A SALISBURY man has been cleared of attempting to rape his wife after she told him it was over and wanted him to leave.

It was alleged the 33-year-old man, whose identity the Journal has chosen not to reveal, followed his wife upstairs into their bedroom, pulled her onto the bed and tried to rape her.

Prosecutor Simon Privett told the court the couple, who had been married for seven years, had been having problems for about a month.

On the day of the incident, in March this year, the defendant’s wife had asked him to move out and he had been to look at a mobile home.

On his return, she claimed, he followed her upstairs and tried to rape her.

The woman claimed she repeatedly told him she didn’t want to have sex, but he pinned her down and attempted to force himself on her, only stopping when they were interrupted by her sister.

However Anne Brown, defending, pointed out major inconsistencies between her account and that given by her sister.

“You may think there is very little in her account that supports any part of the woman’s account,” Ms Brown said.

She also pointed to the omission of a crucial detail in police interviews which the woman later spoke of in court, and said she was embellishing her earlier accounts in order to make life as hard as possible for her husband.

“There were nine occasions that she could have corrected her account,” said Ms Brown. “Either she deliberately allowed this false account to stand or she made this exaggeration up.”

A jury of six men and six women took only few hours to find him not guilty.