Editorial: Secrecy stands in way of open justice

Another week, another episode in the tragi-comedy that is court suppression.

This time, Justice Rod Hansen has suppressed the name of a convicted domestic murderer because the children the man had with his victim share his surname. Having their father's name published, the judge accepted, could affect their states of mind and their new lives in a town outside Auckland where no one knows their tragic background.

Once again, however, the decision errs too far on the side of secrecy. The court system is supposed to operate on the basis of open justice, where the public has a powerful right to know what occurs in court rooms.

Protecting victims is all well and good. The law makes it an offence, for example, to identify victims of sexual crimes. But in general victims must be protected from some real and specific threat of harm, not some theoretical possibility. The name these children share with their father is quite nondescript and common enough not to attract comment. They no longer live in an area where people would automatically link the crime and the convict to them. Tellingly, a counsel for the child from the Family Court, where things are far less open, has been involved here, warning the High Court that the children "may" become linked to their father's crime.

Justice Hansen says this case has unique features. Yet those he lists - that the children are of the murderer and the dead woman, they grew up in a home racked with dissension and violence, have been through the trauma of the crime, grief at the loss of a good mother and a bad father and have now re-established themselves - seem all too familiar.

Using his logic, isn't it now the case that every father or mother or sibling who murders in a family environment ought to have his or her name permanently kept secret because children or siblings of the same surname might be affected by publication? Suppress that thought.