court reporting


No longer keeping it in the family


Charlie Moloney reports on a watershed development T


his year marks a new dawn for journalism in the family courts, as a scheme to make them open has been rolled


out to every court in England & Wales. However, there can still be obstacles. The transparency scheme allows


journalists to apply for a court order which allows them to report on family cases, as long as they do not identify the family involved. It is now presumed this order should be granted unless there are compelling reasons not to. Although I have been a court reporter for more than six years – mainly focusing on criminal and coronial courts – I had never covered family court. In my first job working for a regional agency, my editor had believed it was not worth reporting on family courts. The restrictions meant you could never get a decent story out of it. But the past few years have shown this


conventional wisdom no longer holds true. A group of specialist journalists have been pushing for transparency in the family courts. In 2021, freelance journalist Louise Tickle won the right to report that a judge had found – on the balance of probabilities – the standard of proof in civil cases – that former MP Andrew Griffiths had raped his wife. More recently, Tickle and family court reporter Hannah Summers won a Court of Appeal battle to name the judges who sent 10-year-old Sara Sharif to live with her murderous father and stepmother. Reports from the historically secret family courts often dominate the news cycle.


When the transparency scheme was


rolled out in full on January 27, I asked the Mail Online to commission me to report from Reading family court. The first case I saw involved serious allegations of violence against a newborn baby and coercive controlling behaviour by his father. The lawyers gave me a mixed reception. They were all perfectly affable and recognised my right to be present. At the judge’s direction, they also shared documents which allowed me to understand this complex case. But, when it came to the question of whether and what I could report, it seemed many of them were in new territory. A barrister representing the baby’s mother enquired which publication I worked for and asked me if I was an ‘accredited’ journalist. She confidently informed me I would be unable to report the case was taking place in the town of Reading because of ‘jigsaw identification’. I raised an eyebrow quite high indeed at the suggestion that naming Reading, home to some 174,000 people, would jigsaw ID the family. Barristers representing the local authority and the court-appointed guardian raised an even more troubling idea. Both argued I should not be permitted to report anything until the five-day hearing had concluded. This proposal would have torpedoed my coverage. The whole point of the story was


“


I hope some of the lawyers read my story and realised the sky did not fall in just because a journalist wrote an anonymised article


about the first day of the transparency scheme. A five- day delay would make that stale. Worse still, I realised the reason for this proposed delay was vague. They were concerned “people”, having read my report, might turn up at the court and cause some kind of commotion. Luckily, the case was before Judge Robin Tolson KC. He had a crystal clear understanding of the principle of open justice. In a brief application hearing, he dismissed the barristers’ arguments for banning any mention of Reading and ruled that “real-time reporting” should be allowed. “Otherwise, what is the point of all this?” he questioned. My story was a distressing read, with lots of detail but clearly nowhere near enough to identify the family. I hope some of the lawyers read it and realised the sky did not fall in just because a journalist wrote an anonymised article. I returned to Judge Tolson’s court a


week later for a case involving two girls who had been taken into foster care. One of the barristers questioned my presence in the remote hearing. The judge simply replied: “That’s Mr Moloney, he’s becoming a regular” and assured the lawyers this member of the press ‘knows the score’ on reporting in family court. He even fed me a few quotes about the ‘mess’ the local authority was in. This was the kind of easy relationship


between judges and the press I have been accustomed to in criminal and civil courts. It made me think one day the family court could become just another part of the regional court reporter’s circuit – not something to be viewed with fear or trepidation.


theJournalist | 17


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