A married man accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl broke down in tears clutching his wife after being found not guilty yesterday in Supreme Court.

After four hours of deliberation, the jury returned a majority not guilty verdict to the charges of having unlawful carnal knowledge of a 14-year-old girl on July 24, July 29 and August 7 of last year.

Defence lawyer Elizabeth Christopher said they were very happy with the result.

"It's proof that a jury system works," she said.

The two-week trial had revealed multiple text messages and e-mails between the 37-year-old man and the teenage girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, which the prosecution argued provided evidence of a sexual relationship.

Going over some of the e-mail messages in court, the alleged victim read one aloud where the defendant told her to save herself until she was 18 years old so he could divorce his wife and run away with her to an island in the Pacific Ocean.

Other e-mails mentioned "dirty thoughts" they were having about each other.

Communication between the two was discovered by the girl's father on August 11, the last day the man and teenager were supposed to meet each other.

Ms Christopher, however, argued that the e-mails and text messages only proved that there was an inappropriate relationship between the two — not a sexual one. A relationship the 14-year-old hoped would become more serious.

When the married man said he would wait until she was 18 to have sex with her, Ms Christopher argued the teenager got upset and created the sexual relationship.

Questions were also raised about the teenager's credibility as telephone logs of her phone found multiple calls and e-mails to four teenage boys, who could not be named for legal reasons, some as late as 1 a.m. during the summer.

So, while the 37-year-old never denied e-mailing the teenager or having an inappropriate relationship with her, since his first Police interview on August 13 of last year, he never admitted to having a sexual relationship with her.

He thought he had been arrested for his inappropriate relationship with the girl.

Yesterday, as the jury found him not guilty on all three counts of unlawful carnal knowledge of a 14-year-old girl, he broke into tears of joy.