Mark Pack

At the time, there was stringent criticism from a vocal minority expressed online (such as in the comments thread on this site) of the court’s decision to keep secret the names of the adults involved in the Baby Peter case.

Now we know for sure the reasons:

There were two reasons behind the veil of secrecy. The first being the need to protect the identity of Baby Peter’s four siblings.

Connelly has three other children by Baby Peter’s father and gave birth to her youngest, who is Barker’s child, in prison.

The anonymity order was lifted because all four of Connelly’s remaining children are now being cared for.
Barker and Connelly could also not be named initially because they were involved in another trial and there was a risk of prejudice.

On 1 May, Barker was convicted of raping a two-year-old girl but Connelly was cleared of a child cruelty charge. (BBC)

In other words: they were kept secret to protect other children and to allow another prosecution to go ahead. There’s no real surprise there, given those are two of the most common reasons for secrecy to be imposed. The only slight surprise (and tragedy) perhaps is that it was for both such reasons rather than only one of them.

Here’s hoping that at least some of the people who expressed such utter certainty that the courts were wrong to have issued that secrecy order are having second thoughts…