He insisted the sex they had was consensual and denied he and another swimmer were “passing around” his accuser after a night out.
Commonwealth Games swimmer Otto Putland has been found not guilty of raping a woman who had just had sex with his friend.
The Wales swimmer, 24, who represented his country at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, denied raping the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, following a night out in July 2015.
His accuser, who first came forward in November 2016, said she had consensual sex with Olympic swimmer Ieuan Lloyd after meeting him in a club and going home with him.
After Lloyd left his bedroom, she said Putland entered, sat on the bed and began taking his clothes off, but she told him she did not want to have sex again.
The court heard she was lying on the bed wearing a skirt and top but no underwear, and that it was pitch black in the room.
She said she told him they could not “pass her around” and that she said “no” and turned her head away.
“He lay on top of me and that’s when I was saying ‘you can’t pass me around’ and he said ‘we’re not passing you around,’” she added.
Putland denied her accusations and insisted the sex they had was consensual.
He told the jury of seven women and five men at Cardiff Crown Court that, after they were introduced by Lloyd, he chatted to the woman and she had been “very friendly and happy and flirtatious”.
He said it was her manner that led to him kissing her, her returning his kisses, and then to consensual sex and that the woman did nothing to make him think she was not consenting.
In a statement after the five-day trial, the swimmer described the experience as “horrendous”.
“I am obviously very relieved by the verdict and very glad to have been vindicated, but I can’t say I am elated,” he said.
“This has been going on for 18 months and the experience has been too horrendous, not just for me but my family, and especially for my mum.”
In his closing speech, Christopher Rees, for the defence, told jurors: “Bad sex is not rape. Regretted sex is not rape.”
Pointing out there had been “glaring inconsistencies” in the woman’s version of events, he added: “She did not stop it. She did not call out to Ieuan Lloyd. She did not call out to anyone at all. From that you can infer that she did consent, or may have consented.”
Initially, Putland faced two counts of rape but was cleared of one count following a trial in September last year.
That jury failed to reach a verdict on the other count of rape relating to the same woman and the prosecution decided to proceed with a retrial.
Source:news.sky.com
