Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall
I know, but you have to think of the implications of what it all means. If football clubs are willing to sign a ex-con who's committed a sexual offence as depraved as rape with nary a care in sight then it just says that their attitude is something along the lines of this, "Aw well he's spent his time in the corner I mean he did only rape that woman once, so who cares about what it says to our female fanbase and women in general if we hire him!" Like, it just seems iffy.
And I know everyone should be equal in the eyes of the law, but seeing as this is a high profile case with implications being played out across a highly publicised field (excuse the pun), then it kind of sets the tone for everything else. Letting him carry on in such a cushy job with no-one in else in that career really reacting to him forcing such a traumatic act on another human being is just.. no. It's not right. Moreover I'm not sure how he can have the gall to want to show his face in public after doing something of that calibre.
Rape is simple: if there is an absence of consent, then it's rape. If someone is inebriated they cannot consent because they aren't in a clear and lucid state of mind. Therefore, it is rape. That's taking advantage of someone sexually. You cannot argue against that. It is not 'drunken stupidity', it's someone preying on someone else who's in a vulnerable state. Consent is a constant and enthusiastic 'Yes!' and nothing else.
The entirety of what you've said highlights the problem here, and it's that people often think that the victim 'had it coming' because they shouldn't have gone somewhere with the assailant, and quite frankly it's the most stupid argument in the book. Let's apply that logic somewhere else: would you say that if someone walking home from the train station at 10pm is at fault if they're mugged? It's ridiculous. She shouldn't have to go somewhere with the expectation that she might have to give herself up sexually. And even if she did lead them to think that that's what might happen, any normal human being knows the line in terms of consent. Like I'm pretty sure if someone was drunk etc, or even gave the slightest hint of uncomfortableness when it comes to all this stuff most sane people would know to back the fuck off. Whereas if you don't and you force yourself upon, or take advantage of someone, then that's a rather terrifying thing for someone to do, no?
To reiterate: victim blaming is absolutely the problem at hand. The misogynistic view that "She shouldn't have done this...", or "She shouldn't have done that...", or "Her skirt was too short..", is just an argument both terrifyingly disgusting as it is paper thin.
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Your views are perfectly valid, just not in this instance, in my opinion. They'd be spot on if we were discussing a totally different rape case, but not this one. Rape is not simple. Rape is complicated, rape is upsetting, rape is life ruining. Rape is also not a word with a simple definition. Ched Evans is a rapist because a jury found him guilty of having non-consensual sex with an inebriated girl while he himself was inebriated and while his colleague was in the room, who had just had consensual sex with said girl. Richard Ramirez is a convicted rapist because he broke into married couples' homes, murdered the husbands and brutally raped the wives while the husbands were dying. I don't have much respect for anyone who can look me in the eye and say that these two men are equally as bad or equally as guilty as one another. They're just not. Ched Evans hasn't said sorry because he doesn't believe he did anything wrong. Saying sorry would be an admission of guilt - evidently he doesn't think he's guilty of anything and having read more about the "evidence" that sparked his trial, I don't think he's guilty of anything either.
I was sexually assaulted when I was 20 years old. I got really drunk, thrown out of a nightclub and was taken into a taxi by someone I vaguely knew, taken back to a flat and molested on a bathroom floor. That wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gotten so drunk. It was my fault for getting myself into a state where I could have been taken advantage of so easily. I don't remember if I consented or not - and how many people even ask the question "do you consent to me having sexual relations with you?" before they begin?! It's nonsense.
I can make some sense of how this came about - they left her in the hotel room where she presumably fell asleep, woke up without any of her possessions or any recollection of how she got there, called the police to see if her things had been handed in, spoke to officers who looked into it, spoke to the night porter, hauled in Evans and McDonald who freely admitted they had sex with her because they had no reason to think they'd done anything wrong and the police led the girl into believing she was a rape victim and to pursue legal proceedings against the two; the jury somehow finds Evans guilty and not McDonald on the really shaky evidence at their disposal, perhaps believing that the shaky evidence meant that the players were guilty because it does look bad on paper, and here we are now.
As for the "cushy job" part - he's playing football at a League One level, he's hardly earning Premier League wages. Maybe the police responsible for turning this into a rape trial are Sheffield Wednesday supporters
