The former JLS singer Oritse Williams has been cleared of raping a woman in a hotel room.
The 32-year-old singer had been accused of the attack after meeting the complainant at a solo gig in Wolverhampton in 2016.
After about two and a half hours’ deliberation, the jury at Wolverhampton crown court also found Williams’s tour manager Jamien Nagadhana not guilty of charges of sexual assault and assault by penetration.
During the trial, which had been going on for over a week, the ex-boyband member was accused of raping the woman at the Ramada Park hotel on 2 December.
Williams told the jury he had met the complainant in the VIP area of the Gorgeous nightclub following his performance, and had later had consensual sex with her.
Williams smiled and said “thank you” to Judge Michael Challinor when told he could leave the dock. Nagadhana also hugged two women sitting in the public gallery as he left the court.
The court had heard that two women had gone back to the hotel room Williams had been sharing with Nagadhana, 32, and had cuddled on the bed. Williams had then tried to have sex with one of the women, who hotel staff described as looking “spaced out and zombified”.
In police interviews read out during the proceedings, he called the allegation “crazy” and said he had been left “bewildered”.
The woman claimed she had been pushed on to the bed by Williams after making it clear that she did not want to have sex with him. During a police interview, she told an officer: “I was quite scared. I felt more pathetic, if that makes sense. I just felt worthless.”
She previously told the court that she could remember “bits and pieces” after a night of drinking.
Nagadhana admitted to touching the woman briefly in a prepared statement but said he had backed off when he realised she was “getting together” with Williams.
Williams’s defence lawyer accused the complainant of having selective memory loss, and added: “There is no realistic answer as to why he would do it.”
