Can I attend crown court?

[Courtquestion]

A family member had their children taken into care. They are due in court with their partner soon charged with a range of offences relating to the children and further activity online. It’s about as bad as you could imagine.

My question is, can we attend the court? The children are with other family now and we think someone should go to gainer the facts for now and even the future questions so we can fully support the kids but not sure if we could go due to the nature of the offences.

Does anyone know whether we could attend and how we would sort this.

Thanks in advance.

Yes you can. Courts are open to the public, so you can just go and sit in the public gallery. You don't need to do anything apart from turn up.

Thanks… Even if it involves children? How do they keep the children’s privacy?

Yes, criminal courts are open. That's quite important, justice is done publicly. You can just go in and sit in the public gallery.

Not family court. But for the criminal proceedings you can

I always urge people to go to court to listen to the proceedings. Defendants lie and minimise.

In a criminal court the judge will likely make an order preventing the reporting of the identities of the children (which can pose a problem as it sometimes means you can’t reveal the identity of the defendants as it would obvious who the victims were)

You just turn up by the way. Sit in the waiting room and when the case is due to be heard the usher will come out and call it on.

Thanks so much. We will do just that.

I’ve been to cases where unless you’re officially involved in the case you aren’t allowed to take notes, so maybe just check this when you go in.

Does someone in the family have an assigned family liaison officer at the police? (Maybe most likely whoever is looking after the children now). They should be able to answer the family's questions about attending court, and may also be there on the day. We are going through something a bit similar (although not against children) at the moment.