A UK Border Force officer will NOT have to face a third trial accused of carrying out a rape at a notorious Kent dogging spot.

Father-of-two Neil Crosland, 43, was formerly discharged yesterday – when the Crown Prosecution Service dropped 11 counts of rape and sexual assault.

Two juries at Canterbury Crown Court failed to reach verdicts on the charges – although he had been acquitted of four sex offences in the first trial.

Newly married Crosland, of Federland Road, Worth had pleaded not guilty to all the offences.

But his boss, bearded Richard Nixon, received a stern dressing down by Judge Adele Williams at the end of the second trial.

She accused him of being unprofessional and of “taking sides” after he revealed, during his evidence, that Crosland had faced an earlier trial."

The judge told him later: “You should know just how angry I was on the day you gave evidence because you potentially put the retrial at risk.

You should know just how angry I was on the day you gave evidence because you potentially put the retrial at risk..." - Judge Adele Williams to witness Richard Nixon

“And as an experienced customs officer you must have given evidence in court on hundreds of occasions, I cannot understand what possessed you to say that.”

Mr Nixon replied: “I am sorry, it was a mistake and I realise that now”.

But the judge continued: “One of the things which worries me is the possibility that you did it deliberately, because your evidence was extremely partisan and you had plainly taken sides.

“Although I have decided to take no further action against you I can only emphasise how serious a matter it is that you, by one remark, put the whole of the rape trial in jeopardy.

“And you did so, in my judgement, because you had taken sides between the prosecution and defence and you sought to usurp the power of the judge and jury.”

The judge ordered Mr Nixon to sit for two days outside the court until she summoned him to the witness box for a dressing down.

She said: “I just hope you have had time to reflect on your conduct because it doesn’t reflect well upon you.”

Judge Wiliams told him she was reporting him to his superiors for “putting the whole of a rape trial in jeopardy”.

Nixon, a senior officer with the UK Border Force, had appeared in the dock dressed in his uniform when he let slip it was a retrial.

The judge and lawyers immediately asked the jury to leave court as she criticised the senior official before allowing the hearing to continue.

The judge also ordered a ban on details of the incident being published, until a decision had been made by senior lawyers with the CPS.

A complaint from Kent Police about Mr Nixon’s conduct is also expected to follow.

Today, prosecutor Dominic Connolly told the judge that the CPS had decided not to ask for a third trial and the judge formerly recorded not guilty verdicts against Crosland.

But Judge Williams did issue a restraining order against him for the next two years.