A complaint against the Sunday Mercury over its coverage of child abuse allegations against a priest, following his death, has been partly upheld by the PCC.

After investigating a complaint against the paper on behalf of the family of the late Father John Tolkien, the Press Complaints Commission found the paper had breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) and Clause 2 (Opporunity to reply) in conjunction with Clause 5 (Intrusion into grief or shock) of the Code of Practice.

However it found there was no case to answer under Clauses 3 (Privacy) and 4 (Harrassment).

Messrs Manches complained to the PCC after the Sunday Mercury published articles headlined “Tolkien son’s child abuse shame”, “Tolkien, the archbishop and the lie” and “Church must come clean on perverts”, on January 26 this year, and a further article, headlined ‘Excommunicated’ on February 2.

The complainants’ solicitors claimed the newspaper had breached the Code’s provisions on accuracy in two ways: by failing to take care that material on which the articles were based was accurate; and failing to distinguish between comment, conjecture and fact concerning offences that had never been proven in court.

They also said the family had not been given an opportunity to reply in detail to the specific points raised in the story and publication of the articles had intruded upon their lives at a time of particular grief.

The newspaper maintained that it had reported an important story professionally and said it had offered to publish a clarification making clear that the articles contained allegations that were based on opinion and had never been proved in court.

However the complainants’ central complaint was not that the allegations were inaccurate – which cannot now be proven – but that the newspaper had failed to present them accurately or take care that there was sufficient support for them.

It was not the task of the Commission to come to decide on the accuracy of the allegations, but to assess whether the newspaper had presented them with sufficient care and accuracy.

It decided that the newspaper had not.

The PCC said the newspaper had not clearly distinguished between comment, conjecture and fact and its offer to provide a short correction did not offer a sufficient opportunity to reply to the article.

In coming to its decision, the Commission made clear that it was not seeking to limit the role of newspapers in exposing crime or criminals, but emphasised that they could only do so by acting within the terms of Clause 1 of the Code of Practice.

The PCC also said that the paper had shown a lack of sensitivity towards the grieving family in publishing articles of such a nature so soon after the death of Father Tolkien.

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