Index on Censorship: ‘Girls Aloud obscenity case dropped’

The Index on Censorship reported yesterday that the Crown Prosecution Service has abandoned its case against Darryn Walker, a civil servant ‘who was facing trial under the Obscene Publications Act for writing a violent pornographic fantasy story about pop group Girls Aloud.’

Jo Glanville, editor of Index on Censorship said:

“This prosecution should never have been brought in the first place. Since the landmark obscenity cases of the 60s and 70s, writers have been protected from such prosecutions and have remained free to explore the extremes of human behaviour. This case posed a serious threat to that freedom. In future, obscenity cases should be referred directly to the director of public prosecutions before any prosecution is triggered.”

Full post at this link…

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Evening Leader launches online courtroom project

North Wales Media title the Evening Leader is offering readers the opportunity to play judge and jury in an online court on its website.

The aim of the Your Justice project, which has been launched with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in Wrexham, is to raise awareness of the processes involved in the CPS.

Here’s how it works:

• Real lawyers present their cases on a fictional court case to the reader in a video
• Viewers are given legal advice and will then be asked to give their sentence
• Finally a real magistrate will appear and explain what their decision would be.

“This kind of working partnership shows great common sense by the CPS – they can use our website’s traffic to get their message across and we can use their content to add more value to our site,” Christian Dunn, digital editor for the Evening Leader, said in a press release about the project.

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