The Advertiser, five other local media outlets, several national publications and more than 70 people at Punahou School received an e-mail early on June 5 from an anonymous sender detailing allegations that a staff member was sexually involved with a student in 2004-2005 and made unwanted sexual advances toward a teacher.

The staff member and the two women were named in the e-mail, which indicated it was written and sent "by a group of concerned Punahou parents, past and present."

We ran a short story in the breaking news section of honolu luadvertiser.com on Saturday and reprinted it in Sunday's paper, saying Punahou School was investigating the allegations and quoting the school as saying it "will take immediate and appropriate action if school policies were violated." Several local television stations ran the same story.

Editors tasked to handle these kinds of allegations have to look at the facts before digging further. In this case, the incident involving the student is four or five years old. Why are the allegations surfacing only now? The e-mail is anonymous, so it could have been written by anyone and if the allegations are untrue, it smears the good names of three people. Were the police called to investigate and if not, why not? What was the purpose of sending the e-mail to so many people?

For a time, we permitted comments on the online version of the Punahou story. One reader said it was irresponsible of us to print anonymous allegations and that we should have waited to write a story until they were substantiated or charges filed. Another said we acted properly in reporting on what the school had said, especially because we had all the details in the e-mail.

We shut down the comments on the story Sunday afternoon because we did not want someone with access to the e-mail to post the details.

The school took the correct steps by issuing a statement and pledging to investigate, saying it had only heard about the allegations when they surfaced with the mass e-mail.

The local media outlets did the right thing by reporting on the action Punahou planned to take and waiting for the results of the internal investigation. If disciplinary action is taken, the school should announce it and we should report it. If the allegations are found to be false, we should likewise make that information public. Anonymous or not, such accusations should be taken seriously.