LON­DON-Two women who helped free a man ac­cused by po­lice of rap­ing them in Bar­ba­dos have ex­pressed out­rage af­ter the is­land's po­lice com­mis­sion­er ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, ac­cord­ing to a BBC re­port.

British na­tion­als Dr Rachel Turn­er of Hert­ford­shire, and Di­ane Davies of An­gle­sey, were re­port­ed­ly raped with­in days of each oth­er in 2010. Both women main­tained from the out­set that the man charged with the rapes, Bar­ba­di­an De­r­ick Craw­ford, was not the man who had as­sault­ed them.

Turn­er, 30, who holds a re­search post at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), and Davies, 63, waived their right to anonymi­ty to voice their con­cerns in the mat­ter, and the case was dis­missed last month. Ac­cord­ing to the BBC re­port, the two women do not un­der­stand why the po­lice kept in­sist­ing on Craw­ford's guilt long af­ter they told them he was not the at­tack­er, and when there was no foren­sic ev­i­dence link­ing him to the crimes.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dar­win Dot­tin nev­er­the­less said the case was in­ves­ti­gat­ed thor­ough­ly. In his first pub­lic com­ment on the case since it was dis­missed, Dot­tin told a news con­fer­ence that the Roy­al Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force had re­viewed the files on the case and there was "noth­ing that would keep me awake at night on the mat­ter."

He sug­gest­ed that Turn­er and Davies may not have recog­nised the at­tack­er be­cause he was a "dif­fer­ent race." Turn­er told the BBC she was "al­most speech­less" at the re­sponse by Com­mis­sion­er Dot­tin to the women's con­cerns. She said it was "pre­pos­ter­ous and so in­sult­ing" to sug­gest that she would not recog­nise her at­tack­er, adding that she was con­cerned that the po­lice did not seem in­ter­est­ed in find­ing the at­tack­er.

Davies said: "It is in­cred­u­lous he can make these claims (that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was thor­ough). Dar­win Dot­tin needs to find the man who did these rapes and apol­o­gise to my­self and Rachel." The two women have called for a full in­de­pen­dent in­quiry in­to how po­lice han­dled the case, a call sup­port­ed by Bar­ba­dos To­day ed­i­tor Roy Mor­ris, ac­cord­ing to the BBC.

Mean­while, Craw­ford, 47, who spent 18 months in jail, said he would be seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion af­ter be­ing im­pris­oned for a crime he did not com­mit. Craw­ford told a news con­fer­ence in Bar­ba­dos that he was co­erced in­to mak­ing a con­fes­sion.