A FORMER Carlisle man found not guilty of rape has shared his experience of the two years of horror he endured, that brought him to the brink of suicide.

Aaron Miller was last Friday cleared of three counts of rape after a week-long trial at Carlisle Crown Court.

Mr Miller, 39, had lived in Carlisle for more than a decade before an allegation of rape made against him in September 2018 forced him out of the county as part of his bail conditions.

From the moment he was arrested to his acquittal last Friday, Mr Miller said he endured two years of “hell”, and credits his family and his fiancée with helping him through.

Acknowledging that others in similar situations might not have family or a partner to lean on, Mr Miller has called for more professional mental health support to be given to those facing the sort of allegations he did.

For Mr Miller, last Friday’s not guilty verdict on the three counts of rape he faced was the culmination of two years of “mental torture”. “I just broke down in tears,” he said, recalling the moment the unanimous jury decision was declared.

“It was so surreal. It was like it wasn’t happening. The dock guard had to reach out to try and stop me falling. I just sat down and broke down in tears.

“When I came out of the court, my mum, my dad and my stepdad were there. I just flung myself on my parents, just crying with joy.”

Since September 2018, when the allegation was made, Mr Miller said he was constantly “living and breathing” the ordeal.

“It never left my head. It was like I had someone sitting on my shoulder constantly, reminding me what was going on. It was wrecking me. I just lost who I was. It affected everything.

“I felt like everyone thought I was a monster.

“I had a lot of friends and associates in Carlisle when I was there. I’d been living there for 12 years. To think that when all this came out, that they would think that of me. It was soul-crushing.”

Mr Miller spoke about how close the ordeal brought him to suicide. “I contemplated taking my own life a couple of times,” he said. “I had times where I thought I could pull through it, and I had times where I was really low, where I asked myself ‘what’s the point?’

“But my family kept pulling me out and pulling me up.”

Mr Miller said the last few weeks before the trial was the most intense period.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said. “I was sitting up all night, all sorts of things running through my head, the what-ifs – if I did get sent down, would I ever see my family again?”

Mr Miller said that across the past two years, there were two occasions where he was “minutes” from attempting suicide.

“It got to a point where I had a handful of pills in my hand, and I don’t know what it was that stopped me.”

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“I was minutes away. I can’t recall the actual moments.

“But I remember having them in my hand, looking at them.

“Thankfully, I had all the support of my family, my partner and her family.”

Despite having that support, Mr Miller said the sense that his plight was a burden on them weighed on his mind.

“You get to that point where you think ‘I don’t want to keep putting on them. I don’t want to keep pestering them with it, laying it on them all the time.

“I started to feel guilty. And I think that’s where a couple of times that may have helped take me towards nearly taking my own life.

“It’s a mixture of everything. It’s pain, it’s guilt. You feel bad for your family.”

Mr Miller said that if he had had “someone independent, on the outside so to speak”, that he could have spoken to “once, twice or three times a week”, it would have made the process easier to cope with.

“I know a lot of people don’t have that family support. They are limited to the support they do have, family-wise or whatever.

“It could end very badly.”

Both Mr Miller and his doctor attempted to arrange for some mental health support, from multiple organisations.

But he was instead advised to wait until the trial had been completed.

“Personally, I don’t think I got enough support, with any sort of organisations,” Mr Miller said.

“I was told we would have to see the outcome of the case first.

“I had nowhere to turn on the counselling side of things.

“Being told that I had to wait to see how things would pan out while I was waiting, it didn’t help while I was waiting.

“You’re left by yourself.”

Mr Miller added that for him, and many others in similar positions, expensive private healthcare was not a viable option.

“I think that there should be something in place to help people through the process, not after it,” he said.

In addition to the potentially 10 years or more in prison Mr Miller faced, the nature of the allegations made against him meant a place on the sex offenders’ register was also a constant threat hanging over his head for the past two years.

“That in itself was horrible,” he said.

“If there was anything I needed to do in my life in future, I would have to tell people that, and state that.

“To have to say that about yourself, you just can’t comprehend how disturbed and distraught that would make you.

“I couldn’t imagine it, I wouldn’t want to imagine it ever again. But I have.”

The anguish that Mr Miller experienced was prolonged by the unexpected impact of Covid-19.

His original trial date was April, though the imposition of the nationwide lockdown the previous month meant it was moved to October.

“From January this year, I knew the date of the trial. I was mentally trying to prepare myself,” Mr Miller explained.

“Part of me was relieved it was put back, but a huge part of me was distraught, that I had to go through more time.

“By this time it had been 18 months. That six months of waiting was awful.”

Recent news of rising Covid-19 cases stoked Mr Miller’s fears that the trial might have been delayed further.

“You’re just stuck in that mindset, thinking it’s going to get put back and back.

“It makes you wonder if it’s ever going to end.

“I got to the point where I had run out of fight, where I was running on empty all through last week.

“I just couldn’t seem to summon up the fight to carry on, but somehow or other I did.”

Mr Miller said that the experience of the trial itself was “horrible”.

“I could feel everything coming in on me, crushing me slowly, bit by bit.

“It sucks the living soul out of you.

“It’s a horrible, horrible experience.”

Mr Miller added that in an “intimate, sexual way, I’m a private person”.

As such, for the details of the case to be laid out to “20-odd people” felt “degrading”, Mr Miller said.

“It was like someone had ripped me open and took my insides and laid them out for everybody to see. It was horrible.”

Now the trial is complete, and a not guilty verdict has been returned, Mr Miller hopes to begin the process of healing the mental “scars” that the past two years has left, and look towards moving on with his life.

“It’s still sinking in,” he said.

“To wake up in the mornings with it not there on my mind anymore. To be able to get a decent night’s sleep without it being on my mind.”

One prospect Mr Miller hopes to soon realise is to marry his partner, who he now lives with in Manchester.

“She has been absolutely brilliant. She stuck by, she supported me, in any way possible that she could.

“She’s been by my side the whole time.

“We had these plans but we had to keep everything on hold, because we didn’t know what was going to happen.

“Now I’m just looking forward to living my life, being a good future husband to my fiancée, being a good dad, living life to the full as much as I can.”