The players union, the PFA, requested that Sheffield United allow him to train with them as a way of rebuilding his career. Sheffield United have tonight withdrawn their offer.

Now the PFA request and what's happened this last week may have just been PR BS and a way for SUFC to test the water and seeing what the response would be, but the basic fact is that Evans is an out of contract footballer without a club right now.

Well yes, as if he'd been given permission to appeal, there's be no point in asking for a case review!

On what I have read of the case, I will take some convincing that there hasn't been a miscarriage of justice here.

As for the employment point, everyone has an opinion, but few (and I'm not referring to posters on here) seem to have thought it through. The difficulty with playing a rapist in a pro sports team shouldn't actually need explaining, it's like taking Todd Carney's case (which has got him excluded from his domestic game) and multiplying it by, oh, I dunno, a billion. And that's when apart from being gross, Carney's brief stunt didn't directly affect any other person nor was it even remotely a crime. It is hard on Evans if as I believe his conviction was wrong but pro team players are held up as idols and role models for kids, by each team, like it or not that's the fact, every club projects itself as a "family friendly" club and an "inclusive" organisation. The players' behaviour is meant to chime with and project the values of the club. If anyone claims they can't see what the issue is with a rapist being cheered, admired and put on a pedestal then I say they are hard of thinking. It is ridiculous to pretend you don't get it. Having a criminal conviction has always effectively barred many people from many jobs and always will. One point is that they knew it would, before choosing to commit whatever crime they did.

Agreed. I have read quite a bit about the case, including the sentencing remarks.

It is blatantly an inconsistent / perverse verdict. As in the verdict of the jury did not sit with the evidence. I take the view it was an 'all or nothing case'. I do not see how one of the men involved could be guilty of rape, and the other be not guilty, when the prosecution case was that the women was too drunk to consent to sex with either.

It is also worth nothing that the jury, who were in their 3rd week of jury service, told the Judge on a Friday afternoon that they could not reach a unanimous verdict. Rather than direct the jury could return a majority verdict (10/2), as a judge is entitled to do after 2hrs 10 minutes, the Judge told them to go away and spend further time seeing if they could reach a unanimous verdict. Faced with the prospect of returning on Monday, for what would have been a 4th week's jury service for some, the jury came back shortly thereafter and returned a unanimous guilty verdict.

I fully expect it to be declared unsafe, and thus overturned, once the Court of Appeal gets hold of it. This will raise an interesting question - will public opinion be 'happy' with the idea of Ched Evans going back to playing football?

As for other points raised in this thread, any man can be accused of rape, and there but for the grace of God go any of us.

As I said previously, false accusations happen on a regular basis. Usually it is a women who has had sex that she regrets. She then tries to justify it to herself and others by saying she was raped. Once she walks into the police station and gives the complaint, the ball has started rolling, she has to stick to her story, or face possible prosecution herself.

Again - there is no public appetite to take action against false complainants, because the police and CPS are terrified of the women's lobby who constantly push the line that all men are s and everyone with a penis is a rapist. Also, it is feared it would discourage genuine complainants from coming forward.

A question to everyone regarding this topic.
Have any of the people that have expressed their opinions on this subject ever actually had any personal experience of what it is like to be wrongly accused of rape ?

Serious question . Because if you have not , then you really do have no idea what it is like . Oh yes you can have an opinion on what it might feel like . You can try to imagine how your family , friends , employers etc may react . Or take a guess at how people that are only aware of your existence because they saw your name and picture in the local paper might treat you if they meet you in the street .

In my opinion anyone (male or female) that wrongly makes an accusation of rape deserves all they get . It can totally destroy the life of the person who is wrongly accused .
In this case the girl is now dead . Very unfortunate for her . But if such accusations are false then they can result in the accused having to face a future with very little prospect of employment , relationship or inclusion in the social life they used to have . A fate worse than death . At least death is finite .

Name them and shame them , and let them live with the consequences of their actions . If it results in them topping themselves then so be it .

Rant over for now .

Here's one for you then:

Ever been raped?

No?

Well it trumps all allegations oif making false rape claims

No we don't.

But it's nothing to do with "By The Grace Of God".

Whatever that weird shizzle means it's best avoided by not being a rapist.

By respecting women.

By understanding that no, means no.

By valuing the women in our lives.

Ain't so hard. Don't make the women, indeed anyone, you come into contact with do things they don't want to do.

No Coddy I have never been raped . But i was once arrested at work , taken to Weetwood police station , DNA tested and all the other rigmarole . I went through a real bad time . Am still suffering from it .
It was six years ago , but it still haunts me .
I can no longer teach martial arts because the classes I took included women and children .
The 'lady' that accused me of raping her was adamant that it was me that she had shared a bed with . She is a nutjob . I had hundreds of witnesses that could prove where I was at the time of the incident . I live close to where it was supposed to have happened in Leeds , but was actually camping in Oxford over that weekend as I had my car on a show stand .
She has repeated the accusation four times and I have been arrested for it on each occasion . I have said that I would like her prosecuted over the allegations but have been advised against it because it will just bring more publicity to the case and will do me no favours at all .
Better for me to just shut up and deal with damage limitation than defend myself publicly .

I can't win .

How does she know you to label you as the man who raped her?

Have you had any type of relationship with her? Have you ever had sex with her?

Was there evidence that she had been raped? If she has been raped by someone, and because of the shock involved in that ordeal has now wrongly fixated on you being the perpetrator, do you really want her prosecuted for being wrong about that?

Really sorry to hear that but she sounds like she needs professional help rather than prosecution

It's shocking how many lads need reminding that consent needs to be excited, informed, and continuous. And will argue to the death about why that isn't accurate.

She knows me because i am a friend of her then husband . They had an argument and she told him she had slept with me . when he kicked off over that she tried to get out of it by saying i had raped her . He rang me and kicked off . I said if she was serious about it to go to the police .They did .
I went to Pudsey police station and tried to hand myself in for any assistance i could give to the investigation .
They didn't want to take me in or question me so I went home . It was a few weeks later when I was arrested at work .

I have never had any kind of relationship with her nor have I ever had any sexual contact with her .

I have no idea as to wether or not there is any evidence of her ever actually having suffered any kind of sexual abuse . All I can say is that if there was ever such an incident involving her then I wasn't present .

Yes I do believe she should be very severely punished for her actions . If she is ever punished for it then it should match my financial losses and the mental and physical suffering . Regardless of wether anything did actually happen to her it is not fair that I should suffer so much and her just walk away with nothing other than a caution .

Part of her statement accuses me of ... and this is from her statement .... ' He sh****d my in my f***y then f****d me in my a**e' .

Not very ladylike language but it gives you an idea of what was going on in her head .

Alcoholic with relationship problems made a mess of things and randomly picked my name to accuse . Once she had opened her gob she couldn't back down .

I don't think you should be posting this.

You should speak to your legal representative.

Things posted online are regarded as published.

Drunken consent is still consent.

And morning after regret does not = rape.

Without going into too much detail, I have dealt with a number of complaints of rape. False complaints are real. Usually from women who have sex and then are ashamed, typically when confronted by family or a lover about what they were doing the previous evening.

As someone who has first-hand experience of dealing with people falsely accused of rape, I am sorry to hear this. You really should push the police about this. If the police are not interested in doing anything, and funds permit, perhaps consider a private prosecution against her.

Who advised against it? The police???

Don't get your advice from the police, get your own solicitor. You should be looking to sue her and possibly the police. If the police chose to arrest you at your place of work when you had previously been to see them then they have damaged your reputation deliberately.

If the solicitor you have isn't defending you properly then find another one who will.

You can't give consent legally if you're drunk.

blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2013/0 ... ation.html

blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2013/0 ... ation.html

Complete nonsense and wrong at law.

Do you know anything about criminal law, have you had any experience in investigating, prosecuting, or defending rape allegations, or are you just posting random links to American law blogs?

If I had the funds to defend myself then I really don't think I would . Any damage that has been caused is history . An expensive chase through the courts would only line a solicitors pocket and bring it all up again . It really is better to just shut up and put it all down to experience .
The people that know me , and the people that really matter to me know the truth . I am lucky that I had such a supportive family , a partner that found it amusing when i handed her the phone when the first accusation was made , a boss and colleagues that backed me , and so many witnesses to prove she was making up the allegation . It could have been a lot worse if she had named somebody else . They might not have had the support I had .
She has moved darn sarf now , so hopefully our paths will never cross again .

Is it wrong for me to wish something bad really would happen to her ?

No, not at all.

Have you spoken to your MP about this, not just for your personal situation (but obviously with the emphasis on it) but for all victims of false rape accusations ?

If you still live in this area then you either live in the same constituency as me or the next one along, LibDem or Tory, believe it or not both MP's are decent blokes and very active with personal "issue" campaigns and I wonder if they'd be interested in this as their next cause, our MP has just succeeded in getting his private members bill against the beer tie through the Commons, the Tory took up the fight last year against the closure of the childrens heart surgery unit in Leeds and won and neither are afraid of using social media and the BBC for their cause, might be worth an email ?

Consent in itself is a fairly straightforward concept and is defined in English Law Section 74 Sexual Offences Act 2003 as "where a person agrees by choice and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice."

I don't think there's any doubt that alcohol or other substances can impair the capacity to consent

Agreed. But drunken consent is still consent. And quite rightly so. Otherwise every man who takes a woman out for a drink or two, then has a bit of hanky panky, would be a rapist.

You have to be so drunk you pretty much have absolutely no idea what you are doing, before you are deemed too drunk to consent.

I'd hazard a guess that the majority of sexual intercourse that takes place in the UK, on a Friday and Saturday night, is actually rape then?? ....

And equally obviously, at some point as you get increasingly drunk, you eventually reach a point where you are so extremely drunk, that you can no longer give consent. Until you reach that level of drunk, drunken consent is still consent.

The samples taken from woman Evans is convicted of raping tested Zero for alcohol content which is one major reason I can't understand how at 4am she could have been paralytic and incapable.

Mention nothing of the 'when I win big' tweets she made, which were only recovered by some American computer hacker who investigated her Twitter account.

And also, when the police went through her Facebook she had deleted all records of conversations between her and a friend that took place in the immediate aftermath of the incident.

The whole Ched Evans case screams unsafe conviction, It will be interesting to see how the public react if / when it is overturned on appeal.