Footballer Ched Evans cleared of raping teenager after complainant's sexual history is put before court

DevilishRogue · 2016-10-14T16:48:13+00:00

The state of justice in the UK. An innocent man spends two and a half years in prison, branded as a rapist and subject to all the violence that entails. When he is released he was prevented from returning to his former club and profession with club employees and their families being threatened and intimidated. Eventually he won a quashing of his ridiculous conviction and was cleared at retrial thanks to new evidence which frankly shouldn't have been needed or relevant as the initial evidence presented should have resulted in a not guilty verdict. Only Evans, his supporters and Chesterfield FC come out of this whole sorry episode with any dignity.

He probably won't see a penny in compensation despite having to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds to clear his name, money that the average accused in Evans' situation doesn't have access to. I said from the start the conviction was obscene but it took years, cost him the best part of his career, his good name and untold lost millions of pounds in career earnings. From how he was performing at Sheff Utd he was due to be snapped up by one of the big clubs. With his prime development years spent in prison he'll be lucky if he ever plays in the Premiership now. The whole stitch up has been a disgrace and happens to too many innocent men who lack Evans' resources. It's time to change rape laws to make convictions more difficult to obtain when innocent men are getting convicted when even the evidence presented by the alleged victim is that she doesn't know whether she gave consent or not.

Xristos_Xristos_III · 2016-10-14T17:29:03+00:00

I think you should understand this outcome as a victory for a certain kind of feminist rather than a legal one for Evans.

Just look at the language of the report (my italics):

Ched Evans successfully overturned his conviction for raping a teenage girl ....

By calling a 19 year-old woman, a woman who Evans (and Clayton McDonald) had met after she had been to a nightclub and after she had spent the day at work, a "teenage girl" is - while factually accurate - clearly implying that she was vulnerable and taken advantage of by the older Evans.

In case that reference to a "a teenage girl" doesn't make it clear to the reader that Evans is a total shit in the eyes of this report, this later line makes it completely unambiguous (my italics):

Evans, 27, had admitted to having sex with the teenager in a hotel in Rhyl, north Wales, and cheating on his girlfriend in the process ...

But more importantly, the story from that certain kind of feminist's point of view in a nutshell is this:

A wealthy white male convicted of rape uses his wealth to overturn the earlier verdict;
More specifically, the earlier verdict is overturned by making reference to: "crucial new evidence clearing him [which] came from two men who told of their own sexual experiences with the teenage waitress."
So in other words, a woman's sexual history at times other than the alleged rape incident is used to discredit her claims
The allegedly Patriarchal system steps up to confirm her as a discredited witness.

The Guardian has already published "Campaigners fear Evans case will stop women reporting rape" and tomorrow's papers and next week's blogs will be flooded with a slew of comparisons to Brock Turner amongst other things.

Title	Footballer Ched Evans cleared of raping teenager after complainant's sexual history is put before court
Author	DevilishRogue
Upvotes	1
Comments	4
Date	October 14, 2016 4:45 PM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/57hbtw/footballer_ched_evans_cleared_of_raping_teenager/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/footballer-ched-evans-cleared-of-raping-teenager.939797 https://theredarchive.com/post/939797

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