Samuel Armstrong: a year of his life, then cleared in 2017

What happened

In October 2016 Samuel Armstrong was chief of staff to a Member of Parliament in London. After a night of drinking in the Houses of Parliament, he and a woman in her 20s had sex in the MP's Westminster office in the early hours of 14 October.

She later said she had been raped. He said the sex was consensual. Nobody else was in the room, and there was no record of what either of them agreed.

The charges

He was charged with two counts of rape, one count of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration. He was suspended from his job, and he was publicly named long before any jury heard the case.

The trial

His trial at Southwark Crown Court lasted two weeks. By then he was 24. The court heard that the woman had at first refused to give police access to her phone and medical records.

On 21 December 2017 the jury found him not guilty on all four counts. Outside court he said:

"My whole life has been turned upside down. For a year I have not slept or eaten, and I was innocent."

He also said that crucial evidence had been "disclosed to my defence team just eight working days before trial." He and his lawyers did not say what that evidence was.

What it shows

A night out, two people, one room, and no record of what was agreed. It took more than a year, a police investigation and a two-week trial to answer one question, and the evidence that mattered reached his lawyers only days before the trial began.

Cases like this are rare, and most reports of sexual assault are genuine. When it does happen, everyone loses: the person accused, the person who made the report, and every genuine victim who finds it harder to be believed. A clear record of what was agreed, made at the time, protects both people.