AN ex-student accused of raping two women and sexually assaulting two others will have to wait to learn his fate.

The jury retired to consider verdicts in the trial of former University of Worcester student Sam Ringer at Hereford Crown Court at around 1pm yesterday.

However, by 4pm the panel had failed to reach unanimous verdicts and so will resume its deliberations this morning.

The 20-year-old, then living at Ankerdine hall at St John’s Campus in Worcester, denies two counts of rape, two sexual assaults and one count of assault by penetration.

Yesterday Judge Daniel Pearce-Higgins QC summed up the case to the jury. The first rape is alleged to have taken place in Worcester on November 14, 2017 while the complainant was drunk.

Ringer is accused of sexually assaulting a second woman who had also been drinking after walking her home in Worcester on January 16 last year.

The prosecution say Ringer then raped and carried out a penetrative assault on a third woman, also in Worcester, later that night, again after walking her home while she was under the influence of alcohol.

A fourth complainant says she was sexually assaulted by Ringer in Ilkeston, Derbyshire where the defendant now lives with his parents. This assault is said to have taken place on July 12 last year and involved kissing and touching her bottom and a nipple piercing.

Ringer, the grandson of a vicar, has maintained throughout that all sexual activity was consensual and the women were willing and even ‘flirty’, claiming he felt a ‘connection’ with them.

The woman in the alleged November rape said Ringer walked her home before locking the door of her room behind them. Describing herself as ‘really drunk’, she said she replied ‘whatever’ when Ringer asked her if she wanted to have sex. “I didn’t have any fight in me” she said and described herself falling asleep during sex.

The court heard how Ringer offered to walk the alleged second victim home on January 16. She says he then sexually assaulted her in her room.

She described him pulling off her clothes before she told him she felt sick, taking her phone to the bathroom so she could text her boyfriend and friends for help.

The woman said: “I punched him to the left side of his jaw.”

Her account is that Ringer swore in response and left.

But Ringer claims she was willing and at one stage said ‘get into bed’.

One of the woman’s friends said Ringer spoke to them on the way out of her room, telling them: “I’ve still got my clothes on. Nothing happened.”

The prosecution case is that minutes later Ringer, after leaving the woman’s flat, made contact with the third complainant who had argued with her friends and was ‘hyperventilating’. Ringer is then said to have calmed her down, walked her home and raped her. The defendant says sex was consensual and she led him inside.

She said: “He just wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

The woman, estimating she was nine out of 10 on a scale of drunkenness, added: “I didn’t know what to do so I just lay there. I looked at my bed and I was bleeding all over my sheets. There was so much blood.”

She said: “I was scared he would put his hand over my mouth or hit me or something.”

The trial continues.