The reason he got off, was because deep down, most people don't really believe rape is all that terrible.
They think that a man going to prison for at least five years for an ill-judged fuck, is far far worse than a woman being raped.
Because men are more valuable than women.
People pay lip service to the idea that rape is terrible. But in reality, they don't think it is.
In the old days, they did, because a man who raped a woman was violating another man's property.
But now he's just violating a woman, it doesn't matter quite as much.
That's why juries bend over backwards to cling onto the unlikeliest possibility of innocence.
I think one useful adaptation could be (not just for rape), that juries could be made to disclose the reasons for conviction. This would also be useful in cases such as that of Sally Clarke, where the jury convicted on the basis of the bogus statistic that was used about the possiblity of cot death. And another adaptation, would be that anyone who sits on a jury of a rape trial, should actually have to sit through a training day where they learned the reality of rape rather than the myths and where they had the opportunity to ask questions so that any rape myths they have in their heads, get an airing and can be discussed openly and dispelled.