A FORMER traffic warden cleared of rape has failed in a new legal bid to bring a £300,000 damages claim against his accuser for malicious prosecution.

Lawyers for North Dorset man Anthony Hunt, 66, had told three civil appeal judges that he wanted to "vindicate his reputation" by obtaining a judgement against the woman, referred to as AB, who had asked him into her home for a cup of tea and, he claimed, consented to sex.

But the Court of Appeal ruled that AB could not be sued for malicious prosecution as she was not "the prosecutor".

She had not gone straight to the police and had not made it clear that she wanted Mr Hunt prosecuted – and even if she had done so, the intervention of the police and Crown Prosecution Service would have made them the prosecutors and not her.

Mr Hunt was convicted after a two-week trial at Winchester Crown Court during which he claimed he was incapable of rape because he had an abnormally small penis which, together with medical problems, meant that intercourse could only be a mutual act.

He was accused of raping the woman after he had finished work at the Fordingbridge Show in July 1995, although she made no formal complaint until eight years later.

He was released on appeal in December 2005 after judges branded the conviction unsafe, ruling that the trial judge had misdirected the jury.

No retrial was ordered because Mr Hunt, of Blandford St Mary, had already served two years of his four-year prison sentence.

Mr Hunt’s lawyers had argued that, by giving a witness statement to Hampshire police in May 2002, and by agreeing to give evidence against him, AB became the prosecutor.

The case, believed to be the first of its kind, is regarded as potentially significant, not only for acquitted defendants like Mr Hunt, but also for women in the same position as AB, who might be discouraged from coming forward to make complaints.

The question of whether there will be a further appeal to the Supreme Court has yet to be decided.