There is a straightforward dilemma when it comes to the family courts, and now that I have actually seen what they do, I have a clearer idea what it is.
Family courts, which opened to the press for the first time yesterday, deal with people in crisis. It is by no means unusual to encounter people in crisis anywhere in the court system – only a small percentage of cases of any kind go to court and so they are always the most serious.
But a crisis that ends up in the family courts looks different to the ones I have seen elsewhere. These are children freshly traumatised from a family breakdown being taken into care, in some cases following the death of siblings in unexplained circumstances. Or they are women who, despite being over 18, the court decides need protecting from what appears to be a forced marriage. There are spouses going through painful divorces, allegations of sexual abuse and domestic violence against children being raised between parents.
These are serious issues and they also bring a whole new dimension to the concept of "sensitive" cases. And, as a high court judge told me in no uncertain terms yesterday, they are the type of issues he deals with day in, day out, one after the other in quick succession.
If Mr Justice Ryder – who I sat before yesterday – is anything to go by, judges welcome the media's presence in their court. Never mind the fact that journalists add unhelpfully to the delay – numerous parties yesterday made applications for me to be excluded, which then delayed the case – judges want the public to know how proceedings in their court work. They want the public to know that the family courts are working hard in difficult circumstances, bogged down with an astonishing backlog of work. Or that they deal each day with dozens of cases, all of them with serious and lasting implications for the parties concerned.
What they don't necessarily want is for journalists to reveal details that will identify these vulnerable parties. There are numerous reasons for this. Unlike criminal proceedings, many of the people involved are caught up through no actual or alleged fault of their own. And what the press report could do is prejudice the actions of abductors who still have children in their custody, or identify the victims of abuse who want nothing more than anonymity.
But is there really any point in opening up courts to journalists and then preventing them from writing about any of the cases they watch? Yesterday, after witnessing this first day in the family courts, I had the interesting challenge of writing a news story describing what I was not allowed to describe. The fact that such a story is deemed newsworthy reflects not my talent for writing about what I can't write about, but the extent of public interest in what these courts do.
The government has said that allowing the media in is a first step. And step one was not free from teething problems – interestingly, mainly due to the profound suspicion of court staff and lawyers, rather than the parties themselves. The people who the cases concerned were on the whole too preoccupied with the ordeal of being at court in the first place to seem to care who was watching. But other courts manage fine with the presence of journalists and the family courts will get used to it eventually.
The thing is, the media are not interested in going to the family courts for an informative day out. The point – and these are the government's words not mine – is to fulfil a public interest role so that the general public, who are still excluded, can learn about them too.
This will only really happen if the restrictions are relaxed so that reporters who go to the family court can actually report. I strongly suspect that in the absence of this, readers, and so journalists too, will lose interest. How many times can we write about what family courts look like, what kind of things they deal with, and how many cases they get through in a day?
At the moment, the presence of the media is only marginally better than pointless. Concerns about protecting the privacy of the litigants are understandable, but the current system is weighted so heavily in their favour that there is little danger of an increase in openness placing them at risk.
There are numerous measures that could be put in place that would still protect the vulnerable while allowing the press to report more meaningfully. In the meantime, as far as the family courts are concerned, be prepared to hear a whole lot more about what you are not allowed to hear.