The law is making a total ass of itself
ONCE upon a time a rich, famous person had sex with a prostitute.
He thoroughly enjoyed it so he consorted with her and two of her friends on a regular basis. Of course, Mr Celeb would rather you didn’t get to read about it. He doesn’t much fancy his wife, mother, children or colleagues finding out about his shenanigans either. His sordid deeds don’t sit comfortably with his carefully constructed image as a jolly good sort, all round decent chap and pillar of the community. What’s more the companies currently paying him to endorse their products or star in their programmes won’t take kindly to the tarnishing of his saintly image. The gulf between the person he purports to be – a devoted husband, bastion of church-going morals, and the person he actually is, a compulsive patroniser of prostitutes – is more like a chasm.
So Mr Celeb trots off to an expensive lawyer who in turn waddles down to see a sympathetic judge. The lawyer argues that if details of Mr Celeb’s sex-life were published it would cause infinite pain and suffering to his fragrant wife and school-aged children. Visibly moved, the judge obligingly issues a superinjunction, thus ensuring not only that you’ll never read details of his “sexploits” in the newspaper but also that you won’t even be permitted to know that legal steps have been taken to make darned certain you’ll never be allowed to find out the nitty-gritty.
Mr Celeb is so relieved he celebrates by booking his favourite ladies of the night for another rousing session. His lawyer banks the cheque. The judge sleeps well at night. Mrs Celeb plans a fabulous black tie bash to mark their wedding anniversary. As for you – you’re none the wiser. What, as Mayor of London Boris Johnson might say, “a pyramid of piffle”. What a chronic waste of court time. What a disgraceful brake on free speech. What an embarrassing fiasco. Super-injunctions are unfair to those who can’t afford to commandeer crack legal teams to cover their traces.
What’s more, if a man genuinely cares about embarrassing his wife and humiliating his children he is perfectly capable of choosing not to behave in a way which will cause them suffering. If he succumbs to temptation it is not the court’s job to help him pretend his dirty nose is clean. Former Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas may not be the most endearing role model but seeing her struggle as the wealth of a footballer yesterday named as Ryan Giggs was used to muzzle her made her seem almost sympathetic.
Prostitution was not involved in her case but I still say thank heaven for twittering rebels and those who refuse to submit to the unjust mute button which threatens to make patsies of us all.