Mary Bell granted anonymity

CHILD killer Mary Bell was yesterday granted anonymity for the rest of her life in a landmark ruling which has devastated the family of a child she murdered more than three decades ago and angered victim-support groups.

The High Court order, designed to protect Bell, now 46, and her 18-year-old daughter from press intrusion, harassment and attack, was made due to "exceptional features" in the case and did not set a general precedent.

Giving her reasons, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, a judge who is the president of the High Court’s family division, said that Bell was a "vulnerable personality with mental-health problems" who would remain at risk if identified. She stressed that her reasons were different from those behind her similar decision to grant lifelong anonymity to Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the killers of two-year old James Bulger.

"The granting of the relief sought by the claimants in this case is not, and is not to be taken to be, a broadening of the principles of the law of confidence nor an increase in the pool of those who might in the future be granted protection against potential breaches of confidence," she said at the High Court in London.

The family of Martin Brown, four, one of two boys murdered by Bell in 1968, who were in court to hear the judgment, were angered and disappointed. Sharon Richardson, 30, Martin’s sister, said: "It takes us no further forward. I would just like some restrictions on her that she cannot make money."

Martin’s mother, June Richardson, said that she would be happy with a ruling granting Bell’s anonymity as long as she "then vanished".

June Richardson, who revealed that, in an awful twist of fate, Bell’s daughter was born on the anniversary of her son’s death, added: "Every time this comes up it’s devastating. I just want it to end; for her to vanish forever."

Bell was aged just 11 when she killed Martin Brown and Brian Howe, three, in Newcastle, in a case that horrified Britain and gave her a notoriety on a par with Moors murderer Myra Hindley.

At her trial, which revealed that Brian had been beaten, strangled and his legs scarred with cuts, a judge labelled the schoolgirl "evil and cunning".

She has lived under a new identity since she was released in 1980.

When her daughter was born, in 1984, an injunction was granted to prevent disclosure of her identity, which lapsed when she turned 18. Despite the order, the family have been threatened several times, forcing them to move home, once at the time of the Bulger murder in 1993.