to think some people in the public eye shouldn't have access to twitter - rape victim vilified by footballer.

[cfc]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132750/Wales-footballer-Ched-Evans-raped-teenager-drunk-consent-told-judge-thrown-away-successful-career-jailed-years.html

I've just lost this original post on my stupid tablet so will be more brief.

Gist is footballers get charged with raping drunk girl. One found guilty, other not. I don't really understand that only that not guilty guy went first and when guilty guy walked into hotel room he asked him if he wanted a go, boak, so perhaps the jury thought she wasn't too drunk to consent to first man, but was too far gone to consent to the other.

Anyway, team-mate of guys rants on twitter calling her a money grabbing slag. Does he not have the intelligence to realise that the get a guilty verdict in such cases is rare and can he therefore not accept that his friend must be guilty at least in some way of having sex with a near comatose woman - which is rape. She should sue the ignorant little shit for slander - no, libel, as it's a published, permanent statement.

Why do footballers have such a low opinion of women? Have the likes of Imogen Thomas et al ruined us all in their eyes?

I agree with SardineQueen.

The self-entitlement of celebrities in their abuse of women is unbelievable and frightening. :(

This isn't the first rape case brought against footballers. The misogyny in sport, as with music and film, is endemic.

I haven't read the daily mail link, but I know the story as it has been on the news.

The idea that men see women in a particular way because they are vilified in the media is a red herring. The media is run by the rich and powerful - notably, mainly men. The attitudes which come out in the media are illustrations of the attitudes of these men, rather than shaping them. Of course, they also serve to justify the ideas/attitudes that some people hold. (Of course, not all men see women in this way in the first place.)

If you want to know why men act this way, look, see the twitter accounts, the newspaper articles - you can see why they act this way because they think this way.

The celebrity angle is a red herring. Lots of men treat women like this. It hardly ever gets to court and if it does it doesn't get in the papers.

I'm surprised there was even one conviction given what the average person thinks about rape in these circumstances.

x posts bertie

Sex isn't always about love but it is about enjoyment.

Men who get enjoyment from 'doing' sex to someone surrounded and joined by male cheerleaders with camera phones are disturbed and the judge should have taken that into account.

Maybe he did and but I didn't read that in his summing up. Or maybe that behaviour isn't considered an aggravating feature in rape. Does anyone know?

Someone has just been sent to prison for a racist tweet. Wonder whether scumbag footballer will be prosecuted and sent to prison for misogynistic tweet? No, of course he won't, because the police and CPS and judges realise that racism is Bad but don't think there's much wrong with hating women.

The first man had two other men filming through a window, didn't he?

And they had booked the hotel room for this purpose before setting off to find a drunk woman, any drunk woman, to take back.

This teenager, the victim, he saw falling over, unable to walk, he chose her.

And he's not guilty.

Kicking, let's at least stick to the facts.

He booked the hotel room as there was no room for his friends to stay at his parent's house. She approached not guilty man first, they went back to hotel. He texted guilty man that he had a woman. Guilty man arrives and takes his turn. As far as i know guilty man's brother and friend watched from window and tried to film it.

As an aside, how did 4 such despicable young men find each other and not one of them said 'hang on, this isn't right.

One guilty and the other not is utterly illogical

We have to remember that there were witnesses and CTTV footage from in the kabab shop to getting into the taxi, there probably wasn't enough evidence to secure a convition of rape.

But tbh, he should have been charged with a lesser charge, as should those that filmed them having sex, because they aided and abeted a crime.

The statements show that they tthink they are entitled, he said that because they earn what they do and are footballers, they could have had any girl from the club that they were in.

I'm not sure I need lectures on the law from someone who clearly doesn't understand the meaning of the word "reactionary", cfc. Your OP was clearly framed to make a further swipe at Ms Thomas, and I'm not the only one who called you on it. Glad to see you backtracking, tho.

Ah, the story I read portrayed it more the way I did.

I've only read one. It might not have been entirely accurate.

It mentioned people at the kebab shop saying he came up to her when she'd fallen over, and the receptionist at the hotel saying the woman could barely stand up.
Actually it only said that there was some argument about whether he'd booked the room with a plan to find a girl. I am sorry, I did assume he had done so from that, probably because I was reading it through a veil of negativity towards him.

It makes me sick to my stomach.

Their view of women is disgusting, however, I'm not surprised.

I said "have the likes of It et al ruined us all in their eyes". Because of her going public (although I'd say there's a strong case that she was in some way forced to because of the charges Giggs was levelling a t her from behind his super-inj) anyway, because of her going public, and more recently the case of Jenny Thompson and Rooney, Balotelli etc footballers think they're all kiss and tellers.mdo they view ALl women as undependable and easy for them to bed now, and they have the right to bed them if they flash the cash?

My husband recently heard a young man in his gym say to another, complete with 'feeding the pony' ' hand gesture "you've got to flash the cash to get the gash". I mean, seriously?!

Typos, sorry. Blame tablet keyboard.

Some other prat tweeted this morning that it was "fair play" for the victim to be targetted.

In terms of the split verdict, in a funny sort of way it is actually quite heartening. Split verdicts are generally thought to indicate that a jury has been extremely thorough in studying the evidence and applying the right standard of proof. You would expect a jury to either acquit both if they were working under the victim=asking for it mentality, or to convict both if they were gunning for the defendants for some reason.

This case hinged on a single, narrow issue - could they have reasonably believed the victim consented? To convict one and acquit the other suggests that they were able to look at the evidence in enough detail to make some sort of quite fine distinction around that one issue. I would hazard a guess that the CCTV and the mobile phone footage showed the victim's condition deteriorating between her encountering McDonald and being raped by Evans. The jury may not have been quite sure that McDonald knew perfectly well that she couldn't consent (however doubtful that may sound to those of us with only snippets of information about the case) but in no doubt at all that Evans knew he was assaulting an incapable woman.

That's the most likely reason I can think of for the split verdict. It could be simpler - it could be that one defendant was simply more plausible in his evidence about his state of mind at the time, but I think that is less likely.

i feel so sad and angry at this. Why are these opinions so pervasive and tolerated by society?

Even people i know and love who have okay opinions on other things, think things like date rape are grey areas and provocative clothes/drunken behaviour is an invitation for sex.

I suppose that McDonald could show that he reasonably thought she consented as she approached him initially and went back to the hotel with him.

If you pitch up in the middle of the night just as your friend is finishing having sex with a nearly passed out woman, it would not be reasonable in those circumstances to think that she is consenting to also have sex with you.

Found to be a victim and still abused.

Proves the argument in favour of victim anonymity IMO.

Everyone should have freedom of speech though. They still have to abide by laws stopping them harrassing her, outing her or lying about her.

Poor woman, hope she isn't reading all this braindead neanderthal bullshit.

wondered how long it would take for someone to name her

On the subject of IT, she did knowingly have sex with someone else's husband. I reserve the right to judge her negatively for that (while in no way excusing RG's behaviour - what he did was far worse on so many levels).

I may be wrong here but didn't RG admit that he was economical with the truth in order to obtain his super injunction? That being the case, why hasn't he been prosecuted? I though perjury was a crime.

I am furious that the team mates are attacking this poor woman who has done nothing wrong. Naming her makes her a public target and she has done nothing wrong. Surely there must be some law against what they've been doing?
It makes me so angry. What if it was one of their sisters or girlfriends who'd been raped? Would they be so bloody vile and rape-apologist then?

Can we do something about this?

petition? vigilantism? self-immolation somewhere public?

Can't see if anyone else has mentioned the coverage on the news as my iPad isn't showing the whole thread but I was disgusted with radio 1 - they actually listed every drink the younggirl had had that night in a very inappropriate way and then just glossed over the rest - I was shocked and quite upset at their POV