TWO former police officers were cleared yesterday of raping a drunken crime victim at her home, but both were jailed for 15 months for having sex while on duty.

The former constables Mark Witcher, 30, and Andrew Lang, 31, showed no emotion as Mr Justice Davis called them “a disgrace” at the end of a retrial at Winchester Crown Court.

They were acquitted of rape and indecent assault, but found guilty of three counts of misconduct in public office in September 2003 when they had sex with the hairdresser at her home in Godalming, Surrey.

The alleged victim, a mother of three, sobbed uncontrollably and had to be helped from the public gallery by police officers.

At an earlier trial last October a jury failed to agree verdicts on the sex charges but convicted the two men of the misconduct offences.

Both were dismissed from the Surrey force last year. Yesterday it emerged that they had a reputation for inappropriate behaviour to women at their station in Guildford.

During the trial the jury heard that the officers attended an incident outside the Harlequin nightclub in Godalming and found that the woman had been assaulted by “three northern blokes” while celebrating a friend’s birthday.

The woman, who had drunk 12 double vodkas with Red Bull, was excitable and told them that she could identify the men if she saw them again. She got into their patrol car to search for her attackers, only for Witcher to make explicit comments about her breasts.

In the witness box, he denied making the remarks, but admitted calling her a “lusty busty northerner” and claimed that she said: “I have never been with two policemen before.”

In evidence, the woman said that she was so drunk that she had to be helped from the car and into her home by the officers. Once inside, she alleged, they raped her as her children and a babysitter slept upstairs.

The officers denied one count each of rape and one of indecent assault.

Witcher, a married man with a young daughter, said that he had found the woman attractive but that the threesome was initiated by her. He was now ashamed and deeply regretted having sex with her.

Lang, who is unmarried, claimed that the woman had said it was her fantasy to have sex with two men in uniform. He said: “I should have walked away, but it was spontaneous and consensual and I made a total mistake by staying there.”

Later the constables went back to Guildford police station, where they boasted to a colleague that they had given a woman a “roasting” and that Lang had answered his radio during the sex and had replied: “Area search no trace.”

In the following weeks both officers bragged to colleagues that they had had sex with the woman. When senior officers heard of the boasts, an inquiry was launched, the officers’ notebooks were seized and the woman was traced. It was then that she made the rape allegations and the constables were arrested in February last year.

Mr Justice Davis told the defendants: “What you did, in my view, is a disgrace and you have brought great disgrace on yourselves, on the uniform you wore that night and the reputation of the Surrey Police force.”

Mark Rowley, the Surrey Police Assistant Chief Constable, said outside: “I welcome their conviction and imprisonment. We sacked them at the first opportunity and are now applying to the Home Office to seize their pensions.”

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