A man who claimed he could have been identified as the victim of a sexual assault from a newspaper report has been backed by the Press Complaints Commission.

The newspaper watchdog agreed that the report in the Barking and Dagenham Post in July could have revealed who he was – when sex assault victims have automatic anonymity.

It said that the inclusion of specific details relating to the complainant’s injury was likely to identify him to a number of people – and it did not consider the information to be of such importance to the story to demand its inclusion.

The complainant said that a report of a court case, in which a former teacher was convicted of indecently assaulting school pupils, contained sufficient information to identify him as one of the man’s victims. Details were published of an injury suffered by the complainant at the hands of his teacher during a lesson – an injury so specific that anybody who was at the school at the time would have been able to identify him.

And as a result of the article, he said that friends, relatives and former schoolmates knew that he had been a victim of his former teacher’s crimes.

The identification as a victim of sexual assault was in breach of Clause 11 (Victims of sexual assault) of the Code.

The newspaper said it had decided not to name the school at which the offences had taken place but that the details of the injury suffered by the complainant were an important part of the case. The teacher who was convicted was also named in the story.

But the paper said that the report of the evidence was justified.

The terms of Clause 11 are clear in that newspapers must not publish material likely to contribute to the identification of victims of sexual assault unless there is adequate justification – something which will occur only in very rare circumstances.

It is designed to also protect against the possibility of ‘jigsaw identification’ where readers can decipher the identity of a victim even though their name is not mentioned in the report.

The complaint was upheld.

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