U.K. rapper Slowthai was acquitted on rape charges stemming from an allegation that he and a co-defendant attacked two women at a party following a concert in Oxford in 2021, the BBC reports.
The rapper, real name Tyron Frampton, and co-defendant Alex Blake-Walker were both found not guilty on three counts of rape following 10 hours of jury deliberation. Blake-Walker was also found not guilty on an additional charge of sexual assault.
A lawyer for Frampton, as well as an attorney for the prosecution did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s requests for comment. According to reports, Frampton began to cry as the verdict was read and declined to speak with the press while leaving the court with his wife, the singer Anne-Marie.
While the alleged attack took place in September 2021, the allegations against Frampton didn’t come to light until 2023 when he appeared via video link for an early court hearing. The two women who accused Frampton and Blake-Walker did report the incident to police the night it allegedly took place, and Frampton and Blake-Walker were arrested and interviewed at the time.
According to the women, they’d been part of a group that had met Frampton before a show, and Frampton had invited them to a house party afterwards. Per the prosecution, Blake-Walker allegedly raped one woman while Frampton encouraged him, and Frampton allegedly raped the other woman twice while Blake-Walker encouraged him. Prosecutors further claimed that during alleged attack, Frampton and Blake-Walker made jokes, high-fived each other, “discussed ‘tag teams’ and contemplated swapping the girls.”
During the trial, the court heard from a police interview given a week after the alleged attacks, where Frampton’s accuser said he pushed her to the floor and forced her to perform oral sex on him. “I said stop to him,” the woman told the officer. “Slowthai was trying to pull my hair so I would continue.” She said that during the second alleged attack, Frampton pushed her against a wall: “I hadn’t said no, not saying anything, I just pretended I wasn’t really there,” the woman said.
Frampton and Blake-Walker both denied the charges and said the two women had consented. While speaking at the trial, Frampton said that he and Blake-Walker had “fist-bumped,” but claimed it was out of excitement. He went on to claim he was certain the woman was consenting, and stated she “initiated” the oral sex, and he claimed, “The energy she was giving me wasn’t of someone who was not consenting. She was giving me eye contact.”