Baby P father awarded £75K in libel damages from People

The natural father of Baby P has been awarded £75,000 in damages from the publisher of the People, Mirror Group newspapers (MGN), for printing what his lawyers described as "one of the gravest libels imaginable".

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons and was referred to in court as KC, was wrongly accused by the paper of being a convicted sex offender, the high court heard.

The allegations were contained in two paragraphs of a story about the Baby P death, published in September 2010, headlined: "Tortured to death as mum turned a blind eye".

His lawyer, James Dingemans QC, told a recent high court hearing that the "shocking and appalling" reports were "completely false" and caused significant distress.

An apology was published in the newspaper in November 2010, noting that "the allegations are without foundation and that Baby P's father has never been convicted of any criminal offences. We apologise to Baby P's father for making this error and for the very considerable distress and embarrassment our article caused him".

However, the two sides could not reach an agreement on the level of damages at the time.

Heather Rogers QC, representing MGN, told the court: "This was a mistake that MGN regrets and it has apologised to the claimant, and I repeat that apology on its behalf in this court."

Baby P was a 17-month-old boy who died from more than 50 injuries at his mother's home in north London in 2007. His mother, Tracey Connelly, and her partner, Steven Barker, were jailed in 2009 for "causing or permitting the death of a child".

In his ruling today, Mr Justice Bean said: "It is important to emphasise that [KC] played no part whatever in the neglect and death of his son. It is also important to emphasise that he was and remains a man of entirely good character.

"The claimant feared that the widely publicised allegation that he was a sex offender meant that his children might be taken from him. Happily they were not, and I was told that a permanent order in favour of the claimant was made in March 2011."

He concluded: "The result is that I assess the compensation due to the claimant at £75,000."

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