Luke Lazarus leaves court in Sydney after his acquittal in May. Credit:AAP After a judge-alone trial this year, District Court Judge Robyn Tupman​ cleared Mr Lazarus of the charge. In a statement, the Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb, SC, said he had lodged an appeal against the acquittal in the Court of Criminal Appeal on Wednesday. Mr Lazarus' trial heard that he met the woman on the dance floor of the Soho nightclub, took her into the VIP section and introduced her to the DJ before leading her outside to a dark laneway. The Crown alleged that Mr Lazarus told the woman to turn around and put her hands against a wall, before anally raping her while she was on her hands and knees.

Mr Lazarus, however, told the court he believed the woman was consenting to having sex and that she never told him to stop. Judge Tupman​ found that the woman "in her own mind" did not consent but Lazarus had a genuine and honest belief that she did. After Mr Lazarus was acquitted, the woman wrote on Facebook about her experience. "I've spent far too long feeling embarrassed and ashamed," she wrote in the post. "The 18 year old in the story is me. Those awful things happened to me. I am that girl. "The reality is this doesn't get to be over for me. I don't get to know who I would be today had this not happened to me, and I mourn for that person. She seemed like she was on her way to being great."

During the trial, Crown prosecutor Cate Dodds put to Mr Lazarus that he had recognised the woman he allegedly raped as a "very young girl who was well affected by alcohol" and designed to take advantage of her to satisfy his own sexual desires. "She was an 18-year-old virgin, who had known this accused for a matter of minutes and who had engaged in consensual kissing and possibly body rubbing, but did not give consent to the anal intercourse that followed," Ms Dodds said in her closing address. Defence barrister Phillip Boulten, SC, said the woman was an "active participant" and had "pushed back" against Lazarus when they had sex. "This charge is an act of violence. It's a despicable act of violence if it is what it is said to be and you would need to be very, very drunk to be so disinhibited as to go from someone who is not normally violent or sexually oppressive to be so in this instant," Mr Boulten said. Loading

"He was someone who was popular, he got on well with young women, better than most it seems, and their evidence about him suggest that he is not really the sort of person who would force himself upon someone even when he was sexually excited." The appeal is listed next Thursday for a callover in court.