Amongst those cast out from the first trial were the original claims by Kirk (he "bravely waived his anonymity" in The Sun later for a large sum of money).

The five men in my first trial were the most recent claims (from the late 70s and 80s).

When I was originally arrested (after Kirk's false allegations - I had never even met him) - the publicity was enormous. The main newspaper with an online profile then (2000) was The Guardian, which had hugely covered my arrest in detail and those facts remained there for all to read.

I'm almost certain that, when the jury was stale mating on whether I was guilty or not guilty, one of them went online one evening, found all that earlier information from a year earlier, assumed I had been "done" before - as the details were totally different from those heard in my trial - and told the other jurors who, as a result, went guilty rather than not guilty, assuming I'd done it before.

They had been told by the Judge NOT to read the papers - who also asked them, before swearing them in, if they had read any coverage, dropping them if they had - but had not been told not to go online. In 2001 the Internet was quite a new phenomenon.

As you know, I was found NOT guilty in the second trial and the Judge then ordered the prosecution to drop the other claims and cancelled the three other trials, sentencing me for the first trial verdict as a sample of all historic claims. I still wonder why the NOT GUILTY verdict in the second trial wasn't considered the example.