Actually even if he was dead they might legally have a problem naming him anyway.
If you read the article that has been posted by a number of sites and is supposed to be from the guardian in 1997 it says the following:
When the tribunal was established last year, it had been assumed that the press could report its proceedings, using the laws of privilege which allow them to name names from court cases and public hearings without fear of libel actions.
However, Sir Ronald then ruled that the media could not report the name of any living person who was accused or likely to be accused of abusing children in the North Wales homes unless they had previously been convicted of such an offence.
Since then he has extended his ruling twice: he has granted anonymity to one man who died 16 years ago and to another who has twice been convicted of sexually assaulting boys from a North Wales home.
Sir Ronald has argued that his ruling will encourage alleged paedophiles to come froward and give honest evidence without fear of retribution. Critics say this is unnecessary, since he has the power to compel witnesses to attend, and that those who have come forward have done so to deny the allegations and not to make a clean breast of their alleged offences.
One lawyer who has been involved with the tribunal said he feared that the anonymity ruling was actively discouraging witnesses. "Newspaper readers may well have information of potential value to this tribunal. They may themselves have been the victims of abuse, or they may have worked with the alleged abusers. But if the press is not allowed to inform them of the names of those against whom allegations are made, they will not learn that their information is important. So they will not come forward."
This is a crucial thing to look at and understand.
a) it was believed that a media blackout would "encourage alleged paedophiles to give honest evidence and be treated without fear retribution." - thus recognising the dangers of trial by media ruining innocent reputations and possible vigilanti attacks - which I do understand in terms of what is happening with so many names being thrown around - and potentially how this could affect justice (right to a fair trial is a good way to get someones conviction over turned); however how does that justify extending anonymity to the dead and convicted?
b) there is no thought of how a media blackout would also act to silence victims and how they are put as a lesser priority to the dead and convicted criminals.
I'd also like to point out two things that seem to be being conveniently forgotten as this becomes more and more of an internet witch hunt rather than a proper organised investigation which the government and indeed press are rapidly loosing control of due to their incompetence damaging public confidence just so much.
- whilst I applaud the work of conspiracy theorists who pursued this for years, when the people who should have whistleblown haven't, I'm also wary about the situation it creates when they are proved true on this. It doesn't mean they are right about everything else but people having lost faith in the establishment means people are looking for others to fill a vacuum and be sucked into believing a hell of a lot of crap in the process. Its not lost on me that David Icke makes a living from this and that is something to be cautious of. Last night his site went down around the time of newsnight and hes put a big thing up saying the site was attacked. Nothing to do with the sheer volume of traffic - (high traffic being to blame for frequently killing ticket selling websites for popular artists) - it has to be yet another conspiracy. Whether its genuine understandable paranoia after years of being ridiculed or deliberately trying to misled 'followers' is perhaps beside the point; reason and logic first followed by raising questioning after.
My point is vigilance and questioning are great; we've not done nearly enough. But out and out paranoia is really unhelpful and we must not fall into this trap either.
- there has been a focus on Tory politicians in this - because a Tory is involved and because its been reported that Hague was Welsh Security at the time of the first report that led to this tribunal. A tribunal that was held between 1997 and 2000 AFTER the election of Tony Blair. So any findings of the tribunal and potential subsequent cover up fall under the watch of a Labour government. This is important. It shouldn't be a political point scoring exercise as its about a general problem rather than a Labour / Tory one but its going to be used in that way unfortunately. The D notice on Islington care home, especially in the context of this scandal, raises huge questions that need to be answered.
In the best interests of getting to the bottom of this, party allegiances have to be put to one side when debating this otherwise it detracts from the most important things; the victims and preventing this from ever happening again - both in terms of the abusers and the cover ups that have very clearly happened (and are still happening) at the ever going list of institutions being exposed.