Why Chad Evans Was Cleared Of Rape
Former Welsh International, Chad Evans, has been cleared of raping a 19-year-old lady in 2011.
The Chesterfield striker was accused of attacking her at a Premier Inn in Rhuddlan, Denbighshire, on 30 May 2011.
Mr Evans, 27, was originally found guilty of rape at Caernarfon Crown Court in 2012, but this conviction was quashed in April.
He was found not guilty of the same charge at Cardiff Crown Court on Friday.
He always denied having sex with the woman while she was too drunk to consent.
He insisted she agreed to let him “join in” while she was having consensual sex with fellow footballer Clayton McDonald, 27 – who was cleared of rape at the original trial – after a night out in Rhyl.
According to a BBC report, In rape trials, defence lawyers are banned from cross-examining an alleged victim about their sexual behaviour or history to protect them from humiliating treatment.
But there can be exceptional reasons to ditch that rule in the interests of a fair trial. The Court of Appeal said Mr Evans’ case was one of those very rare exceptions.
It said that two other men who had sex with the woman had described their encounters with her in highly specific terms that were virtually indistinguishable from Mr Evans’s own account of what had happened.
One of the encounters occurred days before the alleged rape – and the other in the days that followed.
On each occasion the woman had been drinking heavily and the sex occurred in a very specific way – including the words she used to encourage her partner.
Each time she woke up saying she had no memory of what had happened.
Lady Justice Hallett, one of the country’s top judges, said that these events were so similar to what Mr Evans had described that a jury had to hear about them before deciding whether the woman had been incapable of giving her consent.