guidance on the point. Courts are plainly entitled to bring a measure of scepticism to bear upon such an enquiry: they should not too readily conclude that the defence has been made out.

Mr. Jones was not able to show me any precedent for the Court intervening to, in effect, close down an ongoing investigation on the basis that there was no prospect of a prosecution eventuating. That does not mean that such relief could never be granted, but it reinforces my own view that it will only be appropriate, if at all, in the most exceptional cases.

This court rejected the submission of the Crown that those provisions were justified in case the defendant graduated to contact offences. Preventive these orders are; it does not follow that anything is permissible. It is not legitimate to impose multiple prohibitions on a defendant just in case he commits a different kind of offence. There must be an identifiable risk of contact offences before this kind of prohibition can be justified.