Media reporting on child homicide victims: consultation - easy read

Waiving anonymity

There might have to be rules about waiving anonymity.

Waiving anonymity means that family members allow the victim to be publicly identified.

This would let family members decide if they want to talk about what has happened. If there was no waiver, it would mean the family would be breaking the law if they publicly identified the child.

One way to do this is for family members to go to court to ask for anonymity to be waived. This would mean that information identifying the victim could be published and shared by anyone.

We need to think about how the court would decide if the anonymity should be waived. And which family members could ask for this.

We also need to think about how upsetting this might be for the families. We could allow family members to waive anonymity themselves. This would mean they would not have to go to court.

We need to think about how this would work for the media and the public. It could mean that anonymity ends when this happens. Or it could mean that people need to ask the family before they identify the child.

Different family members may have different views about what should happen. We need to think about problems this might cause.

There may also be a problem if one of the family members is accused of the crime. Their identity might be protected if they decided that anonymity should not be waived.

And we need to think about how to get the views of children in the family.