A party-goer who had sex with a drunken woman he met in the street on Valentine' Day has been cleared of rape.

Following a three day trial at Bolton Crown Court it took a jury an hour to find Majdi Idress not guilty to two counts of rape. He has admitted having sex with the woman but denied raping her.

 He claimed that the sex they had was consensual, but she became angry after seeing his student card and believing he was only aged 17.

Idress, now aged 20, told the court that the 29-year-old woman, who he did not know, did not appear drunk when she approached him on the evening of February 14, 2018 and asked him to take her to his house.

Idress, of Crawford Avenue, The Haulgh, was accused of taking advantage of her drunken state after she was turned away from a bar because she was so intoxicated.
But the defendant told the court that the woman was not drunk. “How can she walk down the street if she was drunk?” he said.

The woman previously the jury that she is gay and had not had any sexual encounter with a man for two years before encountering Idress. She said that she had drunk so much that she could only remember waking up in a room, naked from the waist down and with a strange man looming over her.

But, giving evidence in his own defence, Idress insisted that sex had been consensual.
He told the jury how he was on his way to a friend’s party at around 11pm when the woman approached him in the street and asked if he had any cannabis.
“She started [the conversation]. I didn’t ask her,” he said, adding that the woman then asked to see his house.

When questioned why he agreed, instead of offering to take her with him to the party, he replied: “All the people in the party are 17 and 18 and she’s an old woman.”

Idress told the court that, back at the house the woman put music on his laptop and asked to perform a sex act on him, which he agreed to before they had sex.

But then Idress, who was aged 18 at the time, claimed that she spotted his college student card with the age 17 on it and became angry, thinking she may get in trouble for having sex with someone that young.

“She was insulting to me,” said Idress, a Sudanese refugee,who said that the woman referred to him as a “black monkey”.

The woman left the house and, the next day, contacted police.

DNA from her body and clothing were matched to Idress by police two years later and he was arrested.