Retired Metropolitan Police officer cleared of raping woman 19 years ago
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A retired Metropolitan Police officer has been cleared of raping a woman 19 years ago.
Stephen Kyere, 57, was accused of having sex with the woman without her consent following a night out at Oceana club in Kingston-upon-Thames on April 12 2004.
The case was reopened after the woman wrote to Dame Cressida Dick, the then-Metropolitan Police commissioner, in 2018 about the “injustice” she still felt years after the case was closed.
Mr Kyere, from Ashford in Surrey, was eventually identified as a suspect from CCTV images at the club and his DNA matched to a sample of semen on the woman’s duvet, the Old Bailey heard.
The defendant, who was off duty at the time of the incident and has since retired from the Metropolitan Police, had denied rape and indecent assault.
Following a retrial at the Old Bailey, he was found not guilty of the charges by a jury which deliberated for six hours and 20 minutes.
Jurors were told how the woman had made a report to police at the time and was examined by a doctor who found no injuries that would confirm or refute her version of events.
In August 2004, the woman received a call from police to say a suspect was due to be arrested but she heard no more, and in 2006 the case was closed with no suspect identified.
Insisted sex was consensual
In 2018, the woman, who is now in her early 40s, wrote to the Metropolitan Police commissioner about the “injustice” she felt about the investigation.
Even though much of the original evidence was lost by then, the investigation was reopened and stills from the nightclub CCTV were retrieved.
From that, police tracked down Mr Kyere after comparing the CCTV with images of all black ethnic minority officers called Stephen who were serving at the time.
In January 2020, he was invited to an interview under caution and provided a prepared statement saying he never had non-consensual sex.
His DNA was tested and matched to the sample on the woman’s duvet.
Mr Kyere said in a further statement that he remembered the incident and insisted the sex was consensual.
An Old Bailey jury was discharged in March after failing to reach a verdict in the case, leading to a three-day retrial in May before Judge Lynn Tayton KC.
