Talk:St Catherine's College, Eastbourne

Editions

I've bulked up on the detail but was unsure of to what extent and what depth an article on a school should be. There was no paradigm on which to base this article so I tried to add a relevant structure and some good information. Regardless, I think that the content and layout are still quite sloppy. I hope to visit the school and ask for finer details for the history.
Is there anyone who can provide dates, links, et cetera? In the meantime I've added a few external references and some detail.
Oliverbeatson (talk) 23:11, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Nice one Ollie, I'll read through it properly in a bit. Looks like there's some minor changes need doing and some expansion would be cool, if you can get more details on history that would be good. (Your old chemistry teacher!) - Fork me (talk) 16:17, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

It strikes me that the statement about the changes being due to Terry Boatwright is overstated - there were other people involved as well (as I'm sure he'd be the first to say). I'm not sure how best to change this to a more neutral POV, but I'll think it over. Fork me (talk) 16:40, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Court order

There is a "Section 39" Court banning order against the publication or mentioning of the name "Megan Stammers", and the proof thereof is the link to the article in The Daily Mail, at [1], which I had supplied. It appears that an editor might had just violated the Court order, and now in contempt of the court. -- KC9TV 20:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

You removed massively more than just the mention of her name. Not naming a minor (what the WP:BLPNAME policy you cited says) is very different than not mentioning an apparently widely-reported situation involving that person at all (what you did claiming that policy as the basis). DMacks (talk) 20:49, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

There is a court order in place. Are you proposing that we do not obey to that court order – because the court order was issued in England, and not in Florida – or are you not? This is not a rhetorical question either, and my edit was certainly not "unexplained". -- KC9TV 20:56, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

The order (as far as I can see) is not "do not discuss anything about anything about this case", merely "do not name the minor". WP:BLPNAME is the same. (US) newspapers seem to do that all the time: "Jimmy-John Smith was arrested for sexual assault on a minor" (and some even state "...whose name is being withheld to protect the reported victim" right in the article). DMacks (talk) 21:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I would have to admit that this is probably a little pointless. She was on the news for at least 10 days. And the "Section 39" anonymity and banning order was issued in secret, and unreported! [2] -- KC9TV 21:18, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm with DMacks on this one. The court order is a red herring, as it doesn't bind Wikipedia which isn't based in the UK. (Though as a British editor, it might bind me, so I won't make any further edits to the article.) BLPNAME is a better argument, but the previous version of the article didn't include the girl's name in the text, just the references, which seems acceptable to me. I think there's a good case for restoring the text to the article, or at least as a compromise adding mention of the case without naming the girl or linking to any references which name her. For more input, you may want to create a section for discussion on the BLP noticeboard. Robofish (talk) 00:23, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm also very doubtful that the court order would require WP to purge the name as previously used, because the BBC has not purged the name from the web versions of the old stories (which effectively they are re-publishing with each web view). All our cites that have been removed point to BBC stories that still use the name in their titles. Rwendland (talk) 10:58, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

A compromise solution would be to reinstate the cites, but with Her Name purged from the titles. Looking at the titles most can easily have "Her Name:" deleted, and the other two kludged reasonably well. Be nice if someone outside the UK did that though! Rwendland (talk) 11:09, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

• I have to weigh in here. This is blatant censorship. Wikipedia is protected by the First Amendment and is not subject to British gagging orders. WP:BLPNAME is not applicable either, since it states "When the name of a private individual has not been widely disseminated or has been intentionally concealed, such as in certain court cases or occupations, it is often preferable to omit it...". Clearly, since this girl was the subject of an international manhunt every press outlet in the UK reported her name. It's in the public domain now so should be inlcuded in the article. Betty Logan (talk) 13:31, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

No criticism is intended of anyone but we are talking about an abused child and any UK editor risks a visit from HM Constabulary. That's what happened in the Peter Tobin case -see Fourth paragraph, response by Alison W. There was the risk Tobin could avoid justice. The authorities are taking it seriously, it may be that some Wikipedia articles are made unavailable in the UK but this problem has been around for years. JRPG (talk) 20:55, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Should the pupil's name be included in the Wikipedia article?

Should the pupil's name be included in the Wikipedia article? Betty Logan (talk) 15:20, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Background

In September 2012, a major manhunt was launched looking for a teacher and his 15 year-old pupil who had eloped to France. The girl's name was widely reported by the British media: [3][4][5][6][7][8].

After the teacher was charged with having sex with a minor, UK based publications were gagged by British courts from carrying her name. As a result of this judgment an editor removed references to her name from the article: [9]. The trial has concluded with the teacher's conviction. Media outlets around the world (bar the UK ones) are carrying the pupil's name: [10].

Yet, this Wikipedia article is still being restricted from carrying the girl's name on the basis that i) it is illegal in the UK ii) it violates WP:BLPNAME.

A note for the benefit of UK editors: Now that Forest has pleaded guilty to the sexual activity with a child offence, section 1 (Anonymity of victims of certain offences) of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 probably applies to this case as well as the court order. The legal situation is quite hard to understand, and possibly an ordinary WP editor would be OK and only the publisher (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. and senior executives) could be prosecuted, which would probably be impractical - but I personally would not take that chance without some high-quality legal guidance to that effect. Rwendland (talk) 10:48, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

This isn't specific to this case, but according to meta:Legal and Community Advocacy/Legal Policies#Responsibility for Edits and Contributions which was drafted by the WMF's legal counsel Geoff Brigham, editors are legally responsible for their own edits and editors "who do not comply with their local laws ... do so at their own risk". January (talk) 11:12, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Survey

• Support inclusion Non-UK based media outlets are carrying her name as Wikipedia itself did prior to the gagging order. I think keeping out pertinent facts violates WP:NOTCENSORED and obstructs Wikipedia from fulfilling its commitment to deliver full coverage of the manhunt and trial. I do not believe the gagging order applies to Wikipedia in the same way it does not apply to other non-UK based media outlets. Secondly, I do not believe including the name violates WP:BLPNAME which states "When the name of a private individual has not been widely disseminated or has been intentionally concealed, such as in certain court cases or occupations, it is often preferable to omit it", since the pupil's name had already been widely disseminated by the UK press, and is indeed currently being carried by the international press. Betty Logan (talk) 15:20, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support inclusion this is an international site and the name is freely available internationally. Theveravee 15:28, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include "and obstructs Wikipedia from fulfilling its commitment to deliver full coverage of the manhunt and trial" - I'd be interested in being shown where Wikipedia has made such a commitment. Wikipedia is not a news source, it's an encyclopedia, so the question to me (or one of the questions) is "would the encyclopedia article on the school be enhanced by including the name?" Personally I don't see how a readers understanding would change from it's inclusion/exclusion. As for censorship, I guess one persons censorship is another persons editorial choice, wikipedia editors make choices each and every day as to what to include and what not to include, wikipedia would be a poorer place if all one had to do to win the argument on inclusion of a particular item would be to shout "censorship". Adding in the BLP policy, which is in part about respecting people's privacy. In this case we have a minor, and a victim of crime, given the lack of encyclopedic value in adding the name it would seem within the spirit of the BLP aspect to not include it. As to if news sources have previously or indeed currently specifying the name, news goes stale quickly, the news sources will have moved onto the next topic tomorrow and the current pages filled with something else. The encyclopedia article on the other hand will stay roughly the same, it's likely to be read by those interested in the school, which is likely to include a reasonable amount of people living in the area, the area where the girl in question and her family presumably still live, so again from a BLP perspective it would seem the dynamic of our choice is somewhat different to those new sources, such that the inclusion there shouldn't be a significant factor in our choice. Finally the UK court order is likely to be binding on UK editors, those I would suspect have the most interest in editing the article on this school, may also then find themselves having difficulty doing so. So perhaps wikipedia isn't bound by the UK court order, but I do think inclusion of the name could have an impact on the future development of this article. FWIW (and as should be apparent) from my IP, I'm UK based. --62.254.139.60 (talk) 17:17, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include in this article. We haven't included the names of the other girls in the Child sexual abuse section; likely we couldn't even if we wanted to, as they're probably not in the public domain, but this article doesn't suffer from that lack. WP:BLPNAME doesn't prevent us from publishing her name in this case, but it does encourage us to suppress it as (however ineffectually) the name has been "intentionally concealed" by a court and excluding it "does not result in a significant loss of context". That doesn't mean I'd object to the use of a cite that does mention her name, even in the title, should that be determined to be the right cite to use. Likewise, were there to be an article on Jeremy Forrest, I'd assume her name should appear there. IANAL, but I'm assuming from international coverage that there's no legal problem with mentioning her name here (although I'd expect there'd a problem for UK editors, if the UK legal system could be bothered to get worked up about it). Bromley86 (talk) 18:06, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include As above, this is an abused child -and a mentally very disturbed one at that. See also my comments about Peter Tobin above. This problem will continue and we do need guidance from the UK authorities and Wikipedia. JRPG (talk) 21:08, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include As above. Also, serves no encyclopedic purpose. Martin Hogbin (talk) 15:33, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include. Name not needed to understand so WP:BLPNAME applies: "When the name ... or has been intentionally concealed, such as in certain court cases ... it is often preferable to omit it, especially when doing so does not result in a significant loss of context. When deciding whether to include a name, its publication in secondary sources other than news media, such as scholarly journals or the work of recognized experts, should be afforded greater weight than the brief appearance of names in news stories." Also its inclusion makes it difficult for UK editors to legally edit the section, or possibly the whole article. Rwendland (talk) 15:53, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include. Inclusion would go against WP:BLPNAME, there is no loss of context from omitting the name and it has only appeared in news sources. January (talk) 16:13, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include per WP:BLPNAME - Name not needed. →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 21:10, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include - as covered under BLPNAME, the inclusion of the child's name serves no conceivable encyclopedic purpose, serving instead only to revictimise her. This has nothing to do with WP:NOTCENSORED, a principle of which I am a staunch defender. --Orange Mike | Talk 02:15, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include. This opinion has nothing to do with any country's laws or with any desire to censor, but it based on the common human decency that says we shouldn't force this child to live the rest of her life with her name being mentioned in connection with this episode on one of the world's most popular web sites. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:59, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include. Absolutely no encyclopedic value is lost by replacing the proper name with "a 15 year old student," so per BLPNAME we can use appropriate caution and omit the actual name. VQuakr (talk) 04:06, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
• Include Correct me if I am wrong but isn't Wikipedia is hosted in the US and therefore subject to their laws? Just because some of their editors are in the UK should not be enough of a reason for not including the information that is widely available from sources across the world. Seeing as however there appears to be a precedence where editors were supposedly approached by the police and told to remove the information from the site, I would suggest that a warning be on the top of the page in the banner form (as is done on some articles) when an edit window is open, that warns UK based editors of the gagging order. Although it is a tad pointless now given that the information is freely available elsewhere. -- MisterShiney ✉ 19:47, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include. An article about the abduction was deleted some time ago as being recentism and unlikely to be of lasting interest. In an article that is about the school and not about these individuals there is reason per due weight to name the convicted teacher but no reason to name the juvenile victim. A Wikipedia page is permanently visible unlike old newspaper reports which can only be found by searching the archives. Just because non UK editors could legally include the name is not a good enough reason to do so.--Charles (talk) 21:18, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include per WP:BLPNAME. The name itself is not necessary for a full understanding of the incident. FurrySings (talk) 05:22, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include. WP:BLPNAME seems pretty clear on this matter. Including the name gains nothing and violates the student's privacy. Just because other people have reported her name doesn't mean we should, too. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 13:36, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
• Do not include Doesn't need a policy cite, really, who the victim was has no EV unless she herself becomes notable for being a victim, and the 'moral issue' with publicizing her name is pretty clear IMO. Revent (talk) 02:04, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• Reply to 62.254.139.60 – I don't think UK law is relevant here, since we don't remove coverage from Wikipedia if Iranian law bans something, so I don't see how this is any different. The only applicable criteria we should concern ourselves with is if the encyclopedic value of the coverage is enhanced by including the pupil's name. Well, international sources seem to think it is, and British sources used her name until they were legally prohibited. Does it matter to us in this particular article? Well, two parties are involved in this story and no-one seems to be arguing that the teacher's name is superfluous or unnecessary, and I would say the pupil's name doesn't matter any more or less than the teacher's. If we put aside the legal argument which I consider a red herring, then WP:WEIGHT seems to suggest that we should include both names or neither name, if we are going entirely by encyclopedic criteria. Betty Logan (talk) 17:37, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Not convinced that suppressing her name unbalances the article. Suppressing his name makes confirmation of the details very difficult. Bromley86 (talk) 18:21, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I specified the relevance of UK law as being it's potential impact on the editors who were most likely to be editing this article. It's not the only consideration of course but it's one of the considerations, which adds to the overall picture we should consider. If the article made absolutely no sense without the name, then I'd say that were a bigger concern and override the UK editors aspect, I don't see that as the case here.(FWIW I'd say the same if this were being played out in an Iranian school and it was Iranian law) As to the case for the teachers name being irrelevant, again this is part of the broader picture. The story if about the teachers criminal activity in grooming her etc. i.e. I believe the standard we apply for respect to privacy regarding the teacher is somewhat different. To quote the judgement "Your behavior over this period had been motivated by self interest and has hurt and damaged many people - her family; your family; staff and pupils at the school and respect for teachers everywhere. It has damaged you too, but that was something you were prepared to risk." the final sentence sums it up, the girl and her family are victims and our blp "do no harm" should cover that, the teacher is only a victim of himself and something he walked into eyes open. If the teacher had somehow been found not guilty It'd be a different picture and there may have been an argument for removing his name too. --62.254.139.60 (talk) 20:59, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Under English Law the press report most of the details of an alleged crime to help the police apprehend suspects. Once charges have been made, there is a ban on further publicity and I think it was at this point the ban on naming the girl occurred. The defendant was tried several months later. Unlike in the US, well publicized trials are held well away from the crime scene, usually at the Old Bailey in London so the defendant isn't known locally. The jury is also told to ignore anything they have previously read. If the defence can show everybody knows about the case, a fair trial can't be guaranteed and the defendant may be acquitted. The law may be changing. When Peter Tobin, a notorious serial killer was tried following a newly discovered body, there was initially a ban on anyone naming the accused and User:AlisonW was approached by police to warn editors -see Talk:Peter Tobin. The prosecution then raised Similar fact evidence which made nonsense of the ban. Hope that helps. JRPG (talk) 23:00, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

In this case there were additional "Reporting Restrictions" set by Judge Michael Lawson (10-06-2013 Lewes Crown Court according to the case listing), beyond the normal sub-judice rules you've explained. If it was only sub-judice, now that the case has finished there would be no restricyion on what we could report. Also now section 1 (Anonymity of victims of certain offences) of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 applies, protecting the victim from being named "during that person’s lifetime" in anything "published in England and Wales". It would be interesting to know if WP could be deemed "published in England and Wales", if that publication was caused by a WP editor working in England; I would not predict the answer to that without some high-quality legal advice, but it has some similarities to English people Tweeting which I believe the courts regard as publishing in England even though the Twitter servers are operated outside the UK. Rwendland (talk) 09:14, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was aware that the naming restrictions were for life whilst the subjudice restriction is already lifted, the template is misleading but I don't know how to alter it. Whilst these restrictions seem very sensible, the UK occasionally makes irrational efforts to enforce censorship, the most entertaining being Spycatcher. For the record, I can't see how anyone could make any legal distinction between Twitter and Wikipedia. Following the recent child abuse scandals there was an injunction preventing someone being named -possibly the innocent Alistair McAlpine, Baron McAlpine of West Green. The Attorney General for England and Wales said rules would be enforced and I edited an article to that effect -but maddeningly can't find it! JRPG (talk) 23:16, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Can a UK tweeter get in trouble for retweeting? I would assume yes. Then can a UK editor get in trouble for clicking Save page, even if the content that they added was related to, say, school uniforms? Bromley86 (talk) 23:41, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Bromley86, that's a very interesting question that I've been pondering. I suspect you'd be responsible for what is in the whole article, if you made a small change elsewhere, on the basis you were causing a fresh publication. Maybe not if you had just edited another section, perhaps.

I've also dug out the reports of the tweeters/facebookers who were convicted recently for naming a rape victim, under section 1 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992. 10 people were criminally convicted in a Magistrates' Court; all were ordered to pay £624 compensation each to the victim, and one was fined £405 + £615 costs as well.[11][12] It was more serious than an editor of this article might be in, as some of the comments were malicious and the victim had never been named before in the media, though a WP article might be seen by a lot more people. There is some useful discussion of this on this good legal blog. So a UK WP editor of this article does seem to have a realistic possibility of getting into a bad mess. I wonder if we should create a Template notice warning UK editors of section 1 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, similar to Template:Sub judice UK. Rwendland (talk) 00:37, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Bromley86, I think this underlines the case for removing victims names, using reliable sources as per wp:blp -and requesting redaction. Separately the Murder of Joanna Yeates where tabloids printed libelous gossip which would have compromised any trial, led to a barrister MP raising the issue in Parliament and a promise of the issue being dealt with by the Attorney General. There is a discussion on police guidance for naming suspects on the talk page.

Rwendland, the template idea is excellent. I found your references really interesting and note that although the cases didn't go to a higher court and therefore aren't binding, the Attorney General gave permission. There are a lot of talk page discussions on this. What's the best way forward? Do you think a new template and perhaps an article section on Social media and English law to which we could refer? Help will be offered! JRPG (talk) 10:57, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

And now I found myself on the opposite side of the argument. There's no reason why an American editor should have to worry about UK law, just as I don't have to worry about Iranian law. Existing rules indicate, IMO, that her name should be suppressed here because of the limited scope of the entry regarding her, but there's no reason for an American editor to suppress her name if we had a more in-depth article on the situation. Bromley86 (talk) 14:58, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

it is interesting that we are all banned from naming her, but The Guardian still does in older articles from the time they first returned back to the UK, and she herself has started a new Twitter account and was openly commenting on what was being discussed during the trial phase. if someone "outs" themselves on twitter, how come the rest of the world still have to pretend not to know ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.9.13.135 (talk) 11:17, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

There is a big difference between adults outing themselves and children, and editors outside the UK (or maybe this only applies to England and Wales - I haven't checked) are not "banned" from naming her, but the consensus based on editorial judgement and Wikipedia policy appears to be that she should not be named. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

The law definitely needs to rethink what publishing is. If it only happens when new information is submitted to the internet (i.e. when The Guardian adds an article to its website or when a WP editor clicks Save), then you have a situation where I could potentially get in trouble for pointing you to an article freely available (and freely accessible from within the UK) on The Guardian's website. Bromley86 (talk) 14:46, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

The old technique of banning new newspaper articles and allowing jurors to forget ahead of an Old Bailey trial worked before the internet, but doesn't help UK wiki editors now. The law needs to be broadly supported, enforceable and to serve a purpose. It fails on 2 points but it seems to me we're heading eventually for a prosecution. I still like Rwendland's idea of a new template. JRPG (talk) 20:49, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 May 2017

As of 1 August 2016 the school was renamed "St Catherine's College". The whole page should be renamed, but without losing any of the previous content and references.

Specific changes

Change page title from "Bishop Bell School" to "St Catherine's College".

Change text "The Bishop Bell School (full title: The Bishop Bell Church of England Mathematics & Computing Specialist School)" to "St Catherine's College (formerly known as The Bishop Bell CofE School)".

Move reference [4] to the preceding sentence after "civil claim".

Change "The school is consulting on being renamed either St Edward's College and St Catherine's College." to "On 1 August 2016 the school was renamed St Catherine's College."

In Infobox UK school replace name with "name = St Catherine's College".

In Infobox UK school delete image.

In Infobox UK school replace website with "website = http://www.stcatherines.college".

Tenbob1 (talk) 11:17, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Not done: The page's protection level has changed since this request was placed. You should now be able to edit the page yourself. If you still seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. Izno (talk) 01:07, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

References