A TEENAGER accused of raping two North-East schoolgirls at the Appleby Horse Fair in Cumbria has been found not guilty.

A jury took less than 90 minutes to clear the 17-year-old after a four-day trial at Carlisle Crown Court.

The teenager, a member of a large family of travellers from County Wexford in Ireland, showed no emotion as the jury foreman returned the unanimous not guilty verdicts.

The two girls, who it has previously been reported are from the Darlington area, like the youth cannot be identified for legal reasons. They claimed he attacked them both within minutes on the Sunday afternoon of the horse fair in 2005.

But, in evidence, he said he had sex with one of the girls with her consent, but had no sexual contact whatsoever with the other.

His barrister, Greg Hoare, told the jury he believed the first girl had willingly had sex with the boy, but afterwards she panicked and invented the rape allegation - backed up by her friends - because she thought it would make it easier to explain her behaviour to her parents if she got pregnant.

The girls said they met the youth while they were watching horses being washed in the river and went for a walk with him.

They said they met him again later in the afternoon, and he walked the 13-year-old into an alleyway where, despite her protests, he raped her.

Once he had finished, they claimed, he transferred his attention to the girl's friend, who was 14, and raped her near a horse box.

A third girl - a friend of the two others, reportedly also from the Darlington area - told the court she too was raped near the horse box, not by the youth on trial, but by one of his associates, who has never been traced.

The youth, on oath, told the court that the girls had invented their stories.

He said he did not know of the girls' allegations until the Irish police arrested him 18 months later