The Eastern Daily Press has finally been able to name a convicted paedophile after being told earlier this month that his identity must remain a secret.

The newspaper had twice failed in challenges to overturn a gagging order stopping it from naming 32-year-old Bacton man Mark Seel.

And after he was sentenced it splashed a story revealing that the judge had refused to give reasons why he could not be named.

But following the intervention of a national newspaper, an order imposed under section 11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 has now been lifted.

The News of the World took up the case after Seel was jailed for a year after admitting making and possessing indecent pictures of children.

It sent a letter to the judge, arguing that Seel should be named, and as a result the EDP and the NoW were told that the order had been made because Seel was due to give evidence in a number of other trials of men being prosecuted for sexual offences in relation to children.

But after the NoW filed its arguments, Seel decided to witdhraw his evidence.

This left no reason for the gagging order, and so it was lifted by the judge.

EDP assistant editor Paul Durrant said: “We’re delighted. This is a key principal of open justice.

“It is important that people in our circulation area know his identity.

“From the perspective of the EDP we had reached the end of what we could do and there was no more money in the legal budget to engage a barrister. But the letter from the News of the World rekindled the case.

“If it hadn’t been for us it wouldn’t have been drawn to the News of the World’s attention, but it took its deep pockets to get the order lifted.”

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