Sheffield Council mistakenly sent out rape victims' contact details to hundreds of people

Sheffield Council has mistakenly sent out rape victims' contact details to hundreds of people.

The city's council has apologised to dozens of rape victims after their contact details were shared when sending out an update on the Spearmint Rhino licensing application.

An email from the council’s licensing committee, updating all those who had submitted comments or registered an interest in the renewal of the strip club’s licence sent out on Thursday, displayed the email addresses of hundreds of people.

The authority recalled the email on Friday morning.

It comes as councillors prepare to make a decision on whether to grant the venue a sexual entertainment venue licence at a meeting on Monday.

Steve Lonnia, head of licensing at Sheffield Council, ‘unreservedly apologised’ for what he said was a ‘human error’.

The club, on Brown Street, is the only licensed sexual entertainment venue in Sheffield and has been open for 16 years.

Sammy Woodhouse, who was subjected to a decade of abuse as a teenager, also had her email address shared as part of the email.

She said: “It’s an absolute disgrace. There are rape victims contact details on that email.”

Steve Lonnia, head of licensing at Sheffield Council, said:

“We would like to unreservedly apologise for this human error, which led to the disclosure of the personal email addresses of consultees in the Spearmint Rhino licensing application.

“We have written individually to all of those affected to say sorry. Sheffield Council takes incidents of this nature seriously and will review the way communications of this kind are made.”

Mr Lonia advised people to delete the email and also delete it from their deleted items.

Sheffield Council’s licensing committee will meet to decide on the application at Sheffield Town Hall at 10am on Monday (16/09)