The Sun has succeeded after a two-month legal battle in overturning an injunction that prevented the paper from reporting on a lapse of judgment by social workers.
The paper reports today![ext]()
that a four-year-old girl was left in foster care with a man accused of downloading child porn despite social workers having been aware for two weeks of the charges against him.
It was unable to reveal that fact because of an injunction secured by Bristol city council in October last year. But a high court judge, Mr Justice Baker, lifted the gagging order yesterday.
He ruled that publication was in the public interest and that the council had been "unjustified" in attempting to suppress the story. He is quoted by the paper as saying:
"There is a clear public interest in facilitating an open discussion of the issues relating to child protection and fostering that arise in this case.
There is a danger that those who practise in the family justice system fail to give proper consideration to the Article 10 rights of the media. This must now cease."
The Sun reported that a family proceedings court was told about the four-year-old girl living with an unnamed foster carer for three months before police told the council's social services team that he was suspected of downloading child abuse images.
Social workers were then said to have waited six days before deciding what to do and a further week before removing the girl and a second child from the foster father. He committed suicide a day later.
Today's Sun editorial, headlined "Gag's no joke"![ext]()
, described the social workers' failure to protect the girl as "bad enough", and asked:
"Who at Bristol city council then thought it best to gag The Sun from exposing the scandal using a sneaky injunction it took us two months of battling to overturn?"
It continued: "Publishing the story, and the council's role in it, was always 100% in the public interest…
"High court judge Mr Justice Baker clearly couldn't believe the council's arrogant stupidity any more than we could… Thank God for a few judges with common sense." Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.
The paper reports today
that a four-year-old girl was left in foster care with a man accused of downloading child porn despite social workers having been aware for two weeks of the charges against him.It was unable to reveal that fact because of an injunction secured by Bristol city council in October last year. But a high court judge, Mr Justice Baker, lifted the gagging order yesterday.
He ruled that publication was in the public interest and that the council had been "unjustified" in attempting to suppress the story. He is quoted by the paper as saying:
"There is a clear public interest in facilitating an open discussion of the issues relating to child protection and fostering that arise in this case.
There is a danger that those who practise in the family justice system fail to give proper consideration to the Article 10 rights of the media. This must now cease."
The Sun reported that a family proceedings court was told about the four-year-old girl living with an unnamed foster carer for three months before police told the council's social services team that he was suspected of downloading child abuse images.
Social workers were then said to have waited six days before deciding what to do and a further week before removing the girl and a second child from the foster father. He committed suicide a day later.
Today's Sun editorial, headlined "Gag's no joke"
, described the social workers' failure to protect the girl as "bad enough", and asked:"Who at Bristol city council then thought it best to gag The Sun from exposing the scandal using a sneaky injunction it took us two months of battling to overturn?"
It continued: "Publishing the story, and the council's role in it, was always 100% in the public interest…
"High court judge Mr Justice Baker clearly couldn't believe the council's arrogant stupidity any more than we could… Thank God for a few judges with common sense." Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.