A newspaper was able to name a man jailed for attacking two babies after a reporter successfully challenged two court orders.
Adam Hewitt was jailed for five years at Hull Crown Court earlier this month after being convicted of wounding the children in 2007 and 2009 and leaving them with injuries similar to those suffered by car crash victims
Hull Daily Mail court reporter Nicky Harley successfully applied for the lifting of a Section 11 Order imposed by a judge during Hewitt’s first hearing in 2010 to prevent his name being reported in the press.
She subsequently used the case in a law lecture she gave to journalism students as an example of how important it is to challenge court orders.
Nicky told HTFP that the judge initially refused to lift the reporting restrictions on Hewitt until the start of the trial in February this year.
She said: “I argued that the charges were serious and it was in the public interest for him to be named, that a Facebook campaigned had already named him in Bridlington and his name had been mentioned in open court on repeated occasions.
“The two charges of GBH with intent showed a pattern of offending the public had a right to know the full facts of the case. The judge allowed me to print his name but not his address.”
However once he had been convicted, the judge did allow the Mail to print Hewitt’s address.
At the end of the trial Nicky also asked the judge to vary the Section 39 orders on the two children, now aged three and five.
He refused to lift them but agreed to vary them to allow the newspaper to print the dates of the offences, the injuries suffered, the fact that they happened in Bridlington and the fact that Hewitt was their mother’s boyfriend.
Added Nicky: “I argued on the grounds that it was in the public interest to identify Hewitt, to protect people in the future from his behaviour and that the police and social services had both failed the parents and not taken action against Hewitt.
“I told the judge a Serious Case Review had been published, which he was not aware of, and that we were unable to publish the failings of social services without being allowed to say that Hewitt was the boyfriend.
“The council sent a barrister to argue against me, as they knew if the Section 39 order stood we would not be able to publish their serious failings. I won and he granted everything I asked for.”
Hewitt denied the charges but was convicted of wounding after a trial last month. Read the full story here.
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Very well done.
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Well done.
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Congratulations, Nicky. This was a first class example of how we need, in the greater public interest, to challenge those who want to cover up, while making the spurious claim of acting in the interests of the child.
For those who wantr to oppose section 39 orders there is a wealth of material dealing with all aspects in the present edition of McNae’s Essential Law for Jouornlists.
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Yeah, well done. Councils will go to almost any lengths these days, and rack up no end of crazy expense, in order to cover up their shocking incompetence.
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Had something similar once, judge would not let us identify a mother who had been done for serious neglect of her two children.
Argued in court after she had been found guilty, fist he said we could name the woman but not say she was mother to the kids (!).
I argued again as the children were 18 months and 4 that they were young enough not to have it impact on them.
He agreed to allow us to identify her as the mother of the 18 month year old but not the older child.
I wanted to press it but editor told me to leave it so it was a very hard story to write without implying she was mother to them both.
Judges make it up as they go along I think.
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