A woman who was named in the press when her estranged husband was in court on child porn charges has had a privacy complaint thrown out by the newspaper industry watchdog.

The MK News published a story Top cop in court on child porn rap in October.

The paper reported that the complainant's estranged husband had appeared in court, leading her to complain to the Press Complaints Commission that the newspaper had breached Clause 9 (Reporting of crime) by publishing her name and partial address, identifying her without her consent in doing so.

Clause 9 is designed to prevent the identification of relatives of those convicted or accused of crime without their consent, unless they are genuinely relevant to the story.

She claimed the article was also a breach of Clause 3 (Privacy) of the editors' Code of Practice, but the PCC rejected both complaints.

Both the newspaper and the PCC sympathised with the complainant, who had become involved in a news story through no fault of her own.

The MK News acknowledged it was a difficult time for her, but said that the alleged pornography had been found at the couple's marital home and was the focus of the police's investigation. It would therefore have been difficult to report the court proceedings accurately without mentioning the location where the material was found.

The address had also initially appeared on a court list, and the complainant's name was already in the public domain thanks to national newspapers which published stories after the house was raided. However, the News was happy to undertake to withhold the complainant's name from future reports, providing her name was not mentioned in any further proceedings.

The Commission, in making its decision, said it could only deal with the matter under the terms of the Code.

The Commission’s statement said: "It was evident on this occasion that the complainant’s first name and her relationship with the accused had already been placed in the public domain through previous coverage of the story.

"Furthermore, the newspaper contended that the address of the marital home, while it may not have been mentioned in contemporaneous court proceedings, had featured on a court list, which was a public document. In any case, the address was clearly relevant to the story, given that it was the location where the alleged crime had occurred."

The Commission said the reference to the complainant was brief, and was not the focus of the piece.

It welcomed the newspaper's offer to withhold the complainant’s name from any future reports, something that was within the spirit of conciliation that self-regulation encourages.

Regarding the complaint under Clause 3, the Commission did not consider that the name of the complainant, or her partial address, amounted to private information.

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