Father-of-one cleared of raping online date woman

Published on 04/12/2012 12:00

A MARRIED man has been cleared of raping a woman he met through an online dating agency.

A jury at the High Court in Livingston took just 33 minutes to return a majority verdict finding the charge against David Evans not proven.

Father-of-one Evans, 34, of Edinburgh, used the screen-name “Ebony” to lure a 26-year-old looking for love on the Plenty of Fish website.

The duo exchanged messages on the site and he then befriended her on Facebook. The jury heard the woman – who cannot be named for legal reasons – picked him up in the West End and took him home to her flat in Craigmillar.

She consented to intercourse and they fell asleep, but Evans wakened her during the night and said he wanted more sex.

The woman claimed that he pinned her down and raped her, but the jury believed his story that she had consented.

Evans – originally from Ghana in West Africa – had denied raping the mum in her home on May 1, 2011.