Tomorrow, Mary Bell will ask the High Court to grant her anonymity for life.

While some feel she should have no such right, it puts the mother of one of her victims in a quandary. Nick Morrison reports.

JUNE Richardson is torn. Her instinctive reaction is that the woman who killed her son 34 years ago has no right to special privileges and cannot expect the law to protect her. But she knows that the alternative may be impossible to bear. In the end, she may find herself rooting for the woman she has cause to hate most.

"She is not entitled to anything, but it would be better for me and my family if she got her anonymity. If she doesn't get it, she will become notorious and it would be very hard for me and my family," says June. "Everybody will want her photograph and everybody will want to hear her story. The worst thing will be making money - she will be able to make money out of the deaths of two little boys."

Mary Bell has already made some money out of her crimes, of course. She was reputed to have received £50,000 from the publication of Cries Unheard, by journalist Gitta Sereny. Its publication four years ago gave June a taste of what she could expect.

And tomorrow, Mary Bell will be back in the public eye again, when she asks the High Court to grant her anonymity for life. When she was released in 1980, after serving 12 years for killing Newcastle boys Martin Brown and Brian Howe, she was given a new identity and the chance to start a new life.

She was later granted a court order giving her anonymity. But this expired earlier this year, when her daughter turned 18, and since then Bell has been protected by a temporary order, in force until the High Court hearing.

For June, now 57 and living in a flat in Gateshead, the thought that the woman who killed her four-year-old son Martin might enjoy the protection of the law for the rest of her life is almost too much.

"She doesn't deserve anonymity and she shouldn't really get it, but the consequences if she doesn't get it are horrendous," says June. "She will become infamous, she will be on the television and in the newspapers all the time.

'We just want to get on with our lives, without seeing her on the television or worrying every time we open a newspaper. I know what the media is like: I've lived with the media for 30-odd years and I know that, if Mary Bell loses anonymity, they will all go in with their cameras and their little books and she would become notorious, and that would hurt."

According to Penny Booth, senior lecturer in law at Sunderland University, the court will have to balance the competing claims of two articles of the Human Rights Convention to decide if Mary Bell should have anonymity for life.

Article Eight gives individuals a right to respect for private and family life. Article Ten concerns freedom of expression. The only other ex-offenders to be granted the anonymity Bell now seeks were Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the killers of James Bulger. When that ruling was made, the judge, Dame Elizabeth Butler Sloss, spoke of the "almost unique circumstances", but just two years later, Bell is claiming similar circumstances.

"One of the factors in Mary Bell's case is that she has a daughter, and if Mary Bell was not given anonymity then her daughter would be unable to have a private life," says Penny Booth. "But the court has to balance between the two articles, and that is the difficulty in the application of fundamental rights.

"It comes down to whether it is more important that we have freedom of expression, is it in the public's interest to have knowledge of Mary Bell, or is it more important to protect privacy? My expectation is that the injunction will be granted."

She says the circumstances of the case - that Mary Bell was 11 at the time of the killings, the horror felt when a child kills another child, the notoriety of the murders, and the extensive coverage over the past 34 years - mean Bell's request may also fall into the category of "almost unique".

"Why would a newspaper want to write yet another story about Mary Bell? Why is that story so interesting? Or is it rather strange that we seek more information? What more is there to tell? Maybe freedom of expression is reduced here because we don't have a good reason for pursuing her. While this case is of interest, and the balance between article eight and article ten is important, I'm not sure that following Mary Bell for evermore is of interest."

Henry Ross, senior lecturer in childhood and family studies at Northumbria University, says part of the fascination of the Mary Bell case is to do with the nature of the criminal, giving her a notoriety which is shared with very few other offenders. This gives an added reason for anonymity - to avoid exposure to the justice of the mob.

'We struggle to comprehend people who do things like this and it is always in people's minds. People will always talk about Mary Bell, the Moors Murderers, the Bulger killers. There are certain individuals that really get into the public psyche," he says.

"They may need protection against the possibility of revenge from vigilante groups. You can commit a crime more than 30 years ago but there are certain offences that people will always remember. Mary Bell may well feel she has paid her debt to society and she wants to live a normal life, and having anonymity will give that extra bit of protection."

John Wadham, director of Liberty, says it is accepted that Mary Bell is now a normal adult living a normal life, and is arguably living proof that young people who commit even the most terrible crimes can be rehabilitated in time. Bell's daughter also deserves protection from the vigilantes, he says.

"It is genuinely hard to believe that there would be no risk to Mary Bell and her daughter if their identities were revealed. The more we see screaming mobs outside courtrooms, the more 'vigilante' groups attack people on the basis of rumour and, often incorrect, suspicions, the more people believe they can take the law into their own hands, the more this kind of anonymity will be needed," he says.

And, he says, important though the principles of public interest and free reporting of the press are, there are times when the right to a private life should override them.

"We don't need to know the identity of Mary Bell and her daughter to keep our children safe. Unmasking them won't make us safer, and it won't bring back the children she killed 34 years ago or undo the damage done to the lives of those children's families.

"All it will do is make a good newspaper story, put her life and the life of her daughter needlessly at risk - and risk making someone else a murderer."

June Richardson knows all too well that nothing will bring Martin back. For her, anonymity is not so much something Mary Bell deserves, as something June needs for her own peace of mind.

"I'm in a no-win situation. Mary Bell lost the right to anonymity when she took part in that book, but I have to think of the consequences if she doesn't get anonymity. I don't know how we will cope with her face being in the papers and on television," she says. "I don't want to know where she is, and I don't want her in my sitting room."