A FOREST of Dean District councillor has been cleared by a jury of raping a woman five times.

The jury of six men and five women returned their not guilty verdicts on all five counts of the rape at Gloucester Crown Court last Friday (May 19).

On hearing he had been cleared of raping a woman seven years ago, the recently re-elected Independent councillor for Coleford collapsed in the dock with relief.

Trial judge Recorder Neil Millard told Mr Whitburn, of Newland Street, Coleford, that he was free to leave the courtroom.

Recorder Millard then thanked the jury for their diligence in the case. The jury had spent four hours and seventeen minutes in deliberation today before returning to court to announce their decision.

It was the second time Councillor Whitburn had stood trial in the same case - last August he was cleared by an earlier jury of three allegations of rape and one of using controlling and co-ercive behaviour. But that jury failed to agree on verdicts on the remaining five rape allegations and the prosecution called for a retrial - which has ended today with not guilty verdicts on all the outstanding counts.

Cllr Whitburn told the jury during his retrial that the woman’s allegations were all ‘vindictive lies’ and he maintained throughout that he had never forced anybody to have sex.

Mr Whitburn said: “We didn’t have sex when she said I raped her. These are all vindictive lies. End of story.”

Mr Whitburn said that on one of the occasions they had met up he had to get up early the next day and had gone to bed alone.

But during the night the woman walked in on him and claimed he raped her, he said.

“This didn’t happen. I am absolutely certain that because of my commitments the next day,

“I wanted to sleep and nothing else. I am absolutely positive I did not rape her that night. I didn’t grab her by the throat or pin her on the bed and rape her as she alleges – this just didn’t happen.”

Mr Whitburn said that on another occasion when they met up five months later: “I don’t recall anything happening that night at all. I did not rape her as she alleges

The jury heard that Mr Whitburn admitted he may have been angry with the woman when they met up the following month, and had a blazing row: “I just stood there and took it. She was screaming and shouting at me. I was upset by this, but I didn’t rape her. I doubt we even had sex.”

Prosecutor James Tucker told the jury that Mr Whitburn’s public persona was of a very sociable and good natured man. However the woman alleged that his anger would often become ‘uncontrollable’ and he ‘lost the plot’ on one occasion and resorted to raping her, despite her saying no.

Peter Binder, defending, told the jury that it is Mr Whitburn’s defence that sex with the woman had been consensual on all occasions. “He never raped her,” he said.

The jury heard that the woman went to the police in 2019, three years after the last alleged rape.