As explained in CONTACT No.3 the Court of Appeal Injunction of 20 June 1996 banning identification of Dr Pelling's son Michael Alexander School he attends in Pinner, Middlesex or his address (3 Avenue Road, London E7 when with his Father), was really dead in the water from the moment the European Court published its unanonymised Admissibility Judgment in Pelling v. United Kingdom on the Court’s Internet Website in October 1999. Anybody reading that Judgment could acquire the banned information at the price of some trivial detective work: in particular the Court of Appeal Judgment reported as Re P-B (Minor)(Child Cases: Hearings in Open Court) [1997] 1AER 58 CA could be easily located. The Court of Appeal, in rejecting Dr Pelling’s appeal against the decision of Judge Goldstein to hold his son’s Residence trial in chambers with no public pronouncement of judgment, held that the courts are bound by FPR 1991 Rule 4.16(7) to hear child cases generally in private and also held that the present practice in the English courts is consistent with Articles 6 & 10 of the Convention. A non-identification injunction might never have been made had not Ms Janet Plange, Counsel for Alexander’s mother Ms Bruce-Williams, shown to the Court of Appeal a flier circulated by Dr Pelling to advertise the appeal which entitled it as "Pelling v. Bruce-Williams”. When she saw this Lady Justice Butler-Sloss immediately imposed an interim injunction to hold until the Court delivered its reserved Judgment on 20 June 1996.
Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss has done more than any other judge in recent years to enforce secrecy and anonymity in children cases. The real motive of course is not to protect children but to protect judges and the rotten system of Family law over which Dame Elizabeth now presides as President of the Family Division. You may think that anonymity does not matter provided the hearings and judgments are public, as in the Court of Appeal: but anonymity imposed by injunction destroys authenticity and credibility and prevents communication between the parties and the public and press. Judges like Butler-Sloss know very well the inhibiting and weakening effect their injunctions have on anyone who wants to publicise injustice he has suffered but cannot do so under his own name and describe his own experience. Or on someone who wants to campaign for changes in the Law but can only give anonymous examples of the evil effects of that Law. So true to form on 20 June 1996, and notwithstanding the appeal was only on the procedural questions of public hearing and judgment and involved no reference at all to facts about Alexander’s and the parties’ lives or to any substantive issue in the Residence case, Butler-Sloss LJ imposed a permanent non-identification Injunction in the terms explained above. In so doing she not only breached rules of natural justice by refusing to hear Dr Pelling’s objections, but also managed to get the relevant case law completely wrong.
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