Timeline

06/04/05 Mid-week munch takes place
07/04/05 NW Evening Mail runs initial story at lunchtime.
07/04/05 I'm informed of story by Instant Message (IM)
07/04/05 Details posted online to inform group members
07/04/05 SM Pride contacted
08/04/05 I contact the journalist responsible for writing the story
08/04/05 Response emailed to the newspaper
11/04/05 Further contact with journalist. Made aware of possible outing of Carlisle munch
12/04/05 Article published giving balanced view.
14/04/05 Article published in News & Star on Carlisle Munch.

Details

06/04/05 The munch goes ahead as normal - I have no idea of what is to come.

07/04/05 Talking online to one of the munch group moderators when my IM box is suddenly filled with the words, "I take it you've seen the evening mail then!!" "Our munch is front page headlines!!" "Don't know why but says bondage group hold munch at family pub!!"

After reading the damaging article through I realised that my first priority was to let the munch group people know what had happened. I also had a serious concerns about being outed personally. I posted details of the outing on various well known web sites and removed all references of the munch and covered or removed my personal details.

After the initial panic I realised that as I had no experience of this sort of thing, I needed another point of view. I contacted SM Pride by phone to find out what my options in dealing with this were. SM Pride compared the article against the Press Complaints Code but everything was in a very grey area and there was no clear breach of the Code. I was advised to consider the implications of the article and possible fallout in a calm and logical manner. SM Pride made it quite clear that as the munch organiser, I knew the local area best and any course of action must be right for me. They confirmed that whatever my decision, they would support and assist me in any way they could.

I decided that as long as I was able to protect the other munch attendees and retain anonymity for all of us, I was prepared to complain to the newspaper about the way BDSM was represented. It was suggested that I should be the one to write the first draft of the response to the newspaper and then ask SM Pride to review the text. In hindsight, this was probably a very good thing because my original letter was quite angry and emotional and may have made a bad situation a whole lot worse. SM Pride also offered to contact Barry Slemmings, a professional journalist, and ask him to edit the final text so that when sent, it was already in an appropriate newspaper style and it would lessen the chance of my comments being edited out of context.

Meanwhile there was a lot of positive reaction on the various forum boards commiserating with the fact that the munch had been outed but very supportive of the action I proposed to take. Several people posted to say that they had also written to the newspaper editor complaining about the way the article portrayed BDSM.

08/04/05 Points raised by the Management Team at SM Pride led to me contacting the journalist by phone. I very briefly told her about the possible impact of the negative style of reporting and mentioned several inaccuracies within the article. She confirmed to me that all munch attendees were anonymous to her and invited me to send in a response, which would be printed.

The response was duly written and professionally edited ready to send to the newspaper. At this point the SM Pride Management Team reminded me again that I need take no action if, on reflection, I decided that it would be too much of a risk to proceed. I took the decision to go ahead and my strongly worded response was emailed to the journalist.

11/04/05 The journalist was contacted again to make sure that she had received my email and I was informed that the story would run the following day.

12/04/05 A second article was published incorporating my response and overall, the tone was reasonable and well balanced. I was happy with the outcome, satisfied that our views had been heard.

Conclusion

This experience was very worrying and inspired total panic initially. It's easy to be sympathetic when it happens to someone else and doesn't actually impact on your life. It's only when it happens to you that you realise just what little protection or redress you have if you want to live your life the way you want to.