A 29-YEAR-OLD man was dramatically cleared of two rapes after a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to convict him of the charges.

Kevin Turner had denied raping a former partner at a house in Gifford in 2017 and claimed she had consented to sex.

The woman, now aged 26, gave evidence that she had not consented to “rough” sex sessions which left her bruised and bleeding.

After hearing legal submissions on day three of Turner’s trial at the High Court in Livingston, Judge Lord Braid ruled that there was no case to answer on both rape charges.

He formally found Turner not guilty of the rapes and also acquitted him of assaulting the woman to her injury and behaving in a threatening and abusive manner towards her after the Crown withdrew those charges.

In agreed evidence which was given to the jury at the close of the Crown case on Friday, it emerged that Turner’s DNA had been found on the neck of a Japanese tourist he is accused of strangling with intent to rape her at an Airbnb in Musselburgh on February 9, 2019.

Jurors were also told that the young woman, who was on a three-day whistlestop tour of the Edinburgh area, had identified the accused from photographs shown to her by detectives investigating the case.

The 24-year-old woman – speaking through an interpreter via a live TV link from Tokyo – told how her attacker forced his way into her flat, demanded sex and pulled her jeans down before touching her on the body.

She later told police that the man who assaulted her had distinctive tattoos. The prosecution showed the court photographs of tattoos which Turner has on his neck and arms.

The jury was also told that a 50-year-old woman to whom Turner allegedly made a sexual remark in an Edinburgh public park had also identified him from a set of photographs shown to her by police.

In evidence, she described the accused as a "sexual predator" and claimed he was a "weird oddball".

Turner, 29, who is from Leith, Edinburgh, but has a current address in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, is still on trial on two remaining charges.

He denies assaulting the Japanese woman with intent to rape her on February 9, 2019, and committing a statutory breach of the peace by approaching the older woman at Harrison Park, Edinburgh, on May 7, 2019, and directing a sexual remark towards her.

The trial, before Lord Braid, continues.