Accused rapist Ched Evans to be released from prison
- Thread starter Bahnhof Strasse
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belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Letter from Paul Blomfeld, whose constituency covers Bramall Lane.
Note (some of you, anyway) who the co-chairs are - don't sound very arabic to me
An open letter to Kevin McCabe and Jim Phipps, co-chairmen of Sheffield United FC.
Dear Kevin and Jim,
As you know, I've supported United through thick and thin for over 50 years, following the team home and away first with my father and then my son. It's because I care so much about our Club that I am writing to urge you to reconsider your decision to accept Ched Evans back to train with the team.
I have not commented publicly on the issue until now because I was confident, on the basis of our discussions over several months, that you would make the right decision in accordance with the values of our Club and because I didn't want to add to the damage to our reputation by needless speculation. I also sought to reassure people who contacted me about the good intentions of the Club. Sadly it appears I was wrong.
In the statement published yesterday evening, you rightly say that "rape is a heinous crime" and that you do "not question Mr Evans' conviction". You also highlight the right to "rehabilitation under law", with which I strongly agree. Everybody deserves a second chance, but with such serious offences this is based on offenders recognising the gravity of their crimes and seeking to make good for them. Since his release Ched Evans has not taken this first step towards rehabilitation, but has trivialised his crime by describing it as an “act of infidelity”.
So we are considering the case of an unrepentant convicted rapist. To take him back in these circumstances sends a disturbing message to young people and victims of sexual violence about how we view rape. It's also regrettable that, in all the views that your statement says were considered by the Board in reaching your decision, you don't mention the victim whose father has spoken movingly of how her life has been, and continues to be, damaged by Ched Evans’ crime.
The way this issue has been handled by the Club is dragging our name through the mud and dividing fans. Yesterday's decision only makes that situation worse. I really hope that you will reflect further and change your mind.
Yours sincerely,
Paul
Note (some of you, anyway) who the co-chairs are - don't sound very arabic to me
An open letter to Kevin McCabe and Jim Phipps, co-chairmen of Sheffield United FC.
Dear Kevin and Jim,
As you know, I've supported United through thick and thin for over 50 years, following the team home and away first with my father and then my son. It's because I care so much about our Club that I am writing to urge you to reconsider your decision to accept Ched Evans back to train with the team.
I have not commented publicly on the issue until now because I was confident, on the basis of our discussions over several months, that you would make the right decision in accordance with the values of our Club and because I didn't want to add to the damage to our reputation by needless speculation. I also sought to reassure people who contacted me about the good intentions of the Club. Sadly it appears I was wrong.
In the statement published yesterday evening, you rightly say that "rape is a heinous crime" and that you do "not question Mr Evans' conviction". You also highlight the right to "rehabilitation under law", with which I strongly agree. Everybody deserves a second chance, but with such serious offences this is based on offenders recognising the gravity of their crimes and seeking to make good for them. Since his release Ched Evans has not taken this first step towards rehabilitation, but has trivialised his crime by describing it as an “act of infidelity”.
So we are considering the case of an unrepentant convicted rapist. To take him back in these circumstances sends a disturbing message to young people and victims of sexual violence about how we view rape. It's also regrettable that, in all the views that your statement says were considered by the Board in reaching your decision, you don't mention the victim whose father has spoken movingly of how her life has been, and continues to be, damaged by Ched Evans’ crime.
The way this issue has been handled by the Club is dragging our name through the mud and dividing fans. Yesterday's decision only makes that situation worse. I really hope that you will reflect further and change your mind.
Yours sincerely,
Paul
CyberRose
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Jim Phipps (American) is co-chairman along with Kevin McCabe (British). McCabe is also co-owner with Prince Abdullah who was previously co-chairman but had to stand down as he's now minister for sport in Saudi Arabia (or youth welfare as it's called over there) and you can't be chairman of a football club if you're in a government position. Phipps is Abdullah's chief advisor
CyberRose
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I was convinced he'd have to serve the full five years as that was determined by the court to be the length of time necessary to rehabilitate and protect the public. As he is half way through that process and has shown no indication he knows what he did was wrong surely he must still be a risk as somebody who is capable of committing a crime like this?
If he'd admitted what he'd done it would be a whole different debate and as much as I'd not want him back at the club I'd have to support anyone's right to rehabilitation after serving their sentence. This isn't the case with Ched
CyberRose
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I think, unfortunately, that you'd be surprised...
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
As I said earlier in the thread, if he didn't complete an SOTP, it was probably because one wasn't available to him, and non-availability would have been taken into account when considering his release.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
aah, sorry, missed/forgot that.
If one wasn't available to him, it's a fucking disgrace.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, attendance and availability, in every case, are predicated on one thing, and one thing alone: The presence of POA members to accompany psychologists around the prison, and prisoners from cell to therapy. Prisons are now staffed in such a way that one or two people going sick in an establishment brings the entire duty roster for that shift tumbling down, so for inmates that means no treatment, no education, minimal physical exercise etc etc. It's fucking joke, and it's one that's been going on since around Michael Howard.
andysays
Love and solidarity
But don't you have to accept your guilt, the fact that you are a sex offender, before you can (meaningfully) take part in a sex offenders programme?
There may well be other issues about availability/access to this programme, but it sounds to me like what we have here is something else.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
He was in a beasts' prison though, would that not help?
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Nope, acceptance into a programme isn't predicated on prior admitted guilt. If it were, a lot fewer people would participate.
What the programmes do (very generally) as a first stage is encourage sex offenders to look at what got them in prison in the first place - many of them at this time will still be deploying various rape myths to themselves and others to justify their crime - and it's not until the offenders are able to view their crimes as others see them, and view their justifications for what they are, that they can move on to addressing why they might have undertaken such behaviours. In a (slight) majority of cases there's been abuse and/or neglect in the perpetrator's background, often of a degree that has "normalised" such behaviour to the perpetrator (such offenders are more likely to have started committing sexual offences as a juvenile). For most of the rest, there's usually a mix of opportunism, narcissism and lack of empathy that come together to make a perpetrator weigh the odds of "getting away with it", and for a tiny minority their crime is related to drugs and/or a disordered personality.
Such as?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Like I said, everything hinges on whether there's staff cover to take you to and from the therapy session, and on there being staff cover to take the psychologist (most of whom aren't directly-employed by the Home Office, so don't have staff privileges or the use of key sets) to and from reception to the session. Even in nicks like Grendon successful treatment often boils down to whether the staffing levels are adequate.
andysays
Love and solidarity
Thanks for that explanation and description, and for correcting my mis-assumption. I'm still concerned that a convicted rapist who hasn't even begun the process of rehabilitation by recognising his guilt can be released after only a couple of years. The poor availability of sex offender programmes might be part of the background to that, but it doesn't seem to me that it should be allowed to justify it (not suggesting that you personally are justifying it).
And I'm still left wondering if Evans' celebrity and ability to court/manipulate the media has contributed to his early release and, apparently, the bringing forward of his appeal against his conviction.
Was disgusted and dismayed when I heard two lads at work last night discussing this. They both said and were agreed with by the four lads sat with them, ''Evans has done nowt wrong, he's only done what 95% of blokes have done sometime in their lives.''
I despair and shake my head in disbelief that this is how some men see this behaviour.
What the fuck is wrong with this society?
I despair and shake my head in disbelief that this is how some men see this behaviour.
What the fuck is wrong with this society?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
My only reply can be that a lot of supposedly-operational decisions are in fact political, so what you say is entirely possible, just as Harry Roberts doing 48 years was entirely-possibly down to the non-operational diktat of politicians.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Was disgusted and dismayed when I heard two lads at work last night discussing this. They both said and were agreed with by the four lads sat with them, ''Evans has done nowt wrong, he's only done what 95% of blokes have done sometime in their lives.''
I despair and shake my head in disbelief that this is how some men see this behaviour.
What the fuck is wrong with this society?
Simplistically, a massive sense of entitlement - a belief that we deserve what we want, and that what we want we can take.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
Was disgusted and dismayed when I heard two lads at work last night discussing this. They both said and were agreed with by the four lads sat with them, ''Evans has done nowt wrong, he's only done what 95% of blokes have done sometime in their lives.''
I despair and shake my head in disbelief that this is how some men see this behaviour.
What the fuck is wrong with this society?
In my life time I believe have seen a definite shift from a notion of social/collective responsibility (e.g. expressed in national, class and familial terms) to one of individual responsibility; a move from taking care of each other to taking care of ourselves. I'm not saying that this was always done; rather that the aspiration to look after each used to be more valued (culturally, politically, even economically), and that this has been overtaken by the idea that looking after number one is what is seen as being both achievable and desirable.
In this changed landscape, it not only becomes more explicable that a young man can excuse his own behaviour - his rape of an unconscious young woman - in terms of a perceived lack of personal responsibility on her part, it also becomes easier for others to agree with him. And just to make clear I'm not suggesting that women didn't get raped in some halcyon bygone era, but that the justifications for the crime and the ability for others to sympathise with the criminal have changed.
Cheers – Louis MacNeice
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wobbly
all you have to do is look at the people arriving on this thread to defend him and they really do believe he was convicted solely as a result of having sex while drunk. he's managed to muddy the water to the point where a lot of people beleive it was 2 drunk people falling into the same bed together and one of them got convicted of rape.Was disgusted and dismayed when I heard two lads at work last night discussing this. They both said and were agreed with by the four lads sat with them, ''Evans has done nowt wrong, he's only done what 95% of blokes have done sometime in their lives.''
I despair and shake my head in disbelief that this is how some men see this behaviour.
What the fuck is wrong with this society?
That's what I tried to point out last night and received a torrent of bile.
I said, in what universe does being unconscious mean okay I consent to whatever you want to subject me to, outside of an operating theatre.
Got called a wuss!
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wobbly
ah yes, you* are less of a man because you're capable of convincing conscious women to want to get jiggly with you and have all sorts of fun rather than fucking someone who is unconcious and can't show you any more enthusiasm and naughtyness than a sex toy.
*generalised 'you'
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Who says twitterstorms have no effect? John Holland Sales Limited - blades shirt sponsors - have said they might pull out of the deal if Evans is re-signed.
Dave Berry and some businesswoman have also resigned from the SU Community Foundation
http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/sheff...-of-deal-if-ched-evans-is-re-signed-1-6948870
Dave Berry and some businesswoman have also resigned from the SU Community Foundation
http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/sheff...-of-deal-if-ched-evans-is-re-signed-1-6948870
CyberRose
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This, I think, is why a lot of people support Evans, because they don't want to think that something they themselves might have done could be considered rape.Was disgusted and dismayed when I heard two lads at work last night discussing this. They both said and were agreed with by the four lads sat with them, ''Evans has done nowt wrong, he's only done what 95% of blokes have done sometime in their lives.''
I despair and shake my head in disbelief that this is how some men see this behaviour.
What the fuck is wrong with this society?
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
At one level, that's great (really, it is). Same time there's also a number of sponsors and others making PR decisions as to whether they can 'contain' the story. That's not a dig at people who are making the right decision and taking a stand, it's just that for the club itself and probably the key sponsors this has become a cold financial/reputational calculation. Pity the club couldn't fucking wise up earlier.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
This is how capitalism works, sadly.
So yeah, keep up the pressure on the sponsors. No one wants their product/service associated in the public mind with rape.
edit; and not just sponsors, folk such as Paul Heaton, lifelong Blade, twitterstorm him enough and he'll have to decide whether he wants his 'brand' associated with rapists.
The Octagon
Stop...Hammertime
Sean Bean is one of their most prominent fans, has he said anything (not that he has to per se, I'm just wondering)?
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
One does not simply resign from Sheffield United
likesfish
You can't park here sir
Sorry I was a squaddie in cyprus and my battalion managed to get through two years without raping anyone so no not every manchild thinks fucking a woman whose out of it then inviting their mates for twos up is reasonable behaviour, ok knew one nutter who tried asking he got a well deserved slap
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wobbly
because they think all he did was have drunk sex
Sorry I was a squaddie in cyprus and my battalion managed to get through two years without raping anyone so no not every manchild thinks fucking a woman whose out of it then inviting their mates for twos up is reasonable behaviour, ok knew one nutter who tried asking he got a well deserved slap
that's the difference between drunk sex, which i'm guessing a shitload of them did manage to do. and what evans did. he's got every loudmouth fuckwit convinced that all he did was mutually drunk sex. look about, how many of his defenders will say she went back to the hotel with THEM. not she went back to a hotel room with one man who invited his mate along for a go.
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