Teenage killers of Angela Wrightson launch bid for lifelong anonymity

The girls were aged just 13 and 14 when they put the frail and vulnerable 39-year-old through a five-hour ordeal while posing for Snapchat selfies in December 2014.

The pair denied murder but were convicted by a jury at Leeds Crown Court in 2016.

They were handed life sentences and told they must serve a minimum of 15 years behind bars.

Trial judge Mr Justice Globe imposed reporting restrictions preventing the media from identifying the killers, due to them being under 18 and vulnerable themselves.

Both girls have now turned 18, and their lawyers are asking for them to be granted lifelong anonymity. News of the application first emerged in March.

At a hearing in London, Edward Fitzgerald QC told Mrs Justice Tipples that both girls suffer from “recognisable mental conditions”, adding that they are “extremely psychologically vulnerable”.

There are also concerns that “lifting anonymity would create a very significant risk of harm from third parties”, he said

Mr Fitzgerald argued: “The claimants live in fear that, if their names are disclosed, they will be attacked. And that affects their mental health and threatens their rehabilitation, and indeed promotes the risk of self-harm or even suicide.”

In documents before the court, Mr Fitzgerald said the pair are seeking “a permanent injunction preventing them from being publicly identified as the murderers of Angela Wrightson”.

As well as risking their psychological health, lifting a ban on naming the girls will “create harm to and anxiety about their families”, the barrister argued.

He added: “It will also seriously prejudice both their therapeutic treatment and their rehabilitation – in which both have only just begun to make progress.”

Mr Justice Globe halted the first trial at Teesside Crown Court and imposed a ban on reporting the second hearing months later in Leeds after he was alerted to hundreds of social media posts written about the girls while the first set of proceedings was under way, which could potentially be seen by jurors.

He later described these as “a blitz of extreme and disturbing comments posted on Facebook by members of the public”.

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