The legal challenges of reporting a teacher's illicit sex with a pupil

As I blog, a shocking story is just going off-stone for today's first edition front of the Birmingham Mail... A maths teachers at a local Catholic school jailed over his affair with a teenager.

'Teacher is jailed over pupil affair'.

Legal challenges exist with such cases. The victim most certainly cannot be identified, and yet justice would not be done to leave out the name of the convicted teacher; and for clarity and local information, the school he worked at should, if possible, also be named.

But does this threaten to identify the victim?

In this case, we decided to name the teacher (that's almost always the case) and the school. It's a large school, with 950 pupils, which is a factor to consider. Harder to identify the victim among that many pupils.

We also removed the dates that the incidents occurred, and referred to the victim as a 'teenager', not specifying her actual age, which again blurred which year she is or was in. We have not referred to whether or not she is still at the school.

The result is a story that specifies enough detail for justice to be detailed and seen to be done, but also protects the identity of the victim involved.