Remember Brianna Ghey’s name, not her killers’ – and confront the transphobia that dogged her | Zoe Williams

Her murder by two other children was motivated in part by her transgender identity. As a society, we have questions to answer

Brianna Ghey's father, Peter Spooner, had no wish for his daughter's killers to be named in the media. He wanted them forgotten about and locked up", he said. They're nothing." Frances Crook, former head of the Howard League for Penal Reform, commented on X (formerly Twitter): As soon as the children who killed Brianna Ghey are named they will be the entire prurient focus of the media. The victim is passed over," and that was borne out: immediately after the names dropped, images of the killers were all over social and mainstream media, described as the faces of evil".

Explaining her decision to lift the reporting ban, Mrs Justice Amanda Yip said last year that the shock generated by Brianna's murder and the circumstances of it has spread well beyond the local community, across the nation and indeed internationally". She accepted that to name the killers would cause distress for their families, but said the purpose of an anonymity order was not to protect the relatives of the convicted. But exactly what is the point of anonymity orders for under-18s? Why did a government review of the youth justice system recommend lifelong anonymity for children in 2016 (it is currently lifted when they turn 18)? And conversely, what social purpose does it now serve to know the identities of Ghey's killers? What conversation does it start, and what other conversations does it shut down?

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist