THE RAPE trial of six army officers collapsed sensationally last week when the judge ruled there was no case to answer.

The men - including an officer cadet from Preston - were accused of raping a 24-year-old barmaid at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, in May.

They all denied the charge, saying she had consented to group sex and on Friday, the jury at Oxford Crown Court was told by Judge Julian Hall that he was dismissing the case.

His decision followed a day of legal argument in which barristers for the accused said the woman's case was riddled with inconsistencies.

But Officer Cadet Nicholas Oettinger, 20, from Preston; Officer Cadet Andrew Stout, 20; Captain Darren Bartlett, 24; Captain Ian Barlow, 29; and Lt Matthew Tupling, 24, may now face an internal Army investigation into their conduct.

Despite being cleared, they now face an internal Ministry of Defence inquiry into their conduct and could be dismissed.

An MoD spokesman confirmed the men were likely to be punished for "conduct unbecoming to an officer".

And despite dismissing the case, Judge Hall said the defendants only had themselves to blame - as if when six men chose to have sex with a woman, they could expect a rape allegation to follow.

He stressed the attacks made by the defence on the main witnesses were "not attacks either on her morals or way of life - they were attacks on her credibility and her reliability as a witness in this case".

Various aspects of her evidence were singled out by the defence during the trial, including:

the woman admitted willingly having sex with Oettinger days earlier;

she admitted feeling 'betrayed' when he later raised no objection to his friend Lt Rupert Whiting 'forcing himself' on her;

and she did not tell the police about having sex with Whiting in her first statement.

After the case, the woman, a student and part-time barmaid, said she hoped the men would be thrown out of the Army: "I grew up believing that officers were gentlemen," she said: "Now I know different. Giving evidence was a nightmare."

The woman was not in court when the case was dismissed and said afterwards that she was shocked when her solicitor telephoned to tell her: "I could not believe it," she said: "I just started to cry and cry."

The woman now intends to concentrate on continuing her studies and looking after her baby son.

She has been represented by showbiz PR mogul Max Clifford who said that neither he nor the woman would be making any money out of her story and that he is representing her for free because he 'believed' in her.

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