Senior lawyers today condemned as a "dreadful error" a court judgement which could strip rape victims of the right to press charges if they were drunk.

A High Court judge yesterday threw out the case of a student who claimed that she was raped while unconscious through alcohol.

The prosecution said that it could not go on after the woman admitted that she could not remember whether she gave consent or not, or whether sex had taken place. The jury at Swansea Crown Court was told: "Drunken consent is still consent."

Mr Justice Roderick Evans agreed, instructing the jury to return a verdict of not guilty "even if you don’t agree".

The verdict cause uproar among survivors' groups and senior lawyers today, who said that it would give the green light to rapists to prey on woman made vulnerable through drink.

Huw Rees, the barrister who prosecuted the Swansea Crown Court case, is to submit a report of the two day trial to the Crown Prosecution Service.

A spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service in London confirmed that a report is expected from Mr Rees.

She added: "He will give us a report of what happened so that we can see whether there are any lessons to be learned. This is something that is done as a matter of course where there is an adverse outcome so we can see whether there are any matters that need to be addressed."

The drama student was allegedly raped by another student, who was working as a security guard, while she claimed she was unconscious through drink in a corridor outside her flat in a university’s hall of residence after a party.

She told the jury that she had no recollection of events but insisted that she would not have agreed to sex with the man. "If I had wanted to sleep with him I would have taken the few steps to my bedroom," she said.

Vera Baird, a criminal QC and Labour MP who is head of the All Party Parliamentary Groups for Domestic Violence and the group for Survivors of Sexual Abuse, said the judge was incorrect.

"He is wrong, there is no doubt about that, it is a dreadful error," she said. "The judge is utterly and totally wrong, he needs to be spoken to and sent on some re-training. This is a dreadful outcome because women will now think they cannot have a single glass of wine - I think this is going to put women off coming forward again and again."

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