A former factory cleaner alleged to have tried to "poison" colleagues by spiking office coffee with Viagra has been cleared more than five years after she was first accused.

Karen Beale, described as someone who wanted to "help not hurt" people and with no previous convictions or cautions, was found not guilty today (Thursday) by a jury of seven men and five women.

The 62-year-old had claimed during her three-day trial at Canterbury Crown Court that she had been "set-up", suggesting one senior staff member found her "irritating", and that the camera footage had itself been tampered with.

The former Dover resident told the jury she simply checked one Nescafe Blend 37 coffee jar "under instruction" from the general manager and maintained she had never added any substance to it.

Ms Beale, who worked as a holistic therapist before becoming a cleaner, was unanimously cleared after jury deliberations lasting just over three hours.

She had denied two offences of attempting to administer a poison or other destructive or noxious thing with intent to injure, aggrieve or annoy between November 2017 and September 2018.

The mum of three thanked the jury as she was released from the dock and a young woman, believed to be her daughter, sobbed in the public gallery.

Despite Ms Beale's arrest in September 2018, proceedings took three years to reach the crown court and the case was then given an initial trial listing in January 2022.

However, it did not get underway until earlier this week.

After the verdicts had been returned, Judge Simon Taylor KC told jurors the delay had been due, in part, to Covid.

"This case was very old and delayed due to various events we have experienced including the worldwide pandemic, but it needed to be resolved and has been now thanks to your hard work and dedication," he explained.

At a pre-trial hearing in December last year, the same judge had remarked that the court "owed Ms Beale an apology" for such a lengthy wait.

The trial heard she had been employed at fire protection product manufacturer Envirograf in Dover for seven years when she was secretly filmed allegedly fiddling with the jar of instant granules in September 2018.

The covert camera had been placed in the spine of a lever arch file after the firm's accountant Katrina Gravenor began to notice a strange taste, blue and white specks, and a slurry in her drink.

"Not what you would expect to be in Nescafe," said prosecutor Matthew Hodgetts at the start of Beale's trial.

The court heard Ms Gravenor, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, had started to feel ill and stopped drinking her coffee when she noticed the "specks".

She then installed the motion-activated camera, switching it on when she left her office at night and turning it off once back at work in the morning.

Filming started around mid-August 2018 and when she checked the footage a few weeks later she saw Ms Beale, employed to clean at night, handling her coffee jar.

Ms Gravenor, who had been appointed as accountant when Ms Beale's husband James worked for the firm in credit control, then took the memory card to a friend, asking him to copy the clips, and handed it in to police.

Giving evidence, she said the footage was "genuine", had not been tampered with and was not "part of a plan" to incriminate her colleague.

She added she had not discussed the issue with general manager Paul Ackerman-Mond and there had been no disagreements between herself and Ms Beale.

In the 13-minute-long footage, with the first clip dated September 10 2018, Ms Beale could be seen wearing blue latex gloves as she picked up the jar, occasionally shook it, and took off the lid to decant some of the contents before placing it back onto a shelf.

One clip also showed her using her sleeve pulled over her bare hand in what the prosecution alleged was an attempt to avoid leaving fingerprints behind.

Police were alerted and it was discovered that the jar, as well as one in the office belonging to company secretary Jean Smith, contained a number of abnormal 'ingredients'.

These included Sildenafil - an erectile dysfunction treatment sold under the Viagra brand name - as well as a medication for high cholesterol.

But although none of the chemicals were toxic or would have "necessarily caused problems", explained the prosecutor, it was said the full-time cleaner had "hoped and intended it would have some effect".

Ms Beale, who lived in The Street in Eythorne, Dover, but now has an address in Winsley in Westbury, Shropshire, had previously worked as therapist based in Faversham and then her home.

In a character reference provided to the court, a former client described her as someone with "integrity and compassion" who would "help people not harm".

Following Ms Beale's arrest she was sacked from her job for gross misconduct, a decision she appealed.

Police also searched her home but did not find any substances which could have been used to contaminate the coffee.

Giving evidence at her trial, Ms Beale denied tampering with the coffee or having any reason to do so.

She said she had been told by Mr Ackerman-Mond on September 10 2018 about Ms Gravenor's concerns and he asked her to "keep an eye on it".

Ms Beale added the footage showed her checking the coffee but she told the jury: "I didn't know what I was looking for."

She accepted she had not told police about her manager's instruction when she was arrested and interviewed for fear of reprisals at work.

Ms Beale also claimed the date on one clip was wrong and appeared as though "extra bits had been put in".

In his closing speech to the jury, her barrister Ben Irwin argued that the camera footage had not come from an "impartial, disconnected" source and that "manipulation" by editing the clips was possible.

But he added that when his client was on camera, they showed her inspecting the jar, as she said she had been asked to, and not someone, as the prosecution claimed, with "a real desire to hurt people and get them out of their jobs".

"Why is there nothing before the Monday? Why is there nothing in August? It just starts on September 10. Isn't that strange, and isn't that consistent with what she says?" Mr Irwin asked the jury.

"There is no footage of how the substance came to be in there. How have the contaminants got into the coffee? Why is it we have all this footage but we don't actually see anything going into the coffee?

"What we see is Karen Beale looking at the coffee carefully. Perfectly consistent with her case. We don't see her putting anything in the coffee. She doesn't know the camera is there.

"Her evidence is clear. She never put contaminants in the coffee and that has never changed."

The prosecution suggested that possible motivations for Ms Beale's alleged criminality were a bid to regain jobs for her husband and daughter, who had both left the company six weeks earlier, or even "an amusing power trip".

Mr Hodgetts told the jury: "This is an odd crime, an unusual crime, but there are people in this world who will get a bit of a kick from the idea something untoward is being done to those two women's coffee."

The prosecutor alleged Ms Beale had then "invented conspiracy theories" that she had been framed in a bid to deflect the accusations.

Mr Ackerman-Mond told the court when he gave evidence that he had no knowledge of the hidden camera and had not "encouraged" Ms Beale to check the coffee.

At the end of the trial, Judge Taylor ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the coffee.