Maxine Carr injunction one of the most stringent

The injunction banning details of Maxine Carr’s new identity was described as one of the most stringent ever seen when it was introduced at the time of her release earlier this year.

It imposed a blanket ban on the publication of any information relating to her whereabouts, appearance and movements in light of “clear evidence” of threats to her life.

Details of her new name, address or of any care or treatment she may be receiving were all prohibited.

The injunction also barred the publication of any film, photograph or drawing of Carr made or taken after her release and prevented the media from identifying any premises she visited in her new life. It also stopped journalists from soliciting people for such information.

At the time, media lawyer Mark Stephens described the injunction as “extraordinary” and said it was one of the most robust, if not the most robust, ever seen.

He also said it was as strong, if not stronger, than similar injunctions banning the publication of details about the Bulger killers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, and child killer Mary Bell.

Thompson and Venables, then both aged 10, abducted the toddler James Bulger from a busy shopping centre in Bootle in February 1993, walked him more than a mile to a railway line and killed him.

The teenagers, whose crime shocked the world, were granted an open-ended High Court injunction protecting their anonymity after their release from detention with new identities to protect them from revenge attacks.

Family Division President Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss said the two had to be protected due to a “real possibility of serious physical harm and possible death from vengeful members of the public or from the Bulger family“.

And in December 2001 she fined Greater Manchester Newspapers Ltd (GMNL) £30,000 over an article in the Manchester Evening News on the day of their release which she ruled was in breach of the injunction.

Last year the child killer Mary Bell and her daughter won lifelong anonymity.

Bell was aged just 11 when she was thrown in custody for the manslaughter of two boys in 1968 and was not released on licence until 1980. Her identity was protected by anonymity but in 1998 she hit the headlines after it emerged she had been paid thousands of pounds for a book about her crimes.

She was eventually tracked down by a newspaper and was forced to move to a safe address.

However, in May last year, Bell was finally granted lifetime anonymity for both herself and her daughter because of the “exceptional” features of her case.

These included the young age at which she had committed the offences and her semi-iconic status and the effect of publicity on her rehabilitation.

Bell’s concerns for the welfare of her daughter were also a major factor and the principal reason for why the application was supported by British Home Secretary David Blunkett.