Christopher Rickard sobbed with relief as jurors found him not guilty of raping a woman in the New Forest
A former solicitor accused of raping a woman during a summer encounter in the New Forest has been cleared of all charges after a four-day trial at Southampton Crown Court.
Christopher Rickard, 36, broke down in tears as the jury returned unanimous not guilty verdicts on two counts of rape. The case had centred on a disputed sexual encounter between Rickard and a woman in 2023, with the prosecution presenting text messages and accounts of the event that appeared, at times, ambiguous.
Rickard, of Bothenhampton, Bridport in Dorset, admitted having sex with the woman but consistently maintained it was consensual. During police interviews, he claimed the woman did not object to the sexual activity, and that any suggestion otherwise had been taken out of context.
Prosecutor Thomas Wilkins, however, presented the jury with a message Rickard had sent to a friend shortly after the incident. In the text, Rickard described the sexual encounter as one in which he “played into his dominant side,” referencing the woman telling him to stop — but allegedly not meaning it.
Embed from Getty Images“She said stop but didn’t mean it,” Rickard had written, according to Mr Wilkins, who told the jury this was a troubling insight into the defendant’s state of mind. “The defendant said in the message how the woman continued to tell him to stop but ‘did not show any other signs of resistance’,” Wilkins added.
Despite the prosecution’s attempt to portray the message as an admission of guilt, Rickard’s legal team argued that the woman had given clear consent throughout and that the exchange had been misinterpreted.
The courtroom was tense as the jury deliberated. When the foreman announced the verdicts, Rickard wept visibly in the dock, visibly shaking as his supporters embraced him in quiet relief from the gallery. His legal team declined to comment outside court, but a source close to the defence described the verdict as “a just outcome to a very difficult case.”
Rickard, once a practising solicitor, had been suspended from his role during the investigation and trial. With the criminal charges behind him, questions remain over his professional future and whether he will seek to return to the legal profession.
The trial highlighted the difficulty in prosecuting cases of alleged rape where the issue centres around verbal consent and post-event interpretation. No forensic evidence or witnesses were presented in court, leaving the jury to decide on the credibility of each party’s account.
Supporters of Rickard say he has been through “a year of hell,” while campaigners against sexual violence have expressed concern that messages like the one Rickard sent to his friend reflect a wider misunderstanding of consent.
Legal experts note that the case reflects a growing number of “he said, she said” trials where digital communications play a pivotal role — but not always decisively.
For now, Rickard walks free, cleared of all wrongdoing. But the debate over consent, power dynamics, and justice in rape trials remains far from settled.
