On a Friday afternoon at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London, a jury returned its verdict on one of the more scrutinised criminal trials to touch the British film and television world in recent years: Micheal Ward, the 28-year-old actor best known for the Netflix series Top Boy and the film Blue Story, was acquitted on all five counts — two of rape and three of sexual assault — that had been laid against him. The charges arose from an encounter on 2 January 2023, when Ward met the complainant, who cannot be named under British law, at a nightclub in east London. He invited her to join him in a car, and it was there, the prosecution alleged, that the assault took place. In court, Ward described the encounter as wholly consensual, telling the jury that the woman had been pulling him close, that he read her gestures as invitation, and that the two had exchanged warm messages afterwards — including a smiling emoji with a heart — before parting.

The woman gave a deeply different account from the witness stand, breaking down as she told the court that she had completely shut down during the encounter and had, on multiple occasions, told Ward she needed to leave. On her journey home that same night, she had ordered an STI testing kit, ticking a box to indicate she believed she had been sexually assaulted. Ward was arrested sixteen days after the alleged incident and denied the allegation from the outset in a prepared police statement.