A regional publisher has been fined £2,400 after a newspaper named the victim of an alleged sexual assault in a case described as ‘without legal precedent.’
Newsquest North East pleaded guilty to a breach of the Sexual Offences Act, having indicated a “not guilty” plea at an earlier hearing.
Teesside Magistrates Court heard yesterday how reports in the Northern Echo and its companion website identified the complainant by publishing her surname during a hearing relating to physical assault carried out on her.
During that hearing, the defendant’s barrister had referred to an alleged rape which did not end up forming part of the case against his client.
The fact that the rape allegation did not proceed led the newspaper to believe that it could legally name the woman in a report of a criminal court hearing of a non- sexual offence , but subsequent legal investigations showed that she should have been given lifelong anonymity.
Chris Atkinson, prosecuting, told the court the claimant had suffered huge emotional distress and had been contacted directly by another news organisation after the story appeared online.
Mr Atkinson read out sections of the claimants’ victim impact statement where she described how she had been left feeling humiliated when she started receiving text messages from friends after they had read the story.
She said: “I felt my privacy and dignity had been destroyed and my own personal life had been put on display for all to see.”
In mitigation, Guy Vassall-Adams said this was a “highly unusual” case. He said the newspaper immediately accepted that, ethically, the woman should not have been named but believed that no law had been broken, maintaining it was a case of “genuine legally uncertain terrain”.
He said he hoped some good would come out of the case because it would serve to clarify the law.
District Judge Martin Walker acknowledged that the case was “novel”, adding he was satisfied there was “a real legal potential argument that would have had to be considered” had it not been for Newsquest North East changing its plea.
However, he said the company should have pleaded guilty earlier. He described it as a “serious breach” of the Sexual Offences Act, saying there was no public interest justification to identify the woman.
He said: “I should make it clear to the complainant that any sum of money is only really a mark of the distress caused. What she wanted is closure and I hope this allows her to put this dreadful incident behind her.”
The judge fined the publisher £2,400, ordered it to pay £4,500 in compensation, £2,003 in costs and a £480 victim surcharge.
Judge Walker said a separate charge against the newspaper’s editor, Peter Barron, had been “properly discontinued”.
A Newsquest North East spokesperson said: “This was an unusual case involving a novel and complicated point of law where the wording of the relevant statute is unclear.
“However, it is important that proper expectations of anonymity are met by the media when allegations of sex offences are made. We are sincerely sorry for any distress we have inadvertently caused in this case.”
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Lack of common sense and training
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Unless I’m missing something, I can’t see why the defence brief should say this is “genuine legally uncertain terrain”.
The act is very clear that anonymity applies from the time the allegation is made, regardless of whether it is later withdrawn, whether there is a prosecution, or even whether the police are informed.
Newsquest’s spokesman’s quotes are bizarre. It’s not a “complicated point of law where the wording of the statute is unclear”.
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May have been relying on Judicial Studies Board guidance, point two here:
“There are three main exceptions to the anonymity rule. First, a complainant may waive the entitlement to anonymity by giving written consent to being identified (but only if he or she is over 15). Secondly, the media are free to report the victim’s identity as the complainant of the offences alleged in any report of subsequent criminal proceedings, other than the actual trial or appeal in relation to the sexual offence, e.g. if the complainant were to be prosecuted for perjury in separate proceedings. Thirdly, the court may lift the restriction to persuade defence witnesses to come forward, or where the court is satisfied that it is a substantial and unreasonable restriction on the reporting of the trial and that it is in the public interest for it to be lifted. This last condition cannot be satisfied simply because the defendant has been acquitted or other outcome of the trial.”
Risky, mind you.
http://www.societyofeditors.co.uk/userfiles/file/Crown%20Court%20Reporting%20Restrictions%20011009.pdf
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They simply should have known better. Inadequate training?
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There will be more of this kind of legal snafu, as we begin to reap the “benefits” of changes to the teaching of media law.
The current preoccupation with ethical issues, at the expense of hard law, can only result in journos with a reduced legal awareness.
That might not seem too bad, where newspapers and other media outlets claim they are no longer interested in regularly covering the courts, but come the big court story that just cannot be ignored the risk factor rises alarmingly.
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I have just completed my training, and I can tell you that ethical considerations were a very small part of the NCTJ law paper, and mostly involved common sense.
Again and again we had it drummed into us that anonymity was granted from the moment a complaint has been made. This is the first thing we learned, and at least half the questions were related to the issue of anonymity.
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Note for trainees and inexperienced editors. When in doubt leave out. Old advice but so true.
Though there should have been no doubt about this. Basic law. Really can’t see what legal argument there was to be had. A genuine mistake but a very silly one.
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I don’t have much sympathy for the paper – regardless of the law naming a rape victim is pretty crass behaviour – but the relevant statute isn’t as clear cut as some of the comments suggest.
The Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 gives lifelong anonymity once an allegation has been made but section 1(4) says: “Nothing in this section prohibits the publication or inclusion in a relevant programme of matter consisting only of a report of criminal proceedings other than proceedings at, or intended to lead to, or on an appeal arising out of, a trial at which the accused is charged with the offence.”
In short, if it comes up in an otherwise unrelated court case the anonymity doesn’t apply.
There’s a House of Commons library briefing that says much the same, giving the following as an exception to anonymity: “the complainant’s identity is reported as part of subsequent (and separate) criminal proceedings.”
I think in this case it would seem the newspaper was right in law, but wrong in every other sense.
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