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Original poster

To be totally baffled (Ched Evans related)

828 replies

soapboxqueen · 19/10/2014 12:45

Just reading in the guardian that Ched Evans has applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to review his case. That's fine because it is part of our due process and legal system.

However, in the article it points out that his girlfriend's father is paying for appeal barristers, private detectives and even offering a reward for information in order to help his appeal. Why would you do that? Why would you put up so much money to protect a person who at best (from their perspective at least) cheated on your daughter in a rather deplorable fashion and at worst a rapist? Why would got want your daughter to be with such a person?

I really don't understand.

I'll see if I can get the link to work.

OP posts:
CromerSutra · 22/10/2014 23:35

Yes, me too! I heard similar when a friend's Dd was raped. It was all over the news and some of my other friends did not realise that the victim was someone very close to me. It was really upsetting and revealing to hear what they actually thought about it. All of them were women and all of them had a view that she must have somehow "brought it on herself" despite knowing only the very bare bones of the story.

Icimoi · 22/10/2014 23:37

I hope that he has put the final nail in the coffin of his hopes of returning to Sheffield. it's one thing to put forward the argument that he's served his time, he's genuinely sorry, ashamed and repentant and he intends to spend the rest of his life making it very very clear that the sort of conduct he showed that night is shameful and completely unacceptable. It's quite another to ignore the fact that, even on his own version of events, his conduct was utterly despicable, and to demonstrate that he just doesn't accept that what he did was rape. That makes him very dangerous to women, and a dreadful role model. There's no way Sheffield can seriously employ him after what he and his family and friends have been doing recently.

CromerSutra · 22/10/2014 23:37

Yes, that detail, also on his own website about stepping over her when she fell over earlier is just vile. Says so much about his total disregard for her and probably women in general.

Sabrinnnnnnnna · 22/10/2014 23:40

And it is sad but true that women can be the greatest defenders of rapists - because they are men that the love. Far from women being man-haters, women actually love men - their husbands, sons, bfs, brothers, dads.

When my friend went through her rape trial, she was told that women on rape juries are actually more likely to acquit than men. We have a long way to go, sisters.

Sabrinnnnnnnna · 22/10/2014 23:48

*It's also very possible that women victim blame rape victims as a form of internal self-preservation - ie. she brought it on herself - "I'd never behave like that, so I'll never be a victim."

prh47bridge · 23/10/2014 00:31

Yes, I think the victim's testimony must have been incredibly powerful

As far as I am aware her testimony was that she was drunk and had no recollection of what happened from the time she left the bar (i.e. before she had met the two footballers) until she woke up the following morning.

not bothering to actually ask the woman for consent

Both Evans and McDonald maintain that the woman was asked for consent and gave her consent. They both also maintain that she asked Evans to give her oral sex.

Sabrinnnnnnnna · 23/10/2014 00:44

But the court ruled she was too drunk to consent.

Andrewofgg · 23/10/2014 00:54

Yonic Agreed. I mean only that the reaction of the rapists' own kin is natural and human compared with the antics of the gf and her father.

Sabrinnnnnna When my friend went through her rape trial, she was told that women on rape juries are actually more likely to acquit than men. Urban myth? Juries are usually 8-4, 5-5, or 6-6 and if not 6-6 women are as likely as men to be the 8 or the 7. If a jury acquits there is no way of knowing how they split or even if they split. There is no way anyone could have established any pattern like that.

What is, I believe, true is that defence counsel in rape cases is more likely to be female than male. Whether more so than in other criminal defence work I have no idea, but if so I can imagine that solicitors think that a woman can cross-examine the complainant, within the limits of the law, more effectively, because she won't antagonise the jury just by doing it, than a man. Again it is impossible to say whether they are right. Nobody SFAIK collates statistics about the comparative outcome of trials for rape where counsel for the defence is male or female.

Andrewofgg · 23/10/2014 00:55
  • I meant 7-5 not 5-5, sorry.
PuffinsAreFicticious · 23/10/2014 01:19

I don't want to watch the video do I? It's just going to make me even angrier about this class 1 grade a rapist bastard, isn't it? So many of his little chums threatening all of us on twitter with rape and murder, that I doubt he called them off and admitted he was a rapist scumbag?

Arsehole.

PhaedraIsMyName · 23/10/2014 01:42

I'm getting so angry about this. They are just so utterly vile. So many things like stepping over her when she fell. Who does that? I mean really isn't it everyone's natural instinct to help someone up?

The room was so obviously booked just to procure a girl.

The taking of photos, just vile.

The idiot girlfriend makes me want to scream.

I'd be devastated if he were my son.

differentnameforthis · 23/10/2014 04:21

The video...did anyone else notice how monotone it was? No emotion, even when talking of the support of his family.

And he didn't blink, not once! I wanted to turn it off after a few a little bit, but was compelled to watch to see if he blinked...nothing!

I find the fact that she didn't look at the camera at all very telling. I just have this feeling that isn't there because she wants to be...I dunno ...she never looks comfortable with him. All I see on her face is disappointment.

Other than that, it is all ME ME ME!!

Not saying I feel sorry for her, she has been quite vile to the victim, but something tells me that if she could be a million miles away, sans Ched, she would be!

Mumraathenoisylion · 23/10/2014 05:32

I would say that is just a bit of terrible acting different

Wasn't he let out early? Could he be taken back to prison due to what is basically harassing the victim?

sashh · 23/10/2014 06:09

All of them were women and all of them had a view that she must have somehow "brought it on herself" despite knowing only the very bare bones of the story.

I think there is a kind of superstition, to think that there is nothing you can do to stop yourself being raped is such a bleak thought, that people want to think there are things you can do to stop it.

differentnameforthis · 23/10/2014 07:05

I would say that is just a bit of terrible acting different Fair enough, guess I am just seeing too much into it...

Could he be taken back to prison due to what is basically harassing the victim? Ohhh, I would really really like it if they did that!

MyEmpireOfDirt · 23/10/2014 07:55

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Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MyEmpireOfDirt · 23/10/2014 08:01

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WellnowImFucked · 23/10/2014 08:13

Just a musing on the female jurors issue, do you think its in part that by convicting someone they may have to acknowledge that they have been raped?

You see it on threads here, someone asking is this behavior/action a bit off?
Posters come on and gently say not only is it 'off' its rape.

You then get others coming on saying of course its not rape, my husband/boyfriend does that? Are you calling my Nigel a rapist??

That the jurors in non stranger rapes are thinking this way? Thinking that if I convict this man that means that I've been raped, that my Nigel is a rapist. And can't deal with that thought?

Mascaramascara1 · 23/10/2014 08:16

I think that's bit far fetched tbh wellnow - that female jurors aquit because they've all been raped? Not very likely IMO.

MyEmpireOfDirt · 23/10/2014 08:41

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

WellnowImFucked · 23/10/2014 09:00

Thank MyEmpire, I didn't put it as clearly as I thought, what I was thinking was considering the amount of women who experience sexual assault and that rape is considered to be under reported, and as we've seen on several threads a lot of people including women don't fully understand the concept of consent the chances of a women who was raped must be pretty high.

Everyotherfreckle · 23/10/2014 09:04

Yes but by the same token you could say that men would be more likely to acquit because they have been in the same position as the defendant before, and that if they convicted they would be admitting to themselves that something they have done in the past is in fact rape?

ifyourehoppyandyouknowit · 23/10/2014 09:11

I am so unsurprised by his statement. His victim has been violated once again, and all anyone can talk about in the press is how hard CE has had it and how his life is in tatters. Well boo fucking hoo. Don't want your life destroyed? Then don't rape. It's not a difficult concept.

MyEmpireOfDirt · 23/10/2014 09:24

This reply has been deleted

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Sabrinnnnnnnna · 23/10/2014 09:25

The female jurors thing - it was the police liaison that told my friend that female jurors were more likely acquit. Obvs research like that Empire linked to does support this. As to why - could be many reasons, but I do think that victim blaming and self preservation do come into it. ie. if it's her fault, and she 'brought it on herself' - they feel a bit safer themselves. I don't think the difference is terribly significant though.

On my friend's jury it was 7:5 women to men, and my heart did sink a little. But he was convicted.