Aibu to be slightly depressed by the Ched Evans debate?

[BinarySolo]

I feel so angry and upset by the debates going on at the moment. Not so much whether he should be able to play football again, but it seems to be still being debated as to whether or not he's guilty and whether his victim was at fault for being drunk and going back to his hotel room.

Really. Who would ever report a rape? It needs so much evidence just to get to court let alone get a conviction, and then when your attacker is convicted you still have your character questioned and people speculating about whether it was really rape.

Not to mention idiots like Judy Finnigan stating that his crime wasn't that bad because it wasn't violent and the victim 'wasn't physically harmed'.

FFS. No wonder we need ad campaigns explaining what rape is.

I think if his gf/family/football club would acknowledge his guilt then maybe he'd stop believing he was innocent.

I truely think he believes he's not done anything wrong.

I doubt it Binary - nothing will persuade the Cheds of this world that they are wrong.

It's his gf I can't understand. His family yes, his club see him as money, but why is she loyal to this man? It's not just money; her father is rich, she won't go without if she gets shot of him. And on any footing he has not been loyal to her. Very odd.

Maybe she enjoys the status of dating a footballer. I understand her father even less. I just could imagine my dad supporting a man that had cheated on me, let alone one accused and convicted of rape.

I think the debate is reflective of views around rape and society as a whole.

I was a victim of rape and attempted murder as a teen so obviously it was extremely violent and I sustained physical injuries. I really only get to talk about this on MN as so very few people in my personal life know about it and even those few people think I've done a great job at 'dealing with it' and in a lot of ways I have ...but not in all ways.

I went to one rape victim support group many years after the event but it was made clear to me then that after hearing my story, other victims thought their story was in some way not as bad so they felt inhibited about talking about theirs.

It took a lot for me to attend that meeting - I never wanted to consider myself a 'rape victim' and had spent many years avoiding considering myself as that.

I fucking hated feeling like i'd 'won the worst rape' competition at the meeting so I didn't go again.

Rape is rape and is an act of violence regardless of the context. It can never be considered as less than that in my view. The consequences of it for the victim are enormous and far reaching. But I think societies views of it are based on tangible aspects and not the psychological consequences. And they are ENTIRELY INDIVIDUAL to the victim.

I hate to admit it but I can on MN :-) . I have read about or met other rape victims who weren't randomly attacked by a stranger and physically severely injured (and all the other things that my attacker did to me - won't go into them) and left for dead. And I have briefly thought that it wasn't 'that bad' (in comparison to my experience) and I hate myself for that. That was my own anger and distress directed to the wrong person.

I am objectively doing 'better' than a lot of rape victims if you look at my life and it really doesn't matter why that is.

What it means is that the experience of rape and it's psychological consequences can not be judged by 'physical harm'.