A convicted sex attacker accused of raping again has been cleared by a jury.

John Farrar, 38, who was jailed back in 1998 for three counts of raping a young girl, indecent assault and gross indecency with a child, was alleged to have raped a woman in her flat last November.

But at the end of a three-day trial the four men and eight women on the jury returned a unanimous not guilty verdict on a single count of rape.

Prosecutor Christopher Attwooll had said that Farrar forced himself on his alleged victim and dragged her into her bedroom. There it was claimed that he pinned the woman to the bed, put his hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming and raped her.

Farrar, of Newcastle House, Bradford, had always denied the charge and said that the complainant, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had consented to sex with him.

Farrar, who was on remand at the time, is behind bars after he was locked up for three years for breaching a sexual offences prevention order imposed after he was released from his eight-year sentence.

Under the terms of the order Farrar, who was locked up back in 1988 for gross indecency with a child, was banned from having any unsupervised contact with children. At a hearing before the trial Farrar had admitted three breaches of the order.

Passing sentence Judge Geoffrey Marson QC told him: "You have a significant record for offences of a sexual nature and these offences appear to have been committed against children. In the eyes of the law they are vulnerable and for good reason you were subject to a sexual offences prevention order on your release."

The judge added: "These restrictions are there to protect children and prevent you from further offending."

Farrar's barrister Rodney Ferm told the judge that no actual harm had come to any child through the breaches although he conceded that they had been committed over a prolonged period of time.