AURORA —

We first learn it as children. After a scraped knee, mom puts on a bandage. In a few days, the wound is healed, so you grab a corner and, ever so gently, tug.

Mom warns that it will be better to rip it off quickly, but, unwilling to endure the pain, you move gradually. You pull every hair, every skin cell. You only make it worse.

Over time, you learn Mom was right. Confront the pain. Rip it off.

That’s where we are today in the horrifying Aurora shooting.

The community’s wound is nowhere near healed, but Arapahoe Circuit Judge William Sylvester has already mandated that the bandage be removed slowly and that the pain persist for months, if not years.

Attorneys for James Eagan Holmes have warned that his right to a fair trial is at risk if the public learns the evidence against him before a jury is chosen. The prosecution, which initially also requested that all of its evidence against Holmes be kept secret from the public, is happy to oblige. Secrecy has always been a law enforcement officer’s friend.

Sylvester has gone even further. In the name of protecting Holmes’ rights, he has ordered that parties to the case, including all law enforcement officers, make no statements whatsoever outside of court. So others, including Aurora city agencies and the University of Colorado Denver, have successfully burrowed into Sylvester’s order to avoid answering questions.

It is a sweeping gag order with the purest of intentions — ensuring a fair trial. But as with most gag orders, it has already had precisely the opposite effect by producing strategic anonymous leaks of information designed to benefit one side or the other.

Since Sylvester’s order was issued, there have been two major leaks. The first, to Fox News, alleged that Holmes had sent a notebook to the University of Colorado Denver containing details of his plan to attack the Century Aurora 16 — even including drawings. If true (and I have no idea if it is), it would be a powerful demonstration of Holmes’ diabolical but controlled mind as he meticulously detailed what he would do and when. Good stuff for the prosecution.

In short order, that was countered by the leak to Denver’s 7News that Holmes’ therapist had warned a University of Colorado threat-assessment team about him. This, if true (and again, I have no idea), would be a persuasive indication that he was so dangerously unhinged that even his psychiatrist felt others must be warned. Score one for the defense.

Now, I have no idea who leaked what to whom or whether they had any real connection to the attorneys or investigators directly related to the case.

What I do know is that in the absence of information that has been presented to the court as fact, such as the original arrest papers and affidavits in support of search warrants, the leaks will continue.

Because, should it reach trial, this is not a case that will be decided on whether Holmes had the guns in his hand, the body armor on his chest and the helmet on his head in theater 9 that early morning. Even with a completely sealed court file, we know enough from the booby-trapped apartment and what little has been discussed publicly to know this is not a case of mistaken identity. If Holmes didn’t want people to talk about all that, he really should have thought the whole plan through a little better.

No, the only way Holmes is ever able to lawfully spend even one more day as a free man is A) if he is found not guilty by reason of insanity or B) police or prosecutors egregiously erred in their collection of evidence, violating Holmes’ constitutional rights and forcing the dismissal of charges against him.

There is no evidence thus far that B occurred, although, of course, everything has been sealed. So for now, we’ll deal solely with A.

That would become a battle of experts. Jurors who have demonstrated their ignorance of, well, everything or their willingness to keep an open mind about a man who killed 12 people will choose. Defense experts will testify under oath something along the lines that Holmes believed he was dwelling in a comic book and had no idea the 12 dead and 58 injured were real people. Prosecution experts will declare something along the lines that Holmes is fit to be president of the United States. They will testify forthrightly that he was as sane as any one of us that morning in theater 9.

Even in highly technical cases of guilt or innocence, pre-trial publicity by the bucketful has had no impact on a defendant’s fair trial (see Simpson, Orenthal James). In Holmes’ case, the evidence being kept under lock and key will not be the deciding factor. Releasing it now will not affect Holmes’ trial.

And keeping it secret for months or years will only make this process more painful. At trial, as each witness testifies to horrible things we never knew and had no time to process, we will feel the sting. With each revelation of what officials at the University of Colorado Denver knew and when they knew it, the wound will reopen.

The bandage must be removed, but for a community that endured years of slowly trickling new and painful revelations after Columbine, it doesn’t have to happen so slowly and hurt so badly. Please, make it fast.

Chuck Murphy: 303-954-1829, cmurphy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/cmurphydenpost