The Supreme Court of Appeal in Rome on Wednesday overturned a rape conviction, saying that the supposed victim must have agreed to sex because her jeans could not have been removed without her consent.





The instructor, aged 45 and identified only as Carmine, had been sentenced to 34 months' jail.

His defence had argued that the young woman - identified as Rosa - had consented to sex, a version of events which the woman strongly denied.

The Supreme Court ruled that it was impossible to remove a pair of jeans "without the collaboration of the person wearing them", and that the young woman must therefore have consented to sex.

In a judgement likely to anger women's rights organisations, the rape conviction was reversed.

Driving instructors in Italy have a reputation, deserved or undeserved, for molesting young female pupils, and the case appeared at first to be a familiar story of sexual assault on a lonely country road.