Six men have gone on trial at Bristol crown court accused of sexually exploiting vulnerable girls who were groomed in the city.<\/p>\n
The defendants are accused of being part of a \u201clarger group of men who targeted, groomed and sexually exploited\u00a0vulnerable\u00a0teenagers\u201d in Bristol between 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n
The judge presiding over the trial, which is expected to last 12 weeks and involves several defendants requiring interpreters, banned any reporting of the evidence in the trial until all future proceedings related to it had concluded.<\/p>\n
Law newsletter<\/p>\n
Get The Brief, an indispensable guide to the Law with incisive analysis and commentary.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tSign up with one click<\/p>\n
Judge Moira Macmillan said contemporaneous reporting of the trial could cause witness evidence to be undermined.<\/p>\n
She acknowledged there was a \u201cparticular public interest at the present time both in information about serious sexual offending carried out by \u2018grooming gangs\u2019 and in issues of transparency about such matters\u201d, but added: \u201cGiven the level of public interest this trial is likely to attract, I am satisfied that any contemporaneous reporting of evidence in this trial is likely to come to the attention of witnesses and would result in a significant risk of witness contamination. That, in return, would undermine the prospect of a fair trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
Macmillan said the risk of prejudice was \u201cso serious that it must outweigh the interest of open justice, at least until verdicts are returned on this indictment\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge initially imposed a blanket ban on any reporting of the existence of the trial taking place until the verdict had been returned, but this was challenged by The Times and other media organisations.<\/p>\n
Beth Grossman, the barrister acting for the media, told the judge that the \u201ccourt must be satisfied that the [reporting restriction] measure imposed is one of necessity and that requires the least intrusive restrictions to enable reporting to go ahead\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge, giving her decision, said the media could report on \u201cthe fact of the trial, the general nature of the charges and existence of this [reporting restriction] order\u201d. She maintained a ban on reporting the defendants\u2019 names and details of the evidence in the case until verdicts were returned.<\/p>\n
All but one of the six defendants are charged with offences against more than one complainant, and all but one are charged with multiple sexual offences, including rape.<\/p>\n
The defendants deny the charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six men have gone on trial at Bristol crown court accused of sexually exploiting vulnerable girls who were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":960209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-960208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116575273381481168","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/960209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}