Stephen Kyere: Ex-Met Police officer not guilty of rape in retrial

Stephen Kyere denied raping the woman in her flat in 2004

A retired Metropolitan Police officer has been found not guilty of rape following a retrial at the Old Bailey.

Stephen Kyere, 57, from Ashford in Surrey, met the woman at a nightclub in Kingston upon Thames in April 2004, when he was an off-duty serving officer.

He was accused of raping her after they went back to her home in Teddington. Mr Kyere said the sex was consensual.

It follows a previous trial in March in which jurors failed to reach a verdict.

The case was reopened after the woman wrote to the Met Police commissioner in 2018.

When the case was reopened, much of the original evidence was lost but stills from the nightclub CCTV were retrieved.

'Flashed his warrant card'

The Old Bailey heard that Mr Kyere flashed his warrant card at the woman in the nightclub.

Earlier in the retrial, the jury was told when Mr Kyere and the woman returned to her home with two other people, she went to bed because she was tired and had drunk a lot of alcohol mixed with slimming pills.

She told jurors she was drifting in and out of sleep when the defendant climbed over her in bed and had sex with her without consent. The court heard she told Mr Kyere to "stop" and "please go", jumped out of bed, grabbed a dressing gown and ran out of the room shocked and crying.

The woman then went into the bathroom and sat against the door hugging her knees as the defendant asked "what's wrong?" from the other side of the door, and she later screamed at him to leave when he appeared dressed in the doorway.

Jurors were told Mr Kyere was eventually identified as a suspect from CCTV images at the club, and his DNA was matched to a sample of semen on the woman's duvet.

Mr Kyere disputed her account, saying she had seemed "normal" and did not behave in a way that caused him to "worry", but when asked about their meeting he told the court he could not remember specific details or what "sexual activity we did".

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