'I'd never report it again,' says female lawyer who accused a chef of rape when she was too drunk to remember



Peter Bacon was acquitted of rape by a jury of seven women and four men



The woman who accused a chef of rape after a drunken one-night-stand has admitted that if the same thing happened to her again she would not report it.

The 45-year-old, who cannot be named of legal reasons, said she felt 'let down' by the judicial system after Peter Bacon was acquitted last week.

A jury of seven women and four men took just 45 minutes to find Mr Bacon not guilty, after hearing three days of evidence.

The accuser told the News Of The World: 'My experience has taught me there is nothing to be gained by going through the criminal justice system. I couldn't go through what I have again.'

Winchester Crown Court had heard the woman claim that she must have been raped because she was too drunk to have consented to sex.

The jury heard she drunk up to six bottles of wine before the pair had sex in her flat in Canterbury, Kent, in February last year.

The woman, who described herself in court as a ‘recreational binge drinker’, said she found Mr Bacon lying in her bed one morning with no memory of what had happened.

She immediately accused the university student - who was her friend's housemate - of taking advantage of her, shouting that the law had been changed because of ‘f****** like you’.

Mr Bacon had insisted that he believed the woman had given him a ‘come-on’ and had flirted with him before they had sex.

In her interview, the woman said she would never have consented to sex with Mr Bacon because he was 'not her type', and she did not feel the need to 'chase after a 20-something man'.

She told the newspaper: 'I'm fussy about the men I date, I'm quite a snob. For example, I would never date a brick-layer.'

She said she did not blame herself for what happened and did not regret the drinking.



'I concede I was drinking far more than I should have been-far more than was good for me-and as a result I've since cut back on my drinking. But what happened wasn't my fault.'

She said she she cannot accept Mr Bacon's version of events.



'Our mutual friend said in court he hadn't noticed me giving Mr Bacon the come-on at all, and as far as he was concerned my interest in Mr Bacon was purely platonic.



'So I just cannot accept that in the space of 10 minutes, a person can go from being extremely platonic to engaging in sexual intercourse in a number of different positions with a stranger where neither party pays any heed to preventing a potential pregnancy.'

She claimed she would never willingly have sex in such a drunken state, and could not understand why Mr Bacon had not noticed how inebriated she was.

Mr Bacon, seem with friends Jodie Bradley (right) and Laura Dowling (left), outside Winchester Crown Court



'My nickname is Baggy because, when I drink, my face drops and sags very obviously,' she told the newspaper.



The woman admitted that she knew her story was weak and that, were she defending such a case in court herself, she would be confident of getting the defendant acquitted. But she reported the incident to police out of 'a moral duty to other women'.



She believes the acquittal was due, in part, to the fact that seven of the 11 jurors were female.

'In date rape trials, women tend to side with men. That is their inherent nature. They judge other women more harshly. That is my experience.'

Despite her disappointment at the verdict, the woman admitted that she felt sorry for Mr Bacon, and did not condone the fact that he was named publicly as soon as he was charged.



She said she does not condone the vilification and vigilante attacks to which men accused of sexual violence are sometimes subjected.



The woman also fears the outcome of her case will put off other women from going to the police to report rapes.

'In certain circumstances drunken sex quite clearly isn't rape. But when people are incapable of making a decision then, in a civilised society, you have to be protected by the law.

'And, like it or not, young women do get themselves into this situation all the time because we have a binge culture. The implication of the judgement is that, if a woman is drunk and something happens to her, it's her own fault for getting into that state.'

