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The Daily Mail has printed an apology to author JK Rowling and paid "substantial damages" over an article about her time as a single mother. Rowling sued the newspaper for libel in January over the piece which suggested she had told a false "sob story" about being stigmatised by churchgoers. The Daily Mail said it accepted the author had not made any false claims and apologised for the suggestion. It added Rowling was donating the unspecified damages to charity. According to documents filed at the High Court, the Harry Potter writer said she believed the newspaper's story - published on 27 September 2013 - was "premised on a false picture" of an article she had written10 days previously on the website for the single parents' charity, Gingerbread. She said she had not accused fellow churchgoers of "stigmatising" or "cruelly taunting her", but had referred to "a single occasion involving a woman who had visited the church one day while she was working there". Rowling said the Daily Mail had been "misleading" and "unfair" in its story and had injured her reputation and caused her great distress and embarrassment. The newspaper's apology, printed on page two, said: "Our September 28, 2013 article 'How JK's sob story about her single mother past surprised and confused the church members who cared for her' suggested that JK Rowling made a knowingly false and inexcusable claim in an article for the Gingerbread charity that people at her church had stigmatised her and cruelly taunted her for being a single mother. | 
