Met Police officer cleared of raping woman he met at bar while off-duty

A serving Metropolitan Police officer has been found not guilty of raping a woman he met at a bar while off-duty.

Jurors at Inner London Crown Court cleared Pc Rupert Edwards, 30, of raping the woman in Epsom, Surrey, on August 26 2022.

However, the jury was unable to return a verdict on a second count of rape, relating to a different woman whom Edwards met at a bar on September 5 2022.

Edwards wept in the dock as the jury’s verdict was returned following eight hours and 22 minutes of deliberation.

Edwards told police the second complainant never said she did not want sexual intercourse without contraception, and that they engaged in consensual sexual activity.

Prosecutor Robert Brown previously told the court that the first complainant met Edwards on a night out and danced with him, before “kissing the defendant, who she found attractive” at a bar.

They later got a cab back to her home and had consensual sex “at least once, possibly twice”.

The complainant claimed she later told him “I can’t go again” but the defendant pulled her leg up and initiated further sexual intercourse, Mr Brown said.

Asked if the woman told him she did not want to have sex again because she was “tired and sore”, Edwards told the court: “I do not agree with that”.

The second complainant recalled engaging in consensual sex with Edwards in Lambeth, south London, but “told him from the outset there could be no intercourse” because they did not have any condoms.

The woman said Edwards agreed to this but she was later awoken when he raped her, jurors heard.

The prosecutor said: “Isn’t the truth that she said you couldn’t have sex because she had no condoms?” Edwards replied: “No”.

When pressed by Mr Brown, the suspended Pc said: “At no point was she asleep [during sex].”

Edwards said the woman had been a “similar level of drunk” to him, adding he was “shocked and surprised” to be arrested the next morning.