YOUNG LIVES LEFT IN RUINS AFTER WRONGFUL RAPE CLAIMS

BARTOLOMEO JOLY DE LOTBINIERE, 22, was accused of raping a geography student at York University after a night out downing cheap drinks in 2014. But his 19-year-old accuser only reported him to police 14 months later when he appeared on BBC2 quiz show University Challenge. There was no forensic evidence, only her testimony, friends’ statements and text messages. After the first trial ended in a hung jury, Joly de Lotbiniere faced a retrial and was found not guilty in September.

England under-20s rugby star ZACH KIBIRIGE was cleared of raping a young woman he met on the Tinder dating app in 2015. The pair exchanged 1,000 messages before Mr Kibirige was invited to her flat in Newcastle. They had sex that night and the woman sent him a ‘thumbs-up’ emoji the next morning. She went out the night after the alleged rape to a bar near his home, despite telling police she was too terrified to leave her flat. In August last year, a jury cleared Mr Kibirige on all seven counts in an hour and 15 minutes.

GEORGE OWEN, 21, a privately educated trainee accountant, was charged with raping an 18-year-old student in an alleyway after a drunken night out in Manchester in 2015. But the woman only contacted police a year later and told friends on Facebook: ‘I was only raped chill the f*** out. I’m going to ring them [police] tomorrow and tell them I’ll do it....It’s going to be so fun.’ In September, jurors took just over two hours to clear Owen of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault.

FOUR male students were accused of gang-raping a young woman at a university ball at Royal Agricultural University in Gloucestershire in 2014. But detectives failed to disclose the ‘victim’ had sent naked pictures of herself to one of the men and had given inconsistent accounts about a ‘threesome’ she had five months after the alleged rape. Thady Duff, Leo Mahon, above, Patrick Foster, all 22, and James Martin, 20, faced a two-year ordeal before the case was dropped in April last year.

Graduate LEWIS TAPPENDEN, 24, was charged with raping an 18-year-old undergraduate he’d met at a nightclub in York in 2015. But during the trial it emerged that, after bumping into him on the dance floor, the teenager told him: ‘I don’t want to know you afterwards – I just want to f*** you.’ The woman claimed Tappenden had ‘dragged’ her out of the nightclub but CCTV showed the pair holding hands with her kissing him. In March, a jury took only two hours to clear him.

Durham University student LOUIS RICHARDSON, 21, was charged in 2014 with raping a fellow student who claimed she was ‘crazy drunk’ at the time. But the trial heard she continued to have sex with Richardson for three months afterwards, sent him pictures of her in only a bra, and sent Facebook messages saying: ‘I’ll let you spank me.’ The woman only made the rape complaint after going on holiday with her long-term boyfriend. A jury cleared Richardson in three hours in January last year.