A student president accused of raping an undergraduate after a freshers’ party was cleared yesterday.

The jury at Nottingham Crown Court had spent less than two hours deliberating before giving its verdict.

Jonathan Hagan, 22, a third-year maths student, had denied attacking an 18-year-old fresher who was only six days into her course at Nottingham University.

Mr Hagan, who was president of the female student’s hall of residence, was visibly relieved when Judge Tony Mitchell told him: “You are very well aware that your conduct that night left you with some very considerable doubts, morally if nothing else. You have a very bright future ahead of you and no doubt this is a lesson that will take a very long time to overcome.”

During the trial, the court was told that, as a student representative, Mr Hagan had been asked to take the teenager home from the freshers’ ball that he had helped to organise in October last year as she was too drunk to stay.

She alleged that he attacked her after they arrived at her room, saying that she remembered him taking off her underwear before she passed out. She said that she woke the next day to find his mobile telephone number and the slogan, “I pulled the president”, scrawled across her stomach in red ink.

Mr Hagan denied the charge, telling the jury that they had had consensual sex and that she had asked him to write the message on her.

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