The Football News Thread 2014/15 - Everything not Wolves News Related

[lemonjelly]

I presume that at some time in the future that Ched Evans will be allowed to work again.

No one is saying he cannot work.
Following committal of certain offences, you can be barred from certain professions. Not everything is criminal. If you go bankrupt, you cannot be a solicitor. A serving PC would lose their job if they go bankrupt.

He's a sex offender. If he was a teacher, would you be clamouring for him to get his job back?
There are consequences to his actions. Ask Graham Rix.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

An undischarged bankrupt can't be a solicitor as I remember it.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

No one is saying he cannot work.
Following committal of certain offences, you can be barred from certain professions. Not everything is criminal. If you go bankrupt, you cannot be a solicitor. A serving PC would lose their job if they go bankrupt.

He's a sex offender. If he was a teacher, would you be clamouring for him to get his job back?
There are consequences to his actions. Ask Graham Rix.

Mr Jelly. I am not clamouring for Evans to get his job back.

 

[Kenny]

I presume that at some time in the future that Ched Evans will be allowed to work again.

He is probably going to have to accept that being a pro footballer is not going to happen and he needs to find a new line of employment and continue football as a hobby. He has no one else to blame but himself for that (all this based on the review being carried ends in the same result for him).

Sadly though he is going to face a struggle even away from his chosen career as he now has a reputation and if he goes for any job where police checks are needed he is screwed (which rules out pretty much every job closely linked to football.)

He might be best off going "underground" for a while and maybe starting his own business and not being the public face of it. At the end of the day though, he is now getting the rewards for his crime.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Ched Evans releases a second statement. That totally fucks any slight progress the supposed contrition in his first may have made. Ched - stop fucking lying. No way is this anything to do with the "mob rule" criticising your potential contract. And then to try and blame the stand sponsor pulling out and saying it would cost local jobs and you feel bad about that is nothing short of a fucking disgrace. Fuck off out of football and enjoy stacking shelves at your local shop.

 

[Alan]

I don't want to overstep myself here but I do think I have a relatively unique view on things here if I properly understand it.

Anyone mind laying out a timeline of what exactly happened?

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Ched plus a mate on the lash. Mate pulls pissed girl. The have supposedly consensual sex (I have my doubts). After that Ched has sex with the near unconscious girl who is in no fit state to confirm or deny consent.

 

[Alan]

If she was unconscious then I guess I can't really pretend to understand what was going through his head (on second reading this was a poor choice of word. Didn't mean it like that). And he maintains that he's done nothing wrong, so... So much for me trying to be forgiving.

If he'd just take responsibility for himself I'd say he deserves a second chance. But, unfortunately, as it is, it doesn't seem like he'd change his actions if presented with the same "opportunity" a second time.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

A lot of the case depends on just how drunk the girl was and how able to give consent she was. At the very least, it looks like Evans (and in my opinion his mate as well) were extremely reckless as to whether there was consent. And that is why he was convicted, why his appeal failed, and why, I would aver, his judicial review will make not an iota of difference.

Rape is a repulsive offence of violation with intent. For me it is worse than being a drunken idiot behind the wheel who didn't intend to kill, but managed to do so through their own utter stupidity. If there was intent, Hughes would be a murderer. He isn't. The only thing that brings the Hughes offence into even the vaguely same realm as what Evans has done is Hughes leaving the scene of the accident and trying to run away from the consequences of his actions.

 

[Alan]

The general rule of thumb I've been taught is that if she's drunk, don't initiate it.

In his slight defense, from that story it wasn't a "malicious" rape, but IMO he still must take responsibility for taking advantage of someone in a way that no one deserves to be taken advantage of.

What has the victim had to say about it, if anything?

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

I'm not sure how rape can be "not malicious". Rape is rape is rape.

Rape

(1)A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a)he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,
(b)B does not consent to the penetration, and
(c)A does not reasonably believe that B consents.
(2)Whether a belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps A has taken to ascertain whether B consents.
... (subsection removed by me as it doesn't have relevance here)
(4)A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for life.

That is the statutory definition. The length of sentence that Evans received deals with murkiness about subsection (2).

 

[Alan]

I think there can be some separation between rape with malicious intent and rape that occurs over a misunderstanding of the definition of consent.

Both are heinous and I wouldn't dream of letting someone off the hook purely because they didn't properly learn what is and isn't consent, of course.

I'd point out the shortcomings of legal policy that does not acknowledge female-male rape but that's a conversation for another time.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Under our law, there isn't a difference. You are convicted of rape, and there are no "degrees" like you would have with murder over there. However, there is the discretion given to the court to reflect the difference between a sexual predator pulling a woman off the street with intent purely to commit rape and this sort of situation. In my humble opinion, I would say both are still malicious. But to differing degrees, and hence Evans received five years, rather than life.

 

[Alan]

That's fair. And maybe I'm just muddling it too much.

It's such a strange thing to go through. It's all made me a bit obsessed in what makes each rapist commit the act. Maybe that's a sort of mistake on my part in that I'm over-complicating things.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

If it's all based around someone being too drunk to properly give consent then there must surely be countless numbers of very similar situations, discounting the double teaming, up and down the country every weekend, no?

There must be hundreds if not thousands of people that go on a night out and end up in a strange bed the next morning with no knowledge of where they are and no recollection of how they got there, I know friends both male and female who've been in that situation, no doubt they've probably woke up in their own beds with someone next to them thinking the same at some point too. Could these situations all be construed as rape in the same way as the Evans case has? Rather than just being dismissed as a drunken mistake.

 

[Alan]

I can't even touch that one. So difficult when you can't remember what happened that night.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Not really. When I was a kid there was a rapist in the village we lived called "the fox". He hid out in the hills, and came down to break into people's houses in order to commit rape. That is a completely different level to what Ched Evans has done and was well worthy of the life sentence. It was 1983 or 1984 and I think the perpetrator is still inside now.

However, my view is that from the point of view of the victim, which is immensely difficult for a male to empathise with, so I doing the best I can here, the violation is still similar, whether it be "misunderstood" or utter heinous violence. The misunderstanding is by the perpetrator, not by the victim. It is a very complicated area of law, because so much is about intent.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

If it's all based around someone being too drunk to properly give consent then there must surely be countless numbers of very similar situations, discounting the double teaming, up and down the country every weekend, no?

There must be hundreds if not thousands of people that go on a night out and end up in a strange bed the next morning with no knowledge of where they are and no recollection of how they got there, I know friends both male and female who've been in that situation, no doubt they've probably woke up in their own beds with someone next to them thinking the same at some point too. Could these situations all be construed as rape in the same way as the Evans case has? Rather than just being dismissed as a drunken mistake.

Technically, yes. If the partner was unwilling, it is a real possibility. Honestly, Alan's first comment of "when drunk, don't initiate it" isn't bad advice at all.

 

[Alan]

Not really. When I was a kid there was a rapist in the village we lived called "the fox". He hid out in the hills, and came down to break into people's houses in order to commit rape. That is a completely different level to what Ched Evans has done and was well worthy of the life sentence. It was 1983 or 1984 and I think the perpetrator is still inside now.

However, my view is that from the point of view of the victim, which is immensely difficult for a male to empathise with, so I doing the best I can here, the violation is still similar, whether it be "misunderstood" or utter heinous violence. The misunderstanding is by the perpetrator, not by the victim. It is a very complicated area of law, because so much is about intent.

This is a very important statement. +1

 

[Kenny]

If it's all based around someone being too drunk to properly give consent then there must surely be countless numbers of very similar situations, discounting the double teaming, up and down the country every weekend, no?

There must be hundreds if not thousands of people that go on a night out and end up in a strange bed the next morning with no knowledge of where they are and no recollection of how they got there, I know friends both male and female who've been in that situation, no doubt they've probably woke up in their own beds with someone next to them thinking the same at some point too. Could these situations all be construed as rape in the same way as the Evans case has? Rather than just being dismissed as a drunken mistake.

As Evans dived in after his mate, this one probably falls outside of a drunken mistake. He may have been pissed but he was aware what he doing. The victim may have been aware with Evan's mate after that it enters the rape zone.