Ched Evans

[sam_]

Forgive me if this has already been started.

His girlfriend has sparked controversy after appearing on ITV's 'This Morning', saying that Ched would love to come back into football. Personally I don't mind if he came back into football. As long as he was respectful and went about things the right way; such as McCormick, I think he has done everything the right way IMO. Half his wages to charity, behaves, keeps his head down. Whereas Lee Hughes is rude, daft celebrations, and winds fans up. I know manslaughter and Rape aren't the same but they're the most recent examples in the lower leagues I can think of.

Fairly sure his release is imminent, and if he were to return to football, I imagine it would be the same as McCormick, start at a lower non - league club and get back into the league. Or alternatively going straight back to Sheffield United where he was last playing. Fairly sure he scored a couple against us in the FA cup when we lost 3-2 I believe. Howe and Stevens with our two.

What do people think?

[Gullscorer]

There has been, almost certainly, a miscarriage of justice in this case.

[Southampton Gull]

There has been, almost certainly, a miscarriage of justice in this case.

I was never too happy about the conviction either, a lot of grey areas that could have been or were misconstrued.

[Scott Brehaut]

He's done his time (rightly or wrongly) and therefore deserves to be allowed to reintegrate himself back into society, doing whatever he so wishes.
If pro football is his thing and somebody takes a punt on him, well good for him is what I say.

[SuperNickyWroe]

I was never too happy about the conviction either, a lot of grey areas that could have been or were misconstrued.

agreed.

I know from Look North that he has always maintained his innocence and plans to appeal his conviction.

but apparently he cant appeal until 2017............ :S

[SuperNickyWroe]

article here........

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29633825

[Gullscorer]

More here: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest- ... nds-by-him
http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-w ... ws-6646793
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest- ... r-his-name

[Gullscorer]

The more I look at it, the more unsafe this conviction appears.

A young woman gets drunk, but not so drunk that she's incapacitated (see the link below), and she decides to engage in mutually consensual sex with two young men. She wakes up feeling guilty about her sluttish behaviour and tries to shift the burden of her guilt onto something or someone else, perhaps to mention the suspicion, the possibility, of a spiked drink. And although she never claims that she was raped nor even mentions 'feeling' that she might have been raped, eventually the police get to hear about it.

And so, after a botched and biased police investigation (missing CCTV pictures, withholding evidence supporting the accused), another innocent young man is falsely charged with rape and sent to prison. (The other young man was found not guilty)!

CCTV evidence shows that the young woman, although somewhat unsteady on her feet, was perfectly capable of making rational decisions shortly before her sexual adventures. See here: http://chedevans.com/the-trial

Victim of a spiked drink? Impossible. Incapacitated? No way. She clearly knew what she was doing. Clearly enough, certainly, to cast the severest doubt on any other interpretation of the affair.

Ched Evans may have been guilty of being an idiot, of having the same level of morality as the young woman concerned. But he should never have been charged with rape.

[Gulliball]

He's been released this morning.

The article below sums up the case and evidence pretty well (it's from 2012 when he was convicted). At best they took her consent for granted, at worst it was pre-planned and predatory. It's very easy to see why he was convicted.

They pre-booked a Premier Inn room, one man picked up this girl, texts his friend ‘I’ve got a girl', they go to the hotel. Evans enters, has sex with her while his friends (and brother) film it, then leaves out the fire escape straight after. His defence is that the extremely drunk person they chose, based on her drunkenness, said 'yes' moments before they had sex. That was the only connection Evans and the victim had during the whole set-up.

He should be allowed to return to football, as there is nothing to stop him earning a living, but I don't think that two years inside is a miscarriage of justice for what he did.

Ched Evans will be remembered at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane ground this afternoon with a round of applause in the ninth minute of the televised home game, and in the 35th minute.

Why, at those precise moments? Well, Evans wore the coveted number 9 shirt for United and had scored 35 goals for them over the past season. The Welsh international was their star striker, the Wayne Rooney of the team.

Terrace tributes such as staged clapping are normally reserved for giants of the game — great players or managers — who have recently passed away.

Ched Evans, for those who may not follow our national sport, has not ‘passed away’, even though we have been referring to him in the past tense.

In fact, he’s being detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure at Altcourse Prison in Liverpool, where he is beginning a five-year sentence following his conviction for rape last week.

The brief, disturbing details are these: The intoxicated victim — who could barely stand up — was initially picked up on a street corner by

Evans’s friend, another footballer, who took her back to his hotel for sex before passing her onto Evans.

In other words, the 19-year-old young woman was ‘roasted’ (the term footballers use for group sex) and raped while Evans’s brother and a mate tried to film proceedings on a mobile phone from a window outside the ground-floor room.

Two predatory footballers, then, one teenage girl, and a pair of voyeurs.


Even so, in the eyes of many supporters, the real victim is Evans himself, not to mention their ‘beloved’ Sheffield United, which has been
deprived of his services as the side close in on promotion from League One.

So, shortly after kick-off at 5.20pm, a convicted rapist could be lauded at a British football stadium in front of a vast television audience.

The planned tribute has been widely debated on fans’ forums over the past few days.

One message reads: ‘I have been asked to post here on behalf of a Blade (the nickname for Sheffield United fans) who wants as many Blades as possible to give their support for our Ched (live on TV). The match — against Stevenage — is being broadcast on Sky.’

It is only the latest shocking revelation in this still unfolding story.

‘Drunken slag’, ‘tramp’, ‘bitch’ and ‘whore’ are just some of the things the teenager at the centre of the case has been called in a vile internet campaign waged against her.

In the process, even though victims of serious sexual offences are granted lifelong anonymity by the courts, her identity was revealed on social networking site Twitter.

Maybe the culprits weren’t aware of the anonymity law or, more likely, given the ferocity of the personal abuse, they just didn’t care.

Either way, three of the men who allegedly named her (there are literally dozens who did so) have now been arrested.

This disgraceful chain of events, precipitated by Evans’s ignominious downfall, tells us as much about the kind of society we have become as the original crime for which the striker was found guilty at Caernarfon Crown Court.

So how did Evans end up in the dock? The reason — or, at least an explanation for his behaviour — emerged after he was arrested last year.

He claimed (predictably) that the young woman had consented to sex, telling detectives: ‘We could have had any girl we wanted [in the North Wales nightclub where they had spent the evening].

‘We are footballers, that’s how it is. Footballers are rich, they have got money, that’s what girls like.’

Could there be a more sickening illustration of the reckless arrogance that seems to be in the DNA of many modern footballers? It is often the flip side of wealth and celebrity, particularly when it arrives at such a young age.

Evans is from a working-class background in North Wales; his father left home when he was born. Football was the only thing he really knew.

Now just 23, he was earning a cool £20,000 a week at Sheffield United. He drove a Mercedes and a 4x4 Land Rover Defender with personalised number plates bearing his initials CME: Chedwyn Michael Evans.

He had been tipped to join a Premiership club next season and was in the running to represent Team GB at this summer’s Olympics.

He had been leading a glamorous lifestyle with his girlfriend Natasha Massey, 24, a member of the ‘Cheshire Set’, the nouveau riche inhabitants of the ‘golden triangle’ of Wilmslow, Prestbury and Alderley Edge that include soap stars and footballers.

Her father, Karl Massey, is a director of 11 companies, including jewellers Cottrills in Wilmslow. The family home is a £1.5 million property in Alderley Edge, close to the homes of Manchester United stars Rio Ferdinand and Patrice Evra.

Evans and Miss Massey, who have been dating for two years, were recently pictured together at a ‘Rolex Dinner’ staged by Cotterills, described as ‘an evening of fine dining, fine wines and a tasting of the very best Dom Perignon vintages’.

Astonishingly, Miss Massey and her parents are standing by Evans. This is apparent from a photograph on Miss Massey’s Twitter page, which many women in her position might have hastily removed in the light of what happened.

It shows her holding hands with Evans during a romantic restaurant meal. Underneath, Miss Massey has written gushingly: ‘I have the best family, amazing friends and a gorgeous boyfriend. I’m VERY lucky.’

Evans had been leading a glamorous lifestyle with his girlfriend Natasha Massey, 24, a member of the ‘Cheshire Set’, the nouveau riche inhabitants of the ‘golden triangle’ of Wilmslow, Prestbury and Alderley Edge that include soap stars and footballers

But away from the chic ‘Cheshire Set’ dinner parties, Evans led a very different life. Miss Massey, it emerged during the trial, hated Evans going out because ‘girls throw themselves at you’.

That didn’t stop him, though. As he told police, he was a footballer, he could have anyone he wanted. On any given night of the week, at bars across the country, there is an almost endless supply of women available to the likes of Ched Evans.

It is a world epitomised perhaps by the favourite drink at one Manchester club called Gold Digger — a cocktail named in honour of the girls who flock there hoping to snare a footballer.

The scene of the rape, though, was not a big city but the North Wales seaside town of Rhyl, where Evans grew up and where his mother still lives.

On the weekend of May 29 last year, Evans returned to his home town for the Bank Holiday with his friend Clayton McDonald, a defender with Port Vale.

The two had been friends since they were juniors in the Manchester City Youth Academy. They had also been on holiday to Miami and Ayia Napa in Cyprus.

The pair had something else in common, too: they once had a ‘threesome’ (Evans’s word) when they lived together early in their footballing careers.

Old habits die hard, it seems. Evans, it was alleged in court, had booked a room at the local Premier Inn ‘for the sole purpose of procuring a girl or girls’ during their visit to Rhyl.

They ended up at the Zu bar, but left at different times. Some time before 4am, Clayton McDonald encountered a girl outside a kebab shop in the town’s Queen Street.

She was ‘stumbling’ and ‘slurring’. Hardly surprising in the circumstances. She had drunk two large glasses of wine in just over an hour, along with four double vodkas and a Sambuca. ‘Hi, where are you going?’ McDonald asked her. ‘Where are you going?’ she replied.’

‘I’m going to my hotel,’ he said. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she told him.

You’d like to think that most men would have resisted the temptation to take a young women in such a state back to their hotel room.
Instead, McDonald got into a taxi with her, then immediately sent Evans a text message.

‘I’ve got a girl,’ he told him. About 15 minutes later, Evans turned up at the hotel.

He was followed by his brother Ryan, 19, a student at Swansea University, and another local lad, Jack Higgins. They remained outside by the window. Police later found blurred video recordings on Higgins’s mobile phone of the ‘sexual activity which was taking place within the room’.

Group sex, it seems, has become acceptable behaviour among some footballers. The sickening culture dates back many years.

The most notorious recent example occurred at Manchester United’s Christmas party in 2007 when up to 100 girls from across the city were bussed to a local hotel.

A witness recalled hearing clapping and cheering from one of the rooms where five or six men were with a girl. The men were heard ‘shrieking like hyenas’ and shouting ‘get in there’.

That infamous night also ended in an allegation of rape against Manchester United defender Jonny Evans. He was arrested, but did not face charges.

Back at the Premier Inn in Rhyl the following morning, the girl woke up alone in a bed. Her clothes were scattered around the floor.

By then, Ched Evans and Clayton McDonald had long gone. McDonald left through the front door, Evans via a fire exit.

Following his arrest, Evans told police that his friend had asked the girl: ‘Can my mate join in?’ She had said “yes” straight away, Evans claimed. The jury did not believe him.

McDonald, however, was cleared of rape. His barrister said his client ‘may have behaved in a manner you may find morally repugnant, but it didn’t make him guilty of rape’.

We can only assume that, despite her intoxicated state, the girl’s decision to go back to the hotel constituted consent in the eyes of the jury.

Within hours of the verdict, an internet backlash against the rape victim had begun. Her name was being circulated so widely that it is understood to have been one of the words ‘trending’ (meaning it was one of the most widely used) on Twitter.

A number of footballers joined the campaign, including a team-mate of Ched Evans, who has now been suspended by Sheffield United.

The victim is currently ‘on leave’ from her job.

‘She does not want to speak to the media,’ her sister told us when we contacted the family. ‘She is trying to get on with her life and put all this behind her. It has been a terrible time.’

A friend added: ‘People are slagging her off on the internet and it’s terrifying her. She has become a hate figure. And it’s so unfair when you think about what the poor girl has been through.

‘She was raped and then she had to go through the ordeal of the legal process, which felt like she was being raped all over again.

‘If that wasn’t traumatic enough, she has also been identified. She just wants to get away from here now and rebuild her life.’

The story is already a shameful one. But the perhaps the most shameful episode is still to unfold — at around 5.30pm in Sheffield this afternoon.

[Gullscorer]

That article was a rehash of evidence supplied by the police and presented to the court by the prosecution; it is totally biased and completely misrepresents what happened by omitting vital facts and evidence, and includes irrelevant slurs and attempted character assassination.

If written by a journalist it was utterly unprofessional. It amounts to a hate-filled rant against a man for whom at least one responsible investigative journalist has uncovered evidence hidden from the defence as well as shortcomings in the administration of justice in this case.

[Gulliball]

The pre-booked room, text messages and video footage are not slurs, they are the evidence used to convict him. Ultimately, she (at best) gave dubious consent to one person. Evans specifically discussed, planned for, took part in, and videoed, group sex, which is why he was found guilty and the other innocent.

The hard evidence must make it harder for you to copy and paste 95% of your other forum posts into this thread, but it's good to see you're still giving it a go.

[Scott Brehaut]

There is a video, presented in court by the defence, of the woman "so drunk she could barely stand", walking in a straight line out of the taxi at the premier inn with a pizza. She hands it to the co-accused (who was found not guilty), gets out of the taxi, and then begins to walk into the premier inn. She realises that she has left something in the taxi, turns around and obviously tells the guy, who puts the pizza down, runs after the taxi and then comes back.
He forgets to pick up the pizza, they walk in together then, clearly remembering the pizza, she turns around, walks out, bends down (with no staggering or falling over whatsoever) and collects the pizza before walking back inside again.
She is wearing heels higher than the bloody eiffel tower and yet manages to walk the same as either you or I could walk now.
I'm not saying she wasn't drunk, but she certainly wasn't, as the "journalist" in the article puts it "barely standing up"!!

[brucie]

Errrr "he shouldn't have been charged with rape" - why not? the Cps having reviewed the evidence available obviously thought that there was sufficient evidence. That decision seemed to have been vindicated by the guilty verdict by the jury.
As for a bunch of tosspot two brain celled moronic footballers going on twitter and villyfing the victim - well thats sick in itself.
Ched Evans is a feckin idiot lets be fair - yes that doesn't making him guilty of rape but he was found guilty in a court of law so he is a convicted rapist - a sex offender. Is it any wonder that he got found guilty really - you just cannot "assume" consent from an intoxicated person.

[Gullscorer]

The politically correct CPS always prosecutes such cases if there is even the smallest shred of evidence. But there's a difference between being mildly drunk and being intoxicated to the point of incapacitation. If both parties are only mildly drunk then they're both still capable of making rational decisions. It's up to the court to look at all the evidence and decide the degree of intoxication of each party and so decide whether or not one party has taken advantage of the other. These cases are not always clear-cut and miscarriages of justice can occur. In this particular case, notwithstanding the fact that Evans appears to be a pea-brained idiot, the defence team, as well as an independent investigative journalist, believe that he is innocent and that there are sufficient grounds for an appeal against the conviction.

[SuperNickyWroe]

no longer training with the dee-dars.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/30054475