Father not guilty of raping chess champion daughter
Ian Gilbert denied his daughter Jessica’s claims that he forced her to have sex with him in her bedroom at the family home in Woldingham, Surrey, when she was just nine years old.
She told police that he raped her repeatedly until she was 13 years old.
Mr Gilbert had always denied the accusations, telling the court that his daughter may have made them up in a bid for revenge after the pair fell out.
Jessica died, aged 19, when she fell from an eighth-floor hotel room in Pardubice, 65 miles east of Prague, in the Czech Republic, where she had been taking part in an international chess tournament.
It took the jury 15 hours to find Mr Gilbert not guilty of all charges.
Outside Guildford Crown Court, Mr Gilbert’s solicitor Colin Reynolds made a short statement.
He said: “Ian Gilbert fully co-operated with the police inquiry and has strenuously denied these allegations throughout and robustly defended this indictment.”
In a statement issued by Surrey Police, Jessica’s mother Angela said later she felt justice had not been done: “We do not believe that justice has been served. Sadly this is the case for a great many children.”
Throughout the trial prosecutor Dorian Lovell-Pank QC repeatedly confronted Mr Gilbert with the accusations of his daughter that he was a bully who ruled the home with a rod of iron.
But both in the dock and in the witness box, the Royal Bank of Scotland director refused to rise to the bait.
His reserve broke only when he made an impassioned plea to the jury to believe in his innocence.
Tears rolling down his face, he said: “It’s just not something I would even think of.”
The jury heard he had been seen by a doctor for depression shortly before his first marriage and his medical notes branded him “violent and unco-operative”.
In evidence, his father Alan Gilbert said he had no memory of their son ever matching that description.
“It’s not the Ian we brought up,” he said.
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