UNITED KINGDOM-Jamaican born actor found not guilty of rape

LONDON, CMC – The Jamaican-born British actor, Michael Ward, was found not guilty of raping a woman who claimed he had attacked her in the back of a car in January 2023.

The 28-year-old actor and model, who was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, on November 18, 1997, is best known for starring as gang leader Jamie in the hit Netflix crime drama Top Boy. He won the prestigious BAFTA Rising Star award in 2020.

Ward had denied two charges of rape and three of sexual assault, and a jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court acquitted him on all counts.

The court heard he had met the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, at an east London nightclub on 2 January 2023 and that “everything we did was wholly consensual”.

He told the jury that he thought they were “having a great time” during the encounter and that when he met the “very cute” woman, he had sensed “there was interest there” and that he had asked her to join him in a car, where there was a “continuation of the flirting.

“She was reciprocating the energy. She was pulling me close. For me, that was an inviting act, and we were both enjoying that moment,” Ward said, adding that she “never mentioned anything about wanting to leave”.

He told the jury she had seemed “absolutely fine” and had a “nice and engaging general conversation” and that they later exchanged messages.

But in court, the woman, in tears, gave a different story, saying that she would have “never gotten in that car with him” if she had known what would happen.

She denied the encounter was consensual, insisting that “Michael raped me” and that she had repeatedly told Ward she needed to leave “on multiple occasions”.

Ward was arrested on 18 January that year and in a statement then told police “I deny the allegation of rape. “I want to put on record that we had consensual foreplay and consensual sex.”