A NIGHTCLUB bouncer has been cleared of raping a Radcliffe woman he met while working at Sol Viva.

Luke Mesquitta remained impassive as a jury at Bolton Crown Court found him not guilty by a 10 to 2 majority, after nearly four hours deliberation.

Mr Mesquitta (35), from West Bromwich, had been accused of raping the 38-year-old woman, from Radcliffe, on a fire escape at the side of the town centre club.

Giving evidence in the dock on Friday, Mr Mesquitta told the jury that on the night of Friday, January 10, this year, he recognised the woman as she entered the club because she was a fairly regular customer, and they had engaged in lighthearted chit-chat.

He later went round the club on a regular "patrol" and saw the woman standing alone and smiling at him, at which point he joined her. Mr Mesquitta said that he and the woman then left the main part of the club and went into a corridor that led to a fire escape, where they 'kissed and fondled' each other.

As a sexual act was taking place, the woman said to Mr Mesquitta: "I can't, my friends will be looking for me." He said that he took this to mean that the woman wanted sex, but was concerned about the length of time she had been away from her friends in the club.

He said that this was, in his belief, confirmed when the woman told him "you'll have to come round to mine, I'll be raunchy later."

It was at this point, he said, that the woman asked him for a pen and wrote her full address and mobile number on a piece of club paper which he provided. After this, he told the court that he had lifted the woman up and she had wrapped her legs round his waist and her arms round his neck. "If she had been unwilling," he told the jury, "there was no way she would have done that. She had to hold onto me or else she would have stayed on the ground."

When prosecuting counsel Ms Tinas Landale suggested that the woman had been crying and telling him to stop, Mr Mesquitta disagreed. "She never said stop. She was smiling when I left her."