Confusion over a Soham father who assaulted his baby girl was averted when Ely Standard reporter Elaine King successfully applied in court to have the infant named.

She argued that without the relationship being shown, it may have looked in the trial report as though the defendant had twice hit a child not known to him.

Magistrates had ruled at the January trial that the baby should not be named, under the terms of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933.

At the sentencing hearing Elaine also said that the two-year-old toddler would not be harmed by publicity she was unaware of.

Magistrates lifted the naming ban “in the interests of open justice”.

Presiding magistrate Christopher Taylor said: “People might think he was an abuser at large, and for specific reasons in Soham that would be unsettling; the public would not know it was a domestic incident within the family.”

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