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Daily says sorry over naming of woman in court report

John TweedieA daily newspaper has apologised to a woman it identified in a court report about a policeman cleared of assault.

The Daily Record said sorry to Laura Wells after she complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation under Clause 2 (Privacy), Clause 4 (Intrusion into grief or shock) and Clause 9 (Reporting of crime) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.

Detective John Tweedie, pictured above left, was cleared of throwing his wife down the stairs and punching her friend.

The Glasgow-based Record had reported that he had previously been warned by the force over his friendship with rapist George Wells, who was awaiting sentence for raping a woman and indecently assaulting two others when he was found dead at his home in Renton, near Dumbarton, in 2013.

The original article had included Ms Wells’s maiden name and photograph, but she maintained that she had no relevance to the story.

The Record said that it was sorry that the article had caused the complainant concern, but it considered that she was genuinely relevant to the story.

However, the paper agreed to remove her name and photo from the online article and offered to write a private letter of apology to the complainant, which she accepted.

As a result, IPSO did not make a determination on whether there had been a breach of the Code.