Football player Jack Diamond has been cleared of charges of raping and sexually assaulting a woman he met on a dating app after a Newcastle Crown Court jury unanimously ruled him not guilty of the two sex offenses he was charged with.
Diamond was accused of forcing himself on the woman after they had agreed that “nothing more than cuddling would happen” before she turned around.
Diamond testified in court that they had engaged in consensual sexual activity throughout the evening and that he thought the woman had been “in a mood with him” following her request for complete sex, to which he declined.
The woman and Diamond acknowledged that their connection was “95% about sex” and that they became “friends with benefits” after meeting on Tinder.
When Diamond invited the woman around that evening, he hoped that something sexual could happen, but he admitted to the court that “it wasn’t at the forefront of his mind”.
Before Diamond went to sleep, the woman gave her agreement for some sexual activity, according to prosecutor David Povall, but he later told the jury that once she woke up, he raped and sexually attacked her.
There was some sexual activity when the woman got into bed with him, Diamond told the court, but when she sought to start a full-fledged intercourse, he told her, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
She pushed his hand away, he added, so he tried to touch her again “to almost comfort her because I thought she was getting in a mood” when she turned away from him.
According to Diamond, he “wasn’t really that fussed” and believed the woman to be “in a huff”.
Before the woman got up and announced her intention to depart, he told the court he went to the bathroom and climbed back into bed.
Diamond was “not the entitled, arrogant footballer who thought the world owed him everything, but a 19-year-old man – when he first met the complainant – who made mistakes,” Eleanor Laws KC, who was defending Diamond, said in her closing argument.
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Ms Law stated to the jury: “He is not on trial for being immature, he is not on trial for making mistakes, he is not on trial for misreading the signals about whether he had hurt someone.”
The footballer spent the previous season on loan with Lincoln City, but Sunderland suspended him and the agreement was canceled after he was charged.
“After the legal proceedings have concluded, Jack will now return to the Academy of Light and resume his footballing activity,” read a statement released by Sunderland.
After the decision, Diamond buried his face in his hands and began to cry.