President issues guidance on anonymisation in Family Court judgments

The President of the Family Division has issued guidance on two aspects of anonymisation and the avoidance of identification of children in judgments placed in the public arena.

The guidance, which can be viewed here, deals with: (a) personal and geographical indicators in judgments, and (b) the treatment of sexually explicit descriptions of the sexual abuse of children.

In the guidance Sir Andrew McFarlane endorses two checklists contained in a report published by Dr Julia Brophy in July 2016 and jointly funded by the Nuffield Foundation and the Association of Lawyers for Children.

The Brophy report, which built on views expressed on transparency in the Family Court by a National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) panel of young people, set out draft guidance on the anonymisation of judgments.

This draft guidance was designed to minimise the risk of identification of children and made recommendations on how descriptions of sexual abuse could be presented in judgments with a view to protecting children from the dissemination of distressing material on the internet or social media.

The Family President said: “I wish to encourage all judges to refer to these checklists when publishing any judgment in a family case relating to children. I believe that judges will find the checklists to be of real help in writing anonymised judgments.”