A regional daily was wrong to describe a party at which guests rubbed candlesticks between people’s legs as an “orgy”, the press watchdog has ruled.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation has rapped the Northern Echo after it reported a group of unnamed women had become ill after a birthday celebration at a hotel, adding “graphic” CCTV footage had shown the women carrying out “lewd sexual behaviour including passing around sex toys and taking part in sex acts with hotel candlesticks while climbing on restaurant tables and chairs”.

An unnamed woman who attended the party went to IPSO over the story, claiming it was not an “orgy” because all members of the group had been fully clothed throughout and they had not been drinking to excess.

However, she admitted that two members of the group had imitated a sex scene with a candelabra and one guest had used a unicorn horn, which was a party prop, to imitate a sexual pose.

How the story appeared on the Echo’s website

In her complaint to IPSO under Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 2 (Privacy), and Clause 10 (Clandestine devices and subterfuge) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, she also claimed the Echo had attempted to draw an association between the outbreak of food poisoning and the actions of the group.

Denying a breach of Code, the Echo suggested that the party-goers’ drinking and behaviour may have been relevant to the way they handled, consumed and reacted to the food, as well as how they recalled the events of the night.

The Darlington-based daily added it was possible to engage in sexual activity without removing one’s clothes, and said the reporter who viewed the footage had observed that members of the party took it in turns to lie on their back on top of a table in the room where they had been eating while other people in the party rubbed a plastic item and candlestick between the person’s legs.

Following this, the reporter had also observed the plastic item being passed around members of the party who took it in turns to lick it while other members of the party pushed plastic objects up their skirts.

The Echo believed this behaviour fitted the definition of an “orgy” – a “wild party characterised by excessive drinking and indiscriminate sexual activity”.

It added there was a public interest in reporting on the full events of the night, given that the outbreak of food poisoning had been widely reported on previously.

IPSO accepted the Echo had demonstrated that it had taken care over its claim that items had been used in a sexualised way and that there had been a sexual element to the events, but the reference to the events as an “orgy” and “sex party” gave the clear implication that explicit sexual activity had taken place, beyond sexualised posing.

The Committee found no other breaches of Code, but ruled that the Echo should publish its adjudication on its front page.

The complaint was upheld under Clause 1, and the full adjudication can be read here.