HE HAD waited 17 months to clear his name – but now a Basingstoke man has walked free after being found not guilty of historic sexual abuse crimes involving a teenage girl.

A jury of nine men and three woman took just over an hour last Thursday to acquit Gary Edwards of two counts of rape and one charge of indecent assault.

Mr Edwards, of Willmott Way, Winklebury, put his hand to his mouth on hearing the verdicts. He thanked the jury before walking out of the dock and embracing family and friends outside Court One at Winchester Crown Court.

The 46-year-old had always denied raping the teenage girl in the early 1990s, when he was in his 20s, at his then home in Basingstoke.

During the four-day trial, the prosecution alleged that Mr Edwards had befriended the girl and plied her with cannabis before raping her over a period of several months.

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said she reported the matter only recently, after seeking counselling, and her allegations led to the arrest of Mr Edwards.

The court heard Mr Edwards has had to wait 17 months to put his case before a jury following his arrest in July last year.

Giving evidence, he described the alleged victim’s account as “fiction”.

He told the jury that although he and the girl did have a relationship, it was not sexual, and he denied ever threatening her or controlling her.

Mr Edwards said that she had gone to his bedroom on occasion, but only to watch TV, and that his heroin addiction at the time had left him with no sexual desires.

In his closing speech to the jury, Adam Feast said his client was a “lonely, vulnerable man” at the time of the friendship, and had been “rather flattered” by the attention.

He told the jury: “I suggest when you look at the picture that is being painted, look at it carefully, and you will start to see that the picture the Crown is concocting is not as authentic as they say. Did Gary Edwards strike you as a forceful, threatening man? I suggest not.”

The alleged victim gave evidence to the jury from behind a screen.

She admitted, under cross-examination from Mr Feast, that she told the jury the wrong age for when she said the abuse started.

She had initially said that she was 11 or 12 when she first met Mr Edwards, but later said she was 12 going on 13.

Mr Feast asked if she was trying to make matters worse for Mr Edwards, and asked if she was “exaggerating a relationship that was completely non-sexual”.