[Liam-]

Originally Posted by Z

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