35-year-old man acquitted of rape after Tinder date

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

A 35-year-old man was found not guilty of raping a student he met on Tinder. He had denied the charge. The proceedings were reported on 2 June 2017.

The woman said they had arranged to meet on 11 September 2014. She claimed he drove her to the Dublin mountains during their first date and raped her. Defence counsel Michael Bowman said they had arranged a hook-up and had consensual sex, a suggestion the woman rejected.

The jury returned its verdict after almost four hours of deliberation. Mr Justice Paul Butler told jurors it was dangerous to convict on the uncorroborated evidence of a complainant and that they must be most careful if they did so. He said they could consider evidence of the woman's distressed state as corroboration only if the alleged rape was the only explanation for it.