Two teenage killers who murdered a vulnerable alcoholic in her own home will have their identities kept secret for life after a High Court judge ruled that naming them would cause the pair “very serious harm”.

The girls were aged 13 and 14 when they put 39-year-old Angela Wrightson through a five-hour ordeal in her own home in 2014, while also posing for Snapchat selfies.

In a judgment published on Thursday, Mrs Justice Tipples granted the pair lifelong anonymity, an order that has previously been made in only a handful of cases in these circumstances, including that of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the killers of toddler James Bulger, and Britain's youngest terrorist from Blackburn, known only as RXG, who instructed an Australian jihadist to launch attacks on Anzac Day in 2015.

The two young women were handed life sentences at Leeds Crown Court in 2016 and told they must serve a minimum of 15 years behind bars.

At the end of the trial, judge Mr Justice Globe refused to lift reporting restrictions preventing the media from identifying the killers.

Their anonymity automatically expired when they turned 18, leading their lawyers to ask the High Court in October last year to grant permanent injunctions preventing them from being identified in relation to Ms Wrightson’s murder.

In her judgment, Mrs Justice Tipples said the case had resulted “in public outrage and revulsion, together with public concern about how these two young girls could commit such a brutal murder”.

But the judge concluded that revealing the girls’ identities “is likely to cause each of them very serious harm”, adding that this was “an exceptional case” in which the balance was “tipped very firmly” in favour of protecting their rights.

“It is both necessary and proportionate to grant the injunctions sought so that both their identities are protected and not revealed,” the judge ruled.

The young women, known as D and F, join killers Venables and Thompson, who murdered two-year-old James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993, and Mary Bell, who killed two young children in 1968, in having lifelong anonymity.

Similar orders have also been made in respect of Maxine Carr, the former girlfriend of Soham murderer Ian Huntley who was jailed for giving him a false alibi, the so-called Edlington brothers, who tortured two young boys in South Yorkshire in 2009, and Britain’s then-youngest terrorist, known only as RXG, who instructed an Australian jihadist to launch attacks on Anzac Day in 2015.

Miss Wrightson, who was known locally as 'Alco Ange', suffered a horrific and prolonged attack at her home in Stephen Street, Hartlepool, in December 2014.

She was hit with a shovel, a TV, a coffee table and a stick studded with screws after she let the girls into her home.

She was found dead in her blood-spattered living room the next morning.

In response to Thursday’s ruling, Mr Murray said: “What is important is that this decision by the courts to order lifelong anonymity for the perpetrators of such a terrible crime does not create a precedent.

“What is essential is that all cases must be considered on an individual basis if the principles of open justice and providing a deterrent are to be fulfilled.”