Evaluating Whether Ched Evans Should Play Professional Football Again
Update: Ched Evans was found not guilty of rape in a retrial on October 14, 2016. The headline has been adjusted accordingly.
Until Sunday morning, I had great difficulty—which I guess many people shared—in trying to work out whether Sheffield United or any other club should give Ched Evans a new contract.
There is, after all, a balance to be struck between revulsion over the crime of which Evans was convicted and the need to rehabilitate offenders after they have served their sentences. Evans, moreover, has consistently denied raping a 19-year-old woman in a hotel room in 2011, and the Criminal Cases Review Commission could begin examining his contention within weeks, as per the BBC.
If his conviction, for which he served half of a five-year sentence before being released last Friday, were to be overturned, the least he could expect would be a welcome back to football. But even now he has paid the price the judge deemed appropriate for the offence. Therefore, amid misgivings, I spent Saturday moving towards a conclusion that Evans should be allowed to resume his career.
Reluctant? The details of the case, as per Steve Robson of the Mirror—of Evans’ own defence—were not edifying. Late at night, his friend and fellow footballer Clayton McDonald met the young woman, who appeared to be drunk after a night out, in or around a food takeaway in Rhyl, North Wales. They went together by taxi to a hotel where a room had been booked and, during the journey, McDonald texted Evans, saying he had "got a bird."
By the time Evans arrived, McDonald was having sex with her. In court, their versions of subsequent events conflicted; McDonald said Evans asked to join in, while Evans said McDonald invited him.
Outside, two other men, presumably alerted by McDonald or Evans (or both), allegedly watched what was happening through a window and tried to film it on a mobile phone. The woman said she had no recollection of anything between the takeaway encounter and her waking in the morning to find her clothes strewn around the room.
Boys being boys? The court thought otherwise. Although it cleared McDonald of rape, Evans was found guilty. The woman’s torment was just beginning, however, for she was named and repeatedly abused by Internet trolls—"slag," "tramp," "bitch" and "whore"—to the extent that the police felt obliged to help her acquire a new identity and move away from the area in which she had grown up.
If the intention of Evans’ sick supporters was to make her suffer along with the fallen hero, they appeared to have succeeded. And still, as Evans walks free, awaiting the outcome of Sheffield United’s deliberations—the club have denied reports from Richard Moriarty of The Sun (subscription required) that a two-year contract worth £500,000 is being prepared—she can have no true peace.
No doubt she is aware that Sheffield United fans sang Evans’ name during the victory over Bradford City at Valley Parade on Saturday and that, more chillingly, some were heard chanting "Chedwyn Evans, he does what he wants." For me, reading it in Sunday’s newspapers, that was the clinching argument, the reason Evans should not be welcomed back to the game, at least until the outcome of any retrial that might follow his case review.
Football cannot harbour any suggestion of condoning rape, any more than it can condone racist chants, and, while a continued exile of Evans might seem tough on him, it’s an industry based on everything being subject to the magnifying glass of popularity.
Including wages. Because of the money the game attracts, Evans was on a reported £1 million a year when he went for his fateful night out in Rhyl. Not bad for a sub-household name. And, having enjoyed the good things that come with an ability to score the odd goal, he should have to take the bad bits entailed in his choice of career.
Football has a social responsibility that, in this case, could hardly have been more starkly emphasised by the statistic issued almost as Evans made his pre-dawn departure from a Lancashire prison: Reported rapes in Britain have increased by nearly 36 per cent over 12 months, as per the Daily Mail's Tom McTague.
Maybe the rise is partly because a higher proportion of rapes have been reported due to a greater sympathy being shown to alleged victims. In which case the game must do all it can to avoid moving, however inadvertently, against this trend.
That means turning its back on Evans. It’s hard, but life is hard. Especially where the protection of the public is concerned.
If someone is convicted of fraud, you would not want him or her to come straight out of jail and back to the bank where your account is held.
Double punishment? Maybe. But sometimes the health of society must come above the pleadings of individuals. Those chants in Bradford showed us on which side of the argument the Sheffield United board and the rest of football should fall.
Patrick Barclay is an award-winning football journalist and best-selling author, whose portfolio includes biographies on Jose Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson and Herbert Chapman.
