A Glasgow businessman was found not guilty yesterday of the hotel room rape of 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 on March 4, last year after she downed brandy and wine all evening.
Yesterday at Blackfriars Crown Court the Crown Prosecution Service announced they would not be seeking a retrial and offered no evidence against the absent Mr. Paton.
Earlier this month a jury failed to reach a verdict in relation to the case.
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.
His family run a nationwide company involved in the insurance and maintenance of taxis and private-hire vehicles.
He always denied one count of rape and protested his innocence throughout the week-long trial, insisting the complainant had consented to sex.
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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