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Daily justified in naming alleged sex assault victim, IPSO rules

NewIPSOA regional daily was justified in naming the alleged victim of a sexual assault who appeared in court on another matter, the press watchdog has ruled.

The unnamed woman complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation after Brighton daily The Argus ran a story which named her as being on trial for assault and wasting police time, offences for which she was subsequently acquitted.

The article, accompanied by a photo of the woman, reported that the court had heard she had “assaulted a man after performing a strip dance for him” and “wasted police time when she reported that she was assaulted and sexually assaulted.”

The woman said that she should not have been named or identified in the article because she was the victim of a sexual assault, adding she had found the article deeply distressing and believed that identifying her and publishing photographs of her had breached her privacy.

In her complaint under Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 2 (Privacy), Clause 3 (Harassment) and Clause 11 (Victims of sexual assault) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, she also said she had been harassed by a freelance photographer who had followed her into a dead-end alley outside of court before taking pictures of her while she tried to cover her face.

Denying a breach of Code, The Argus said the article had been an accurate report of court proceedings and added that the Sexual Offences Act confers automatic anonymity on alleged victims of certain sexual offences, the same law also provides for circumstances where this restriction does not apply, specifically reporting on other criminal legal proceedings separate to sexual offence proceedings.

The newspaper said that this exception typically concerns the situation where a person is charged with perverting the course of justice or wasting police time, by allegedly making a false accusation of a sexual offence.

The Argus maintained that the law recognised the importance of reporting open judicial proceedings and identifying the defendant in such cases, and therefore believed it was justified in naming the complainant in these circumstances, especially as these proceedings involved a serious allegation of an attempt to abuse the criminal process itself.

It further strongly denied that the photographer had pursued or followed the complainant into an alley and confirmed that the photographer had only taken one photographer of the complainant on this occasion.

IPSO was satisfied that The Argus was justified in identifying the complainant as an alleged victim of sexual assault in these circumstances and, while it was concerned about the behaviour the complainant had referred to in terms of the freelance photographer, was unable to find a breach of Clause 3.

The complaint was not upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.

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