It’s hard to live in the UK and remain unaware of the case of Samantha Baldwin, the Nottingham mother who fled family court while the judge was reading his judgement, grabbed her two children, and went on the run from police for nearly two weeks.

The facts of the case are laid out in this unusual short public judgement, made on 10 April 2017 by HHJ Lea:

The strong presumption in favour of open justice which applies generally to Court proceedings does not apply to proceedings which are held in private and relate to children. The default position is one that by statute and rules prohibits the dissemination of any information relating to the proceedings unless the Court directs otherwise: (In Re W) (children)[2016] EWCA Civ 113. In this case I exercised my discretion to allow a controlled degree of publicity to assist the children to be found. That does…