A 31-YEAR-OLD man accused of raping a drunken woman twice in her Cinderford flat has been cleared by a Gloucester Crown Court jury.

Christopher Barbour had been accused of raping the 29-year-old woman as she lay on her bathroom floor after being sick and then again on her bed on the night of September 11 last year.

He denied both charges and a further assault charge during the same night.

After a brief retirement the jury acquitted him of all three charges and he was discharged by Recorder Ian Pringle QC.

Prosecutor Simon Burns had warned jurors at the start of the trial that they would feel 'repulsed and reviled' by the details of what went on in the woman's flat that night.

Mr Barbour had been one of three men invited back to the woman's flat, along with two of her female friends, after they met up at a kebab takeaway, Mr Burns said.

Large amounts of alcohol were drunk by everyone in the flat and at one stage the woman went to her room and had sex with another of the men, the prosecution said.

She later went naked to the bathroom where she was sick and passed out on the floor, Mr Burns told the court.

He alleged that Mr Barbour, who had sex with another of the women, went to the bathroom naked to use the toilet, saw the woman on the floor and raped her there before taking her to the bedroom and having sex with her again.

In evidence Mr Barbour told the court that when he saw the woman on the bathroom floor "my reaction was to help her".

"I sat her up and lifted her," he said. "I bore her weight to provide support and helped her through to her room. I didn't drag her.

"I didn't touch her sexually at all while we were in the bathroom.

"I sat down with her on the bed. We both lay down facing one another. We were cuddling. We were kissing. She was more awake than she had been before.

"It didn't cross my mind that she might not know what she was doing."

He said: "The intention was to have sex but it was not working. She was not pushing me away and she was not screaming for help," he said. "I never thought that what was happening was without her agreement."

When she woke later she was screaming and shouting for her friend who was in the flat. She was shouting for a phone so he fetched one and gave it to her, he told the jury.

As she made a phone call to the police he 'panicked' and left the flat and drove straight to his mother's home and then to fetch a friend to help her move home, he said.

When he was later contacted by police and arrested he was 'shocked' and 'distraught' at the rape allegations, he added.