A woman who complained that her child could be identified from pixelated photos in a story about a “Russian pervert website” has had her complaint to the press regulator upheld.

The woman complained to IPSO about an article in the Lancashire Evening Post, which was published in January and reported that photographs of children from Lancashire had been found on a file-sharing “paedophile website”.

The story said most of the pictures were accompanied by sexually suggestive comments from users across the world which suggested they were being used for sexual gratification and the article was illustrated with five pixelated photos of local children.

In her complaint, the woman said that two of the images were of her young child, which had originally been published on her Facebook profile, and friends had recognised them.

She said that publishing photographs in which her child was identifiable intruded into her child’s privacy in breach of Clause 3 (Privacy) and Clause 7 (Children in sex cases) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, as they had been reproduced from a website where they had been used for sexual gratification.

The newspaper defended its use of the photographs as an important element of a public-interest story.

It said it had been unable to contact the parents of the children before publication because it did not know their identities but had alerted local schools and had been contacted by other parents who were grateful to have been told about it.

The LEP added that it had chosen to publish the photos heavily pixelated and in a small size in its print edition only and denied that the child was identifiable from the photos.

It also apologised to the complainant and removed the images from a planned follow-up article.

Following its coverage, the link to photographs of children from Lancashire had been removed from the website, and a local MP had become involved in the issue.

IPSO upheld the part of the complaint relating to privacy and said that pixelation of the images had evidently been insufficient to prevent the child from being identified by those who were familiar with them.

In its ruling, Complaint Committee said: “The photographs had previously been published by the complainant on social media, in innocuous circumstances.

“However, the fact that the child had featured on the Russian website constituted significant and deeply personal new information, with the clear potential to cause significant trauma and disruption.

“Notwithstanding the public interest in the story itself, there was no public interest which justified the publication of identifiable photographs of the child in this context.”

IPSO dismissed the part of the complaint relating to Clause 7, because it was not suggested that the child in question had been the victim in a case involving a sex offence.

The newspaper was required to publish the Committee’s ruling with the same prominence in the paper as the original story, with the adjudication published in full on page nine and with a front page reference.

Full details of the ruling can be found here.