TWO friends have been found not guilty of raping a woman after meeting her at a nightclub.

Michael Gibbs, 27, wept uncontrollably in the dock of Swindon Crown Court after a jury took just 52 minutes to clear him and Daniel Ward, 25.

They had been accused of raping the 21-year-old woman at an address in Gorse Hill in the early hours of February 15 last year.

Mr Ward looked shaken when the verdicts were delivered.

Mr Gibbs embraced him and seemed about to collapse before the two left the dock.

The men, neither of whom had come to the attention of the police before, had each produced several character witnesses to say they were decent members of the community.

Mr Gibbs, of The Willows, Highworth, and Mr Ward, of North Wall, Cricklade, both told the court that the 21-year old woman had agreed to come back to a house belonging to a friend of the men for sex, after they met her in Edwards Bar in Fleet Street.

Both men said the woman gave her full consent as they took it in turns to have sex with her in the living room.

Mr Ward told his barrister, Peter Fortune: "Not once did she tell me or Mike that she wanted to stop.

"Had she done that, that would have been the end of it."

Mr Gibbs was asked by his barrister, Alan Fuller, what his reaction would have been if the woman had offered any resistance or protest.

He replied: "I would have stopped."

Asked by Mr Fuller about his feelings after Mr Ward had propositioned the woman in the club on behalf of both of them, he said: "All I can say is that once she said 'yes' I was excited at the prospect."

At one point, the sex was interrupted by the owner of the house and his girlfriend, who came downstairs to use the bathroom, the court heard, but neither saw anything suggesting that the woman was not a willing participant in what was happening.

The woman had wept as she gave evidence, and at one point had to be excused from the witness box to calm herself.

However, the men's barristers put it to her that the only reason she had been upset in the wake of what had happened was that she had felt ashamed of having had sex with the two men, and was concerned as to what people might think of her.

She denied this.

Barrie Hudson