A court order preventing the Croydon Guardian from naming a convicted paedophile has been lifted after a successful legal challenge.

The High Court decreed this morning that we can now name 45-year-old Raymond Cortis from Upper Norwood who pleaded guilty to 20 charges of making and possessing indecent images of children at Croydon Crown Court last April. He was given a community order.

In an unprecedented move Judge Warwick McKinnon had barred the press from identifying Cortis in a bid to protect his two daughters who he argued would be seriously affected by the publicity.

But the President of the Queen's Bench Division, Sir Igor Judge, lifted the gag during a two-minute hearing this morning.

The High Court judgement stated: "It is sad but true that the criminal activities of the parent can bring misery, shame and disadvantage to their innocent children.

"However, we accept the validity of the simple but telling proposition put by the court reporter to Judge McKinnon on April 2, 2007, that there is nothing in this case to distinguish the plight of the defendant's children from that of a massive group of children of persons convicted of offences relating to child pornography."

It added: "If the court were to uphold this ruling so as to protect the rights of the defendant's children it would be countenancing a substantial erosion of the principle of open justice to the overwhelming disadvantage of public confidence in the criminal justice system, the free reporting of criminal trials and the proper identification of those convicted and sentenced in them. Such an order cannot begin to be contemplated unless the circumstances are indeed properly to be described as exceptional."

The Croydon Guardian's parent company Newsquest along with newspaper groups Trinity Mirror, Times Newspapers and Newsgroup Newspapers embarked on a lengthy legal challenge to have the identity ban lifted.

Newsquest's head of legal affairs, Simon Westrop, argued barring Cortis's identity was contrary to the principle that justice should be conducted openly.