After an initial guilty verdict, Ched Evans has now been found not guilty of raping a 19-year-old woman in May 2011, at a retrial which concluded on Friday.
He was first found guilty in 2012, and served half of his five-year prison sentence. After his release new evidence caused the conviction to be quashed, and the ordering of a retrial.
I am not here now to discuss the trial itself, nor the result of it. What I am here to talk about is people’s reaction to it – the thousands of repulsive comments about this woman which I have already seen plastered all over social media – and the idea that because Evans has been exonerated in a court of law, that makes his accuser a liar.
It doesn’t.
A not guilty verdict means that a jury has not been convinced “beyond reasonable doubt” that the defendant should be convicted, given the evidence put in front of them – essentially, to pass a guilty verdict, the jury has to be totally sure.
What this also means, is that even though Evans has been found not guilty, it does not mean that the woman was lying when she accused him. The two are not mutually exclusive.
This is not up for debate – those are the legal facts.
Some of the comments that have been made about this woman are beyond contempt. I am not including any of them in this article, because these people do not deserve to have their voices amplified.
People are calling her a slut. They want her jailed. They want her killed. People are saying that she has “ruined Evans’ life”, while she has got away “scot free”, as if she deserves some kind of punishment for all this. Remember, the ruling does not suggest that the woman has done anything wrong in any legal sense – she does not deserve to be punished. And yet, like countless women who have found the bravery to come forward with rape accusations, she has already suffered far more punishment than most people can even imagine.
She has had to change her name and move house five times since the initial trial because of harassment she has received from Evans’ supporters, and that’s before we even get to the trauma such an experience brings – a trauma unimaginable to anyone who has not been in a similar position to this young woman.
It is unacceptable that society creates such a wholly disgusting environment for women who come forward with these types of accusations.
You have to ask yourself about the motivations of these people who are flinging such vitriolic abuse the way of this woman. Some are even trying to find and name her publicly, with the aim of subjecting her to as much hate as possible (this is a criminal offence).
How do you have to feel about women if your immediate reaction to this verdict is to want to make her feel even more pain? Do these men – because it is overwhelmingly men – perhaps see some of Evans’ behaviours in themselves? In their minds, maybe it wasn’t just Ched Evans on trial, maybe they saw themselves on trial too.
Or perhaps they are just totally unable to deal with their own idea that this woman has “ruined” a man’s life and career, and yet they give zero thought to the impact the entire ordeal has had on her and those around her.
Just to be clear again, I am not here questioning the jury’s verdict. I am not saying Ched Evans is a rapist.
What I am saying is that the reaction to today’s verdict has displayed just how clearly and viscerally alive misogyny still is in 2016.
Rape Crisis England & Wales is a charity which can help you if you’ve experienced rape, child sexual abuse and/or any kind of sexual violence and has details of your nearest Rape Crisis services. There is also a Scotland branch.
