A mother whose son was yesterday acquitted by a Supreme Court jury of raping a female relative has derided the prosecution?s claim that the pair were cousins.

The 43-year-old told that she was ?delighted? with the not guilty verdict, adding: ?I am one happy mother today. Justice has prevailed. He could have lied or constructed a story but he told the truth. She just did it for attention.?

Her 24-year-old son, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was charged with one count of sexual assault, which he denied.

The prosecution claimed he attacked the woman on her bed after she offered to let him stay at her Pembroke home following a night out in Hamilton last November.

The pair had met by chance in Champions on Reid Street and she had driven him to her address in the early hours of the morning.

The woman told the court during the trial that the pair knew one another well and that she tried to fend him off, crying out: ?What are you doing? Stop, you?re my cousin.?

But the construction worker?s mother said last night that her son?s grandfather and the complainant?s grandmother were brother and sister, making them, in her view, distant relatives.

?They ain?t cousins,? she said. ?They are third cousins, I guess, but he didn?t really know her. He didn?t know what the relationship was.?

She praised her son for taking the stand to give evidence. ?Normally, nobody don?t take the stand. To me, he told the story of the truth. I was hoping that we wasn?t going to regret him telling the truth.?

She said her son, a father-of-one, could not walk free from court because he was in custody for another matter, the nature of which she did not disclose.

Earlier, Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons had told the seven-woman, five-man jury: ?You must decide whom you believe.?

Summing up the evidence, she said the man?s defence was that he believed the woman, a bar worker who was 25 at the time, had given her consent.

The judge said the accused said there were ?indications? that she agreed, including asking him where he was sleeping, not replying when he answered: ?In your bed?, not saying anything when he touched her and opening her legs to ?give him room?.

She asked them to consider whether the complainant?s moans during sex, as described by the defendant, were ?an invitation to carry on?.

And she added: ?You must draw the dividing line between consent and mere submission.?