Just came across this cutting from 1974 and I'm sorry to say that I can remember getting very excited following the story in the newspapers at the time.
The case came to court because the Sunday People published a story about how lieutenant-colonel John Brooks had lured the 19-year-old Manchester University student on to his boat for a trip up the river and then forced her to strip before he spanked her about thirty times before telling her to rub some whisky on her bottom to take away the sting (never tried that, but it seems likely to me that he just wanted to rub her bottom for a bit longer).
The story was substantially correct, except it turned out that he often hired young ladies for this particular pastime and it had been made very clear to her beforehand what she was getting paid to do. The newspaper lost the defamation case, and the colonel was awarded a rather derisory
½ penny in damages (although the newspaper had to bear the court costs).
What subsequently happened to Miss Carr never seemed to be reported - presumably she had the embarrassment of her friends and family reading that she'd allowed a stranger to strip her naked and spank her bottom, but then she would have expected that when she took her story to the newspaper. I tend to the view that the editor of the newspaper should, perhaps, have also given her a thorough spanking for misleading him about the original circumstances.







