A COMMUNITY protection officer has been cleared of raping a woman but convicted of using a police computer to find out if she had made an allegation.

Dean Farley was alleged to have raped the woman as she slept at his Carlton home and then checked police computers to see if she had made a formal complaint.

Police staff are forbidden from making personal searches on police computers and must speak to their line manager even for legitimate inquiries.

Derby Crown Court heard Farley had searched on a police computer the day after the woman texted him to say she had not consented to sex the previous night.

An audit of the computer log-in code Farley used revealed he had searched for the road on which he lived, the name of the street where the woman lived and postcodes relating to the addresses and general area.

Farley, 26, was arrested, interviewed and charged with rape and misuse of a police computer.

A jury found him not guilty of rape, but he was convicted of two charges of unauthorised access to computer material under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Farley has been bailed and will be sentenced on September 21.