A MALE nurse accused of sexually assaulting a man he met in a gay bar wept in court after a jury cleared him of the charge.

Family and friends of Christopher Wales also burst into tears when the not guilty verdict was announced yesterday afternoon.

Mr Wales, 38, was said to have performed a sex act on the 20-year-old as he slept at his home in Middlesbrough last year.

The defendant insisted the pair had been drinking lager and cuddling on his sofa before he put his hand down the man's trousers.

He told a jury at Teesside Crown Court that he then performed a sex act on him, but stopped as soon as he was asked to.

He said the allegation had ruined his life, and his lawyer described the prosecution as "a disgrace" during his closing speech.

Robert Mochrie, defending, said the revelation that Mr Wales was HIV positive was an attempt to bring a stigma to the case.

Mr Wales told the jury during his evidence that treatment since he was diagnosed in 2009 had virtually wiped out the virus.

He said he could have a baby with a woman and it would not be infected, and he would have told his accuser had "things gone further".

After the pair's brief encounter ended downstairs, Mr Wales went to bed - and was then brutally assaulted by the younger man.

He said he was repeatedly punched before managing to kick his attacker out the room and barricade the door, but he smashed throng it.

"I could feel the numbness," he told the jury yesterday. "It ads like I was going to pass out. I thought I need to get away.

"I feel like I'm going to be killed. I locked him out on the landing, shut the bedroom door, got hold of the handle and shouted 'get out'.

"I heard two or three bangs and a smash, which was him putting my computer chair through my front bedroom window.

"Then the attack started on the door immediately, and the door started smashing through. It was the mirror and then the washing basket."

Mr Wales's house was wrecked and the accuser wrote "rape" in toothpaste on the bathroom floor after he ran next door for help.

The complainant said his attack was in self-defence, but Mr Wales: "As my friends would describe, I'm the biggest wuss you could ever meet.

"I have never been violent towards anybody in my entire life."

Mr Wales, of Ashling Way, Middlesbrough, said he thought the accuser - who has been with his girlfriend since he was 15 - was "curious" when he turned up at the nightclub.

He said he invited him home after chatting for an hour and a half, and he agreed, and insisted he would never put anyone at risk of infection.