KEY POINTS:
The Family Court is to be applauded for its unprecedented decision to publish the judgments that make up the sorry six-year case history of young Jayden Headley and his warring parents. It is the first time since the Care of Children Act came into force two years ago that the court has allowed complete reporting of its decisions, including the identities of the people directly affected.
In announcing the decision, Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier, long an advocate of more openness, emphasised that it was in the public interest to make details of the case known.
This is a welcome change from the days before the new act came into force when secrecy of the court was guarded with excessive zeal. The assumption seemed to be that the Family Court dealt with matters that were essentially private and nothing entitled the public to know what went on behind its closed doors.
There were some attractive arguments to support this point of view, especially the need to protect children from the consequences of their parents' battles. But at the same time it was a clear contradiction of the basic tenet of our system that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done.
As such it is hardly surprising that excessive secrecy allowed those who were unhappy with the court, notably groups of disgruntled fathers, to make all manner of unchallengeable allegations about how it did its job. The policy of greater openness - although never before allowed to go this far - has at least the potential to create a more sensible and better-informed discussion about the court and its work.
Not everyone accepts that the decision in this case was right. One who does not is Barry Hart, the barrister representing Jayden Headley's mother. She, with her father, faces a charge of kidnapping the boy and Mr Hart argues that publication of the judgments means his client cannot get a fair trial.
However the extent of the impact of publicity on a trial is questionable. In 1999 the Law Commission published a study which concluded that in almost all cases - including high-profile cases such as this - the effect is minimal.
What is more important is the way this case illustrates how a court attempting to preserve secrecy, or privacy, can be undone by those who refuse to accept its rulings. It was the kidnapping of Jayden - in defiance of an interim court order which gave custody to his father - that elevated this beyond being a mere private dispute into a matter of public interest.
Not only did the dispute cause enormous public expense - in the form of lawyers, psychologists, judges, court officials and now police - but, when the rulings went against them, the child's maternal family pressed their side of the argument through a public campaign of letters, videos and interviews. In other words, they played to the court of public opinion and therefore it became the public's rightful interest to know what the full story was.
This is precisely the point that Judge Boshier made yesterday in defending the decision to publish. "Where a case is put into the public domain, and the process of the Family Court is under scrutiny, I will always look at making available judgments so as to ensure the facts are before the public," he said.
In one sense this is a salutary warning to those who would flout the court's rulings. But it also indicates the Headley case is not just a one-off, rather it is a precedent for future action, a logical development of the policy for greater openness in what has been our most secret court. In the long run, that can only be a good thing.
