- Anonymity order will extend to Carr's child
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:45 PM on 31st October 2011
Maxine Carr has given birth to her first child, it was claimed today.
The former girlfriend of Soham killer Ian Huntley, who provided him with a false alibi after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, is believed to have had the baby at a secret address.
It is understood that the child will never be told the true identity of its mother, which is protected by a stringent court order.
New identity: Maxine Carr, left, ex-girlfriend of Soham killer Ian Huntley, will have the anonymity of her new child protected
Carr, 34, was given a new identity after being released from jail, where she served 21 months for covering up for Huntley.
And the rules governing her anonymity are so strict that they will also extend to her new-born child.
But it is unclear how she will be able to hide her identity when the child grows up and sees pictures of Carr in her youth, or even comes across old reports of the Soham case.
Carr was the girlfriend of school caretaker Huntley, killer of 10-year-olds Holly and Jessica.
He was arrested soon after the girls' bodies were found near an RAF base, 13 days after they had gone missing from their home town of Soham in Cambridgeshire.
He eventually admitted that the girls had died in his house after he had invited them in, but said that the deaths were accidental.
Victims: Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman went missing in August 2002
Huntley had told the girls that Carr was in the house, but in fact she had gone to Grimsby to visit relatives.
He told police that Holly had fallen in to the bath and drowned while he was helping her control a nosebleed, and that he had then put his hand over Jessica's mouth to stop her screaming, accidentally suffocating her.
In December 2003, Huntley was found guilty of murdering the girls and sentenced to life imprisonment. He will spend at least 40 years in prison.
After his conviction, it was revealed that he had previously been convicted of sexual offences, but was still allowed to work in a school.
Although Carr was not implicated in the murder, she gave Huntley a false alibi which delayed police investigations, claiming that she had been with him at the time of the killings.
In 2003 she was convicted of perverting the course of justice, and sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
On her release in 2004, Carr was given a secret identity to protect her from attacks from members of the public.
And since she gave birth earlier this year, according to the Daily Mirror, that identity has been extended to cover her child as well.
A new court order may be necessary to protect the child's identity - similarly to the order which preserves the anonymity of the child of killer Mary Bell.
Bell, convicted of killing two boys, received a new identity on her release from jail, and after giving birth in 1984 secured an additional order to protect her daughter,
Carr's new identity has never been made public. It was reported in 2008 that she was set to marry her then-boyfriend.
Huntley, 37, remains in jail, where he is serving a life sentence for the Soham murders.
He has been attacked by fellow inmates at least twice, and is also thought to have made a suicide attempt in 2006.
Lifelong anonymity orders, like that given to Maxine Carr, are relatively rare - there are no more than a handful currently in place.
They are imposed only in the most high-profile cases, where it is almost certain that criminals released from jail will attract intense media attention, and possibly the threat of violence from members of the public.
One reason they are so rare is that most people convicted of the most horrific crimes end up spending their whole lives behind bars, so the majority of those given new identities committed their crimes when they were children and therefore attracted more lenient sentences.
Mary Bell: Convicted of manslaughter aged 11
Mary Bell was a famous early recipient of an indefinite anonymity order.
She was convicted in 1968 of killing two young boys before her twelfth birthday.
Despite the gruesome nature of the killings, she was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, having been diagnosed with a mental illness.
After 12 years in prison, during which time her mother had repeatedly sold stories about her to the press, Bell was released in 1980 and given a new identity.
When she gave birth to a daughter in 1984, the child was also granted anonymity until her 18th birthday, later extended indefinitely.
It is believed that Bell's daughter did not know her mother's identity until it was revealed by reporters.
Robert Thompson and Jon Venables killed toddler James Bulger after abducting him from a Liverpool shopping centre in February 1993.
They were just 10 years old at the time, and were sentenced to indefinite imprisonment, but were released in 2001.
Both were given new identities, and have a large number of restrictions on their movements - for example, they are not allowed to contact each other.
Robert Thompson, left, and Jon Venables killed James Bulger in 1993
Venables returned to headlines last year when he was given a second prison sentence for downloading child pornography.
In May this year, his identity was changed once again after a 'serious breach' in the security of the identity he had been using.
Maxine Carr is unusual among those given new identities, as she is not a convicted killer.
However, her association with Huntley caused such public revulsion that she too was granted an indefinite anonymity order for her own protection.
PLEASE, PLEASE DM, can we have some pictures of Beauty and her kittens!!! Really pleased she has been found safe and well.
- Moominmamma, Moominvalley, 31/10/2011 12:24
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