A Scottish court has ruled that a former university student was raped on a night out, after she sued her attacker in a landmark civil action.

A sheriff in Edinburgh found that Stephen Coxen, 23, from Bury, Greater Manchester raped the then student at St Andrews University while she was too drunk to consent, after they met at a nightclub during freshers’ week in 2013.

Coxen was prosecuted for the rape in 2015 but a high court jury found the charges against him not proven, a controversial Scottish verdict which acquits an accused person but stops short of finding them not guilty.

The woman, known as Miss M, sued Coxen in the civil courts. She was awarded £80,000 in damages.

It was the first time in recent Scottish legal history that someone cleared in a criminal trial had been subsequently sued.

A civil case requires a lower standard of proof than in a criminal case, with a judge sitting without a jury making a decision on the balance of probabilities.

After hearing seven days of, at times, harrowing evidence in June this year, Sheriff Robert Weir QC said on Friday that he agreed with Miss M’s lawyer, Simon di Rollo QC, that the evidence against Coxen was “compelling and persuasive”.

In an 84-page ruling, the sheriff said he found that soon after 2am on Saturday 14 September 2013 “the defender took advantage of the pursuer when she was incapable of giving meaningful consent because of the effects of alcohol, but he continued to do so even after she manifested distress and a measure of physical resistance, and that he raped her”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Miss M said she felt relieved and vindicated by the ruling. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

Describing Miss M as a “cogent and compelling witness”, Weir added that her description of becoming conscious to find Coxen having sex with her, her distress and her attempts to push him away before he forced her to have oral sex was “the very antithesis of the kind of willing, freely chosen, active, co-operative, participation which consent is supposed to connote”.

Miss M, who sustained an injury to her tongue after being forced to have oral sex during the rape, and has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, said she felt relieved and vindicated by the ruling.

“It has taken me five years to get justice, and for society to send Stephen Coxen a message that what he did was wrong,” she said. “To the many, many others who find themselves in a position like this: speak up. It is only by telling these stories we can exert the pressure that is so clearly needed to improve our criminal justice system.”

Due to its legal significance, the case was paid for by the Scottish Legal Aid Board through a special fund set up to support cases of gender-based violence, and was closely watched by women’s rights groups, lawyers and other potential litigants.

Several other women are understood to be preparing similar cases against alleged attackers who were cleared by juries, after a spate of recent civil actions in Scottish courts.

Miss M, who now works at St Andrews University, began her legal action against Coxen before it emerged that two Scottish footballers, David Goodwillie and David Robertson, were being sued for damages for rape by a woman called Denise Clair, who waived her right to anonymity to help publicise her case.

They had not been prosecuted, but in January 2017 a civil court ruled they had raped her in 2011, and she was awarded £100,000 in damages. They appealed against the judgment but lost.

Miss M is not expected to receive much or any of the £80,000 damages, assuming Coxen is able to pay them. He told the court he was unemployed, and the legal aid board will claw back any payments from Coxen to cover the case’s legal costs, with the remainder only then going to Miss M.

Sandy Brindley, of Rape Crisis Scotland, said the rate of prosecutions and convictions for rape in Scotland was very low because of the need in Scottish trials for corroboration and the availability of not proven verdicts. Rape Crisis Scotland wants not proven verdicts to be abolished.

In 2016-17, only 39% of Scottish rape and attempted rape cases resulted in convictions – the lowest rate for any type of crime. Nearly 30% of acquittals in rape and attempted rape cases are found not proven, compared with 17% for all crimes and offences.

Not proven is one of three options available to a jury or court along with guilty and not guilty. It leaves the accused innocent in the eyes of the law and its supporters say it offers an extra safeguard for defendants.

Women’s rights campaigners believe juries make heavy use of not proven in rape cases because they sometimes blame women for what happened or believe they share responsibility for sexual encounters.

In Miss M’s case, she became drunk after drinking free champagne and vodka at a friend’s party that evening, and had been kissing Coxen in the nightclub. Her case was bolstered by expert testimony that she was so intoxicated she had little knowledge of what was happening, had blackouts and was too drunk to give consent.

The three-verdict system may be scrapped after the Scottish government commissioned a study of how jurors reacted to the availability of both not proven and not guilty. A Holyrood committee said in 2016 not proven was “living on borrowed time”.

Brindley said civil actions were being considered by other women who wanted to be vindicated and for their experiences to be recognised. She said Friday’s judgment was “testament to Ms M’s courage and tenacity … While this is a victory for her, she should not have had to go through the ordeal of two trials to search for some form of justice.”