Reaction blues
Rape is a ghastly, sickening crime and one that many surveys and studies testify may be wildly under-reported not just in the UK but around the world. However, the recent acquittal of (now) Chesterfield professional footballer Ched Evans in his re-trial continues to produce a great deal of publicity and comment and I for one am unhappy with the thrust of some of it.
Let us go back to the basics [and in doing so I must here begin with the caveat that I may have got some of the detail incorrect, not least because I attended none of the legal proceedings myself and did not hear the evidence as given in court].
A fellow footballer called Clayton Macdonald took a drunken young lady back to his hotel room – called Ched Evans to say “I’ve got a girl” and invited him over to join them – and then had consensual sex with her. I don’t think there is any dispute about this and in any event Macdonald was acquitted of raping the girl at the first trial.
Evans, as I understand it, then turned up, let himself into the room and walked in on Macdonald and the girl having sex. He then undressed and had sex himself with the girl, apparently with little or no conversation from start to finish, and then got dressed again and departed.
[As I said above, all rather unedifying – however, that aspect is not the topic of today’s piece.]
I believe it to be the case in the original trial both footballers were accused of rape by the girl, on the basis that she was too drunk to have given consent and that either and/or both footballers were – or should have been – aware of this when proceeding to have sex with her.
As indicated, in the original trial Macdonald was acquitted and Evans alone was found guilty – I presume this was on the basis that, although drunk, the girl had probably consented to have sex with Macdonald but was so out of it by the time Evans pitched up that (the jury of 12 rational men and women concluded) she couldn’t possibly have had the wherewithal to consent to have sex with [gasp!] a second man in the same room right after having bonked the first.
Evans was sentenced to five years in gaol, of which he eventually served two and a half before winning an appeal against his conviction (on the grounds it was ‘unsafe’) and being awarded a re-trial.
At this trial, quite recently – as mentioned – he was acquitted.
I now call in evidence three media articles which seem to typify, or indeed stand as representative reactions to, Ched Evans’s acquittal:
Firstly, yesterday’s front page story in The Sun newspaper (Saturday 15th October), for which the headline was ‘ACE COULD GET HALF-MILLION POUND COMPO – HE’S CLEARED OF RAPE BUT AS A SLIMEBALL WHO TREATS WOMEN LIKE DIRT, EVANS IS … GUILTY!’
Secondly, Charlotte England, writing in The Independent, interviewing Vera Baird, the Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner who has criticised the re-trial process because the girl’s sexual past was brought into evidence – see here – THE INDEPENDENT
Thirdly, here is Rowan Pelling, writing in the Daily Telegraph, making the case that the Ched Evans trial(s) send out the message to women “Don’t report rapes” – see here – DAILY TELEGRAPH
My first reaction is that – although no doubt lawyers for The Sun must have considered the matter very carefully before allowing the above front page headline to hit the newsstands, I think this is an appalling statement to make about someone who has been roundly vilified in the press (and by celebrities, media commentators, soccer pundits and last but not least a host of women’s groups) after originally being found guilty, had his soccer career canned, and then actually served two and a half years in prison before winning an appeal and having to go through a re-trial … at which he was found not guilty.
If I was Ched Evans’ s lawyers, I’d be taking a very keen interest over the next few days as to whether this headline is actionable for defamation or not.
As for the hysterical reaction to Ched Evans’s re-trial acquittal, as typified by the above two articles, I’d say the following:
To start with I take as read that the concerns over under-reporting or rape (especially insofar as it stems from victims’ reluctance to be put through the ordeal of police procedures and interviews but most particularly that of facing the accused in court and all that this entails) are justified.
I’m personally less enamoured of various proposals for changes in the law – and indeed in police procedures, ‘public policy’ adjustments and the other ways of making it ‘easier’ for potential victims of rape to come forward and/or secure convictions against those who have attacked them.
Where these much-campaigned-for developments worry me is that while yes, they may indeed assist rape victims in coming forward, they also simultaneously chip away and one of the essential tenets of the law, i.e. that every accused is ‘innocent until proven guilty’ – an inalienable and fundamental right which probably ranks as the cornerstone of justice in this country.
Once more I must restate here that I do not have first-hand knowledge of the facts of the Ched Evans trial(s), but surely – the bottom line is – the key thing to celebrate here is that an innocent man … who was originally found guilty and then wrongly spent two and a half years in gaol … won an appeal against the verdict, went through the ordeal of a retrial, and was then acquitted?
I cannot but help feeling that some of the theatrical outrage being expressed at Evans’s acquittal is the product of middle-class, sensible, intellectual and (mainly female) commentators recoiling at the very contemplation of the scenario that unfolded and caused the grubby Ched Evans hotel room antics simply because (1) it would simply never happen in their own lives, and (2) is therefore probably out there upon the outer edges of their ‘worst case’ nightmare fantasies.
What some of those currently metaphorically thumping the table at the supposed injustice done to the alleged victim in Ched Evans’s case – and even its implications in discouraging future rape allegations being pursued – need to appreciate is that the social conventions and mores that apply within the Hampstead set are a world and a half away from those operating within today’s ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ celebrity circuit.
It’s a completely different dimension to that in which the rest of us live – in soccer’s case, one in which young and immature players, who earn more in a week than probably half the country earn in a year, routinely find themselves being pursued wherever they go off the pitch by herds of ravenous and unsophisticated young women with more looks than brains who want nothing more than to ‘bag’ a superstar … even if it is for a rather ragged one-night shag.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite sure that – in the hurdy-gurdy of hundreds such heady (sometime inebriated) encounters every year – issues such as the ideal borders of consent and non-consent, senses of comfort and post-episode blues of all kinds, including lack of self-worth, may be suffered by the participants both male and female.
Nobody involved necessarily comes out of all this with much credit, of course – but then that’s life, folks.
