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Artist News Legal Media
Cheryl Tweedy’s lawyers want people to stop talking about 2003 assault conviction
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 28 January 2019
Lawyers working for Cheryl Tweedy have reportedly complained to The Guardian that a recent interview with the one time Girl Aloud mentioned that time – back in 2003 – when she was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm over an altercation with a toilet attendant at a nightclub.
According to the Mail On Sunday, Tweedy’s legal reps argued that bringing up the crime, her subsequent trial and her conviction in a 2018 article is a breach of the Rehabilitation Of Offenders Act. Which it almost certainly isn’t.
As one media lawyer – Duncan Lamont at Charles Russell Speechlys – pointed out to the Mail: “The rationale behind the Rehabilitation Of Offenders Act was that, [after a period of time] if you applied for a job, you didn’t have to mention your conviction to your employer because the conviction was spent. It does not apply to the media. The act was designed to give people who committed an offence a second chance, not for privacy purposes”.
The Guardian itself hasn’t commented on its correspondence with lawyers acting for Tweedy, but the Mail said that it too had received a legal letter that “cited the Rehabilitation Of Offenders Act and argued Ms Tweedy should be treated by the media in the same manner as someone who had not committed nor been charged, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced for an offence”.
That letter didn’t stop the Mail running its story and The Guardian article is still live. And now we’ve reported on the conviction again too. Which proves, as always, you should never hire lawyers who claim to do ‘reputation management’. It can be terrible for your reputation.
