A man with an international public profile who is under investigation for alleged serious sexual offences has won a High Court bid for temporary anonymity ahead of a planned BBC broadcast.
In a judgment on Thursday, Mrs Justice Collins Rice said the man, who has a “high public profile”, applied for an interim injunction preventing the broadcaster from identifying him in an investigation it proposed to air into allegations of sexual misconduct made against him by multiple women.
The man – known as WFZ – is bringing legal action against the BBC and earlier this month asked for an injunction preventing him from being identified until the full civil trial in his claim.
The court in London was told the man is under active criminal investigation concerning multiple allegations of sexual offences.
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Mrs Justice Collins Rice said: “The relationship between the allegations and the investigation is not simple.
“The claimant has been arrested but not (yet) charged in relation to two allegations. He has been interviewed in relation to a third allegation. A decision appears to have been made not to investigate further a fourth allegation.
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“And further allegations have not (yet) been notified formally to the police. All the allegations are of a similar nature.”
BBC challenged injunction bid
Mrs Justice Collins Rice said of the broadcaster: “Its evidence is that the proposed reports will state that the BBC has found that at least a quarter of businesses in the sector in which the claimant works have had employees investigated by the police for serious sexual offences, yet despite this the sector does not have any policies or procedures for employees who are accused of violence against women, nor any consistency of approach to allegations.
“They will explain that the claimant has been investigated by the police and arrested in respect of the allegations since it is important to explain that his employer knows that this is the position and has taken no action.
“However the involvement of the police would not be the focus of the reports.”
The High Court judge granted the injunction, finding that the proposed publication creates a substantial risk that the ongoing criminal proceedings would be “seriously impeded or prejudiced by it”.
“I am satisfied it creates a substantial risk of impeding or prejudicing the necessary efforts to ensure that all the evidence, and only the evidence, properly forensically relevant to the trial of any criminal charges brought will be available to a jury,” she said.
BBC report would generate ‘truly enormous publicity’
Mrs Justice Collins Rice later said that “the criminal justice system has not yet done with him one way or the other”.
The judge said that the broadcast “would be entirely successful in its aim of generating truly enormous publicity”.
She continued: “The claimant is a nationally, and internationally, known name.
“High-wattage celebrity sex scandals never fail to attract and retain attention.”
Mrs Justice Collins Rice added: “It would, beyond any doubt, detonate an uncontrolled explosion of personal comment and speculation on the allegations themselves, in both mainstream media and especially online, of which the claimant would be the epicentre and which he would be powerless to stem or withstand.
“Making him, as he puts it, the ‘poster boy’ for the issues in the report would inevitably, and deeply, embed the connection in the public mind.”
She added: “The BBC has a story which brings a legitimate and serious issue of general public concern to attention.
“I intervene with great reluctance, and only to the extent that the BBC wishes to illustrate its story by identifying a man currently under arrest.”
The judge added that the BBC could air the broadcasts and planned written article without identifying WFZ, or reconsider the issue after decisions on whether to charge the man have been made.
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