Don't get me wrong - I'm not coming out to bat for team Evans here. I think this whole thing is a mess - but the difference between our moral judgments and the legal judgments are important. We can privately think that Evans' behaviour is reprehensible, and between his conviction and his retrial, we could've called him a rapist. Now he is not a rapist. Our own personal views about the morality of what happened that night are little more than conjecture.

You could make the argument that he didn't get consent because inviting friends to come with him implies arrogance. A counter argument could be made that you'd have to be really really really stupid to ask your friends to film you committing rape. Would've made the trial significantly shorter, so I presumed they didn't film. Either way, our arguments are simply moral posturing.

He was tried and found guilty then he was retried and found innocent. The majority of the confusion comes with not understanding why someone who has been found 'guilty' was re-tried and found 'not guilty' - without anyone involved lying. The reason for this deep dive was to explore the law as a binary arbitration that doesn't work in some complex cases.

Did he rape her. No. Did he rape her before his conviction was overturned. Yes. What changed? New evidence came before the jury that shook their 'reasonable belief' and added credence to his previous statements. Did that evidence demonstrate she was lying in the first trial? No. Does it exonerate her from the possibility of lying? No. Did the new evidence exonerate his behaviour entirely? No.

Complicated - because what most of us want is a goodie and a baddie. Which is why the general public should be kept away from legal trials. In this case, he would've been named after his first trial - which I think would've been sensible and a balanced position for a society to take.

Whatver position people take - it's good to get to the heart of why people feel the way they do about these things. If we're going to build a society which does better with sex crimes and consent, we need to fully understand the complexity around the law of what we're talking about.

Thanks for commenting and furthering the discussion. :o)