A FURNITURE maker has cleared his name after he was accused of forcing his way into a woman’s home late at night and raping her.

Michael Robinson, 36, was arrested last November after the 21-year-old woman went to police, claiming that a strange man had walked with her part of the way home before sexually attacking her in her own bedroom.

The jury heard she failed to pick Mr Robinson out in a police identity parade, and he told detectives he had never seen the woman, gone into her house or raped her.

A 16-year-old girl whom the prosecution allege spoke to the strange man also failed to identify Mr Robinson, and forensic scientists failed to find scientific evidence or DNA linking him to the woman or the house where the rape allegedly happened.

But police charged him after another 16-year-old friend of the girl claimed she had seen him with the woman.

Mr Robinson, of Church Street, Church Fenton, and formerly of York, spent some time in prison on remand during his six-month wait to stand trial. For most of the wait he was on bail.

He denied rape and trespass with intent to commit a sexual offence.

After half an hour in retirement, the jury at York Crown Court acquitted him on both charges unanimously.

He told them he had been out with friends on the night of the alleged rape and had then gone straight home to be with his girlfriend.

He had not had a conversation with anyone on the journey.

The 16-year-old girl and her friend went to police after detectives appealed for witnesses following the attack and before Mr Robinson was arrested. The woman told the jury she had drunk so much at a Hallowe’en party on October 31 that she got lost for part of her way home.

She did not tell police about the alleged rape until some days after it happened and claimed this was because she wanted to pretend it had never happened.