A Glasgow businessman faces a potential retrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict on a charge he raped a drunken young woman during a trip to London.
Privately-educated graduate William Paton, 30, was accused of taking advantage of the 26 year-old City worker in his hotel room on March 4, last year after she downed brandy and wine all evening.
Paton, of Fruin Avenue, Newton Mearns, who attended £12,00 a-year Hutcheson’s Grammar School and is a mathematics graduate of the University of Strathclyde was attending a black-tie event at a City of London livery company.
Yesterday a Blackfriars Crown Court jury announced they were split and the Crown Prosecution Service will announce on October 20 if they are pursuing a retrial.
Paton, whose family run a nationwide company involved in the insurance and maintenance of taxis and private-hire vehicles, had denied one count of rape.
Both Paton and the complainant told the court they had little recollection of the evening, but the woman claims she woke up at the Holiday Inn, Cavell Street, Whitechapel to find the defendant having sex with her.
“The next thing I remember was being rocked and seeing someone there, I freaked out,” she told the jury. “I did not know if it was real or not and I remember crying in the toilet. I scared myself that I could drink that much.”
She told the court she was “eight out of ten” on a scale of total inebriation, having started on cranberry juice at noon and progressing to double brandy and coke, plus wine.
Paton told the jury he had little recollection of the evening, but stressed: “I would never, ever take advantage of a woman. There’s absolutely no way that I would rape any woman.”
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