THIS is the Army cadet major whose ten-year jail sentence for sickening child sex offences can finally be revealed after a landmark legal battle by The Northern Echo.

Major Andrew Shaw can be named and shamed after the paper overturned a court order banning us from publishing any details about the case.

Sandhurst-trained Shaw, 50, of Queen Street, Barnard Castle, County Durham, was jailed in February for conspiracy to rape a child and trading in child pornography over the Internet.

He exchanged e-mails with paedophile postman Alan Lawson, 34, from the Isle of Wight, speaking of drugging and knocking out a child to facilitate a rape Lawson would commit.

Shaw, executive officer of the Cleveland Army Cadet Force, and Lawson were caught by police before the offence could happen.

For the past five months, the case could not be reported on the orders of the Recorder of Middlesbrough, Judge Peter Fox QC.

The judge imposed the ban, aimed at protecting the victims, as he sentenced Shaw to 14 years in jail and Lawson to ten years.

A fortnight later, he reduced their sentences, to ten years and eight years respectively, but the order banning any reporting of the case remained.

However, following a legal challenge by The Northern Echo, the Isle of Wight County Press and the Evening Gazette, in Middlesbrough, a court in London yesterday overturned the ban, allowing the media to reveal details of the pair's "utterly deplorable" and "completely shocking" crimes.

Last night, Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman, whose constituency covers Barnard Castle, said the case demonstrated that there should be tighter controls on the Internet.

She said: "I am pleased The Northern Echo pursued this. Clearly this is a serious crime as demonstrated by the heavy penalty of ten years.

"I believe it shows the dangers in the way the Internet operates at the moment.

"I believe Internet carriers should accept responsibility for what is carried and should invest in technology to control it better."

A spokeswoman for the Army, Penny Veale, said Shaw had an administrative role and was a former Reserve Forces and Cadets' Association employee, who had also served as an officer with the Royal Logistic Corps.

"He had no routine contact with cadets and there are no cadets connected with the case," she said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence Police said dedicated officers had spent almost a year piecing together an electronic trail that had led to the men, following a US operation to catch paedophiles.

The case, at Teesside Crown Court, heard that police had found pornographic photographs on Lawson's bedroom computer at his house, in South Street, Ventnor, Isle of Wight.

Civilian and Ministry of Defence police later arrested Shaw in an early morning raid at his home in Barnard Castle, where they found e-mails from Lawson, including one boasting he had had sex with a 13-year-old on the Mediterranean island of Malta.

Shaw, well-spoken and wearing a blue pinstripe suit, told Teesside Crown Court: "I hold my hands up to everything that I have done and I am deeply ashamed.

"I never entered into any agreement that anything should happen to the child for real."

He had used the name of Sixties pop star Tony Orlando in e-mails to Lawson, who was a member of the Danish Paedophile Association. The pair never met face-to-face.

Shaw said in evidence he became interested in Internet child pornography after separating from his wife of 20 years.

He told Teesside Crown Court that he chatted to hundreds of people on the Internet about child sex, and that much of the talk was fantasy.