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A Metropolitan Police officer has been found not guilty of raping a woman he went home with.
James Geoghegan thanked the judge after he was unanimously cleared by a jury of the allegation.
A woman had accused the 27-year-old officer of raping her in December 2018, saying she told him ‘No’ and ‘Stop’ but he carried on.
Mr Geoghegan, who was suspended from his duties over the allegation, said he had consensual sex with the woman and that it was a ‘complete shock’ to him when she made the allegation.
The trial had heard that, when interviewed by police, Mr Geoghegan gave a prepared statement which set out his account of what happened.
He said the woman had asked him after he awoke at her home: ‘Did you not hear me say no?’
He said: ‘It was a complete shock, I didn’t know what she was on about.
‘I genuinely thought we were going to wake up and spend the day together and start seeing each other like we were saying the night before.
‘I was so shocked because, as far as I knew, we just had passionate sex with each other and it was really good and things were good between us.’
He said he and the woman had taken a taxi to her home together and they danced and talked.
He said he offered to sleep on the sofa but she ‘insisted’ he sleep in her bed.
‘She laughingly said we were going to have a cuddle and a spoon,’ he said.
He said they had both been drinking but had been ‘having long and involved conversations’.
Response officer Mr Geoghegan, whose mother was in court, wiped away tears as his defence barrister said he had waited a long time for the case to be heard.
Mr Geoghegan said he spoke to the woman on a night out before they went to her flat together.
He said he had joked about proposing to her and going on a honeymoon.
‘We were laughing and joking but the undertone was serious – I thought we were going to be together after this,’ he said.
He said they took a taxi to her home and she invited him in.
Asked by his lawyer Nicholas Corsellis QC if he thought he and the woman were ‘going to have sex no matter what’, Mr Geoghegan replied: ‘No, definitely not.’
Earlier in the trial prosecutors alleged Mr Geoghegan had entered the woman’s bedroom ‘uninvited’ while she was undressing and, although they kissed, she told him several times she did not want to go any further.
Prosecutor Wayne Cleaver said he ‘disregarded her limits’ by trying to take off her pyjama bottoms, to which she responded: ‘Stop. Think about your girlfriend.’
She tried to ‘discourage him’ as she was ‘not interested in intercourse’, but he raped her on the bed, jurors heard.
The victim said she later asked Geoghegan: ‘Do you remember me asking you to stop?’ and he replied: ‘Yes, I thought you were just playing around.’
There were gasps and weeping from the public gallery at Chelmsford Crown Court as the not guilty verdict was read out.
As the judge said he may leave the dock, Mr Geoghegan, of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, said: ‘Thank you, your honour.’
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