The Swindon Evening Advertiser has successfully overturned a banning order on the address of a couple facing child pornography charges.

It claimed the order, imposed under Section 11 of the Contempt of Court Act, would leave the paper open to legal action from third parties with the same names.

A restriction on the addresses was originally imposed after their defence lawyer told how they had already been forced to move once because the police operation to recover material from their home had attracted attention from the public.

He claimed the Evening Advertiser’s only possible motive for wanting to publish the address of a couple facing child pornography charges was mischief, and said that if the press were able to use the couple’s names and ages, there was no need for their addresses to be published.

The Advertiser’s objections centred around the view that orders could not be made simply for the comfort or protection of the defendants and that the names were extremely common.

And at the defendants’ second hearing, this time before a district judge, reporter Tina Clarke presented a letter from Newsquest’s head of legal affairs, Simon Westrop.

The letter drew the court’s attention to the 1988 Evesham Justices case and to the Judicial Studies Board guidelines for reporting restrictions in magistrates courts, but stressed the most compelling reason for removing the restriction was the defendants’ names and the inevitable confusion leading to mistaken identification.

It said: “For the Evening Advertiser, this creates an obvious risk of legal action in libel and effectively inhibits the newspaper’s ability to report the case freely.

“On behalf of those third parties wrongly identified, I would ask the court to take account of the likely distress they will suffer.”

To reinforce the argument he directed them to Judge David Clarke, Honorary Recorder of Liverpool, quoted in McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, who rejected a similar order in 2000 banning publication of the addresses of three defendants of child abuse charges.

As a result the majority of the ban was lifted and the Evening Advertiser was able to publish the street name, but not the house number.

Editor Mark Waldron said: “This is yet another case of courts enforcing reporting restrictions without authority.

“It is only through the vigilance of our court reporters that we can continue to overturn these spurious decisions.”

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