A regional daily editor has been fined £1,600 and the paper’s owners a total of £4,320 over the breach of an anonymity order.

Brian Aitken, left, editor of Newcastle daily The Journal, pleaded guilty to having breached an order made by a magistrates’ court under section 39 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933,

The newspaper’s publisher, NCJ Media Ltd – part of the Trinity Mirror group – also admitted breaching the order and was fined £2,160 on that charge, a further £2,160 in respect of a similar publication in the Journal’s sister newspaper, the Chronicle, and ordered to pay costs.

It followed a report in the paper about a court appearance by a woman member of a school’s staff on a charge of grooming a female pupil and engaging in sexual activity with her.

Although the alleged victim of the offence was automatically entitled to lifelong anonymity because the charge was a sexual offence, the court made a standard order under section 39 specifying that no report should include the name, address, school or other details “calculated to lead to the identification, of any child or young person concerned in the proceedings”.

But the report named the school at which the defendant worked – and at which the alleged victim was a pupil.

When the case for the breach of the order came up at Newcastle on October 27, Alex Bailin QC, for Mr Aitken, had argued that there was no case for him to answer, or, in the alternative, that the prosecution was an abuse of process because the editor of the Journal’s sister newspaper, the Chronicle, was not being prosecuted.

But District Judge Stephen Earle, sitting at Newcastle Magistrates Court, rejected both arguments.

Mr Bailin had argued that Mr Aitken should not have been prosecuted because the wording of section 39 (2) specified that the liability for breaching an order was borne by “any person who publishes any matter in contravention of an order”, and that Mr Aitken, although the editor, was not the person who published the material.

He contrasted sections 39 and 49 of the Act, pointing out that Parliament had amended section 49 three times. The amendments had included changing the details of who was liable to prosecution for a breach from “any person” to specify that, in relation to a newspaper, those who could be prosecuted were the “proprietor, editor or publisher”.

But Parliament had left section 39 (2) unchanged, except to amend the penalty from the original £50 to Level 5 on the Standard Scale, currently £5,000.

The failure to amend the details of those liable to prosecution for breaching a section 39 order, Mr Bailin argued, meant that the list was restricted to the actual publisher of the material, rather than the editor or anyone else, and must be narrower than the wider range given in the amended section 49 (2).

But Cristina Michalos, prosecuting, argued that the scope of the original wording was wider than that of the amended wording, so that the effect of the amendment to section 49 (2) was to restrict the range of people who could face prosecution.

District Judge Earle rejected the defence’s arguments, saying he was satisfied that there was no substance to the submission of no case to answer.

The fact that section 39 and section 49 had the same start point in 1933 “does not mean that Parliament has remained of the same view since,” he said, adding: “That cannot just be because parliamentary language has changed though because, clearly, they have amended section 49 quite markedly but not section 39, despite having had the opportunities so to do.

“Was the original wording was more or less restrictive in section 49 as originally enacted? I do not agree with the defence submission on this point and I am with the prosecution that the amendment to section 49 (2) is more restrictive by naming those who may be prosecuted, rather than the term, ‘any persons’.

“I believe the earlier term caught all of those in the later term AND others perhaps too. For example, the journalist would have been covered originally perhaps, but specifically not now.”

Parliament might have not intended to alter section 39 as it had section 49 as an order under the former was discretionary, but anonymity under the latter was mandatory.

He went on: “Whilst the defence did argue that only the publisher can publish, I am more attracted to the prosecution argument, that the word ‘publishes’ in section 39(2) … refers to the person who publishes (the verb) rather than to the periodicals owner, the publisher (noun).

“I am also attracted to the prosecution argument that subsequent amendments to section 49 does not, of itself, cast new meaning on the original section 39 in the Act.”

He dismissed the argument that it was an abuse of process to prosecute Mr Aitken when the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was not pursuing the editor of the Chronicle, which carried the same story.

The CPS had taken the view that the Chronicle editor’s circumstances differed and that, under the prosecutorial code, such a prosecution was unlikely to succeed or would not be in the the public interest.

“The fact the CPS take a view in relation to each cases circumstances does not, of itself lead to an abuse in the cases they do legitimately seek to pursue,” said District Judge Earle.

He added: “There is a public interest in seeing that the court’s directions are followed in matters where they have exercised their appropriate discretion and other parties have had the opportunity to challenge then legitimately.

“To then flout the decision of the court must be dealt with, if not to protect the integrity of the court ruling, then at least to protect the individual youth for whom the protection was intended.”