Good Evans?
John Leslie, one-time ‘Blue Peter’ presenter and 1990s mainstream TV mainstay, has recently spoken of the accusation that effectively ended his high-profile, £350,000-a-year career. The story that emerged into the public domain in 2002 appeared in the pages of Ulrika Jonsson’s autobiography, when she recounted a rape by an unnamed celebrity that had taken place years before. The anonymous alleged culprit was named on television by Matthew Wright, prompting Inspector Knacker to come knocking. Dropped overnight by ITV, Leslie spent the next twelve months attempting to prove his innocence and legal costs left him £500,000 out-of-pocket by the time the charges were eventually dropped; unlike Lord McAlpine, he didn’t sue the broadcaster who had named him, after being told that suing Channel 5 would place him on a TV blacklist. He ended up on it anyway. Leslie was forced to sell everything of value he owned in order to stave off bankruptcy and now lives back in his native Edinburgh, earning a living via local radio, the traditional retirement home for those residing in the ‘Where are they now?’ file. It’s highly unlikely we’ll see him sharing a sofa with Lorraine Kelly again.
While we’ve become accustomed to famous names being put through the public wringer due to allegations of sexual assault that apparently took place years or decades before, a celebrity career can just as easily be left in tatters by an accusation in the here and now, as was the case with footballer Ched Evans.
The Welsh international was found guilty of raping a 19-year-old woman in 2012 and jailed for five years. His early release from prison in 2014 was the green light for those who wanted to stand up and be counted as defenders of morality. When Evans made it clear he wished to resume his playing career, any club that showed an interest was condemned on social media with a ferocity that implied they had been the holders of the rail franchise that ferried passengers to Auschwitz. Sponsors and celebrities previously happy to lend their name were quick to disassociate themselves from any such club, including the one he had been at when arrested in 2011, Sheffield United.
According to the order of events as laid out at the trial, the 19-year-old victim was chatted-up by Evans’s former Manchester City Youth teammate Clayton McDonald on the street and accompanied the player back to a Premier Inn in Rhuddlan, Denbighshire, where they were later joined by Evans. Presumably, she didn’t imagine a quiet game of scrabble was on the agenda. The woman said she had consumed (amongst other cordials) four double vodkas and two glasses of wine during the time she spent in McDonald’s and Evans’s company; when waking up naked in a bedroom at the Premier Inn the following morning, she claimed to have no memory of the night before and assumed her drink had been spiked, even though blood samples showed no traces of alcohol, unlike the traces of cannabis and cocaine that were found (which she denied taking).
Neither McDonald nor Evans denied having sex with the girl, though they stressed they did so separately and didn’t indulge in a ‘roasting’; they also claimed the girl was at all times in enough control to give her consent. According to some reports, she had actually publicised meeting the two ‘stars’ on Facebook with a distinct absence of trauma, and it was the police rather than the girl herself who insisted on charging the two footballers with rape. When the case came to trial a year later, McDonald was cleared, yet Evans was found guilty. The latter continued to maintain his innocence, but he was twice denied access to the Court of Appeal the year he was sentenced; he finally succeeded with the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2014, who helped secure his release just three months later.
The moment he walked out of prison a free man, two years behind bars for a crime he claimed he hadn’t committed didn’t count where social media was concerned. Once a rapist, always a rapist in the Court of Public Opinion. The full weight of amateur judges, juries and executioners was brought to bear on Evans, though behind the scenes the Criminal Cases Review Commission were busily investigating the case anew, and yesterday it was announced fresh evidence that would have aided Evans’s defence at the trial was deemed sufficient enough to refer the conviction to the Court of Appeal. This referral means the Court of Appeal will finally hear a full appeal, with the potential outcome of the original conviction being quashed or overturned and a possible retrial.
At the trial, the judge had surmised the complainant was ‘heavily intoxicated’ and that ‘she was in no condition to have sexual intercourse’. That may indeed have been the case; the jury certainly came to that conclusion. But were Evans and McDonald tee-total? Chances are that all three will have been drinking together, so they could well have been at the same level of intoxication, meaning the whole trio were in no condition to have sexual intercourse, not just the girl. As we all know, many a drunken fumble has resulted in the shock of waking up next to someone we wouldn’t consider in an erotic light when sober; that doesn’t necessarily mean a rape has taken place.
The vitriol that greeted the stated intention of Ched Evans to return to his playing career upon leaving prison was interesting in that much of it questioned the wisdom of his early release; yet, few doubts were expressed as to the guilty verdict in 2012. Justice got it right and then got it wrong, apparently. And what on earth will the reaction be should Evans succeed in his aim of clearing his name? Looking at the case from the outside, it’s hard to come away from it with the feeling that the current moral climate didn’t in some small way influence its outcome, more so than Evans’s ‘fame’ (for what it was) singling him out as someone to be made an example of. Let’s face it, Ched Evans was playing for a club marooned outside of the Premier League fishbowl and wearing the international colours of a tiny country that hasn’t competed in a major tournament since 1958. He was hardly Wayne Rooney or David Beckham.
As uncomfortable as the truth may be, there is a seedy little culture of football groupies, predatory young women – most of whom are recognisable via their hair extensions and perma-tans – who prowl the nightclubs of Britain on the hunt for household names to add to their list of conquests in a manner that was once the preserve of randy young men – y’know, just like those empowered New Yorkers on ‘Sex and The City’. That’s equality, and if they want to engage in loveless sex with a string of one-night stands, that’s their prerogative as liberated independent women. A hideous TV show such as ‘Geordie Shore’ serves as a visual manual for girls intent on aping the sexual recklessness of their male equivalents; it’s not especially edifying if you’re in possession of an old-fashioned quality called taste, but there’s no real reason why young women shouldn’t behave as badly as their young men-folk if they want to. If they’re determined to live their lives that way, they should be aware enough that it can lead to trouble.
And when it does lead to trouble, this fearless, foul-mouthed, micro-skirted Countess Dracula suddenly reverts to a delicate little flower who’s never been kissed – like watching Olivia Newton John’s ‘Grease’ transformation in reverse. Whether or not this was the case with the 19-year-old Ched Evans was found guilty of raping, perhaps the Court of Appeal will decide once and for all. This could well end up being a game of two halves.
Petunia Winegum
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October 6, 2015 at 9:12 am -
residing in the ‘Where are they now?’ file
So many great lyrics in that one song. As to CE , the CCRC’s statement is a brilliant piece of victim-sensitive eyewash.
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October 6, 2015 at 9:14 am -
“Leslie spent the next twelve months attempting to prove his innocence…”
The mere fact that you can say that, and nobody thinks it remarkable, shows how low our legal system has fallen.
Since when did anyone have to “prove their innocence”? The age of mob rule has returned indeed.
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October 6, 2015 at 9:47 am -
The one thing the CoA will not do is order a retrial because the thought of a Ched Evans (who btw seems a particularly odious C-Lister) with a not guilty verdict and money behind him (apparently his girl friend’s dad is wealthy?) would make Economou …..
His conviction will be quashed as ‘unsafe’ .That’s what my Tarot cards say.
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October 6, 2015 at 9:56 am -
“As uncomfortable as the truth may be, there is a seedy little culture of football groupies, predatory young women…”
As predatory as the “plaster-casters” of rock & roll fame?
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October 6, 2015 at 10:06 am -
I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was convicted because 19 year old girls don’t do that sort of thing and his behaviour was generally awful rather than criminal. It will be interesting to see what the new evidence actually is
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October 6, 2015 at 1:43 pm -
Yes, I’ve long thought that the jury simply found it easier and more socially acceptable to find Evans guilty than effectively label a young woman as “promiscuous.”
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October 6, 2015 at 10:22 am -
What was especially surprising here was that both men said she was consenting, and the jury found she was indeed in a condition to consent with the one , but not the other, a very short time afterwards. With Evans her consent was invalid due to the supposed degree of intoxication, possibly illness. That a man is not absolved from responsibility for his actions when totally bladdered, but a woman is in these situations, shows one of the major sexist inconsistencies in current rape law – it’s far from the only one.
Apparently the complainant had no intention of making a “rape” charge against the footballers when she initially contacted the police over a missing bag. My suspicion is that, under pressure to charge and convict more and more men from the fanatical lobbyists the state always kow tows to,it’s possible the young woman may have been persuaded she could have been raped in a situation she said she had no memory of – it would be difficult for a 19 year old to resist any heavy official pressure to take this case to court. If it turns out that the conviction is eventually quashed, it’s not only Mr Evans who has had his life ruined, but the young woman in the case has been put through an ordeal she might have had no intention of ever getting into. And it would prove a good example of why running the “justice” system by a principle of getting convictions rather than impartial proof being established of guilt, leads to very bad consequences for society, both the accused and alleged victims.
Noticeably the “Daily Mail”, which preceded every appearance of the Evans name in a headline by the word “rapist” now calls him “footballer Ched Evans”. Where Mail reader comments earlier were all overwhelming condemnations of the footballer, now they are overwhelmingly of the “had my doubts about this conviction” sort. Whether they are mainly different commenters, or ones being honest enough to reconsider their previously expressed seemingly firm opinions, I don’t know.
My own opinion, which I put, often to hostile reactions on message boards, was that this was a case where there was not enough to convict, that reasonable doubt was certainly there – and that the jury’s verdict had been heavily influenced by a judicial summing up which seemed to be “directing” the jury to convict without sound enough reasons. Not very edifying behaviour by any of the participants that night, but the basis for a rape conviction? I was far from convinced. It will be interesting to find out what “new evidence” has been persuasive enough to allow the case to go to appeal this time.
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October 6, 2015 at 10:31 am -
It will be interesting to find out what “new evidence” has been persuasive enough
Indeed, my interest as to what this new evidence might be was peaked when the CCRC announced they were going to ‘fast track’ (a mere 10 months?) their investigation.
My personal view of the original trial is that all three of the main protagonists should have been publically birched and banned from drinking alcohol until they reached the age of maturity.
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October 6, 2015 at 11:27 am -
I believe Yagoda May has your suggestion ready to go after she’s disposed of the current business of abolishing free speech.
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October 6, 2015 at 2:25 pm -
Good God! I actually find myself in total agreement with you – can this be right?
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October 6, 2015 at 2:30 pm -
‘even a broken clock is right twice a day’ as Norfolk Granny Dwarf was known to exclaim (not that I think she had ever seen a clock, beyond the big one on the village church …bit new fangled for them days), so don’t let it rob you of sleep
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October 6, 2015 at 10:44 am -
The many hand-wringing bedwetters uniting to condemn (and who still are) Ched Evans on social media all seem to have one thing in common – their own social inadequacies have (lucky for them, you might say) kept them away from the sexual interaction with members of the opposite sex so they have no idea what they are talking about – which is perhaps the way the media likes it.
They have had little experience of the sexual mores of young women or young men, and probably could not comprehend the code of behaviour if it were explained to them a thousand times over. They know not of the ‘social conditioning’ and gender norms that young people feel compelled to abide by, of the increase in media-led sexualisation versus the decrease of sensuality, of how sex is by and large instigated by increasingly wanton and out-of-control females now and the legal blindside that dictates men are ‘in control’ when intoxicated but women are incapable of that. They do not wish to accept that the behaviours flaunted by the underclass for entertainment on daytime ITV and by reality TV on just about every channel are, after 10 years of Jeremy Kyle and 15 years of Big Brother, now reality for an entire generation. They cannot accept that most young men – whether they are up-and-coming footballers or supermarket shelf-stackers – feel socially obligated to “take advantage” of intoxicated when they demand sexual contact as this is the ‘norm’ they see plastered across the media.“Ah, but rape is rape and you must be a rape apologist, a woman cannot consent in drink” comes the cry of those who take everything literally.
Well, in that case you best hammer that message home to the millions of ordinary socially conditioned tattooed young saps across the country then. Do not fuck these girls any more.-
October 6, 2015 at 11:24 am -
The attempts to convict more and more of rape without proper evidence that rape has taken place, is really about gender extremists/hate mongers using this as a method of turning men and women as a whole against each other, to foster suspicion, distrust and grievance. Protecting traditional morality and even protecting women as individuals, is not what is driving this – but a political agenda which is both deeply sexist, totalitarian, and ultimately inimical to all who are not fanatical gender warriors.
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October 6, 2015 at 12:28 pm -
Chris,
Re: “The many hand-wringing bedwetters uniting to condemn (and who still are) Ched Evans on social media all seem to have one thing in common – their own social inadequacies have (lucky for them, you might say) kept them away from the sexual interaction with members of the opposite sex so they have no idea what they are talking about – which is perhaps the way the media likes it.
They have had little experience of the sexual mores of young women or young men, and probably could not comprehend the code of behaviour if it were explained to them a thousand times over”Lol, I couldn’t help laughing at this, and you’re probably right….
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October 6, 2015 at 11:01 am -
The Ched Evans case was nevertheless something of a turning point. Since posting about it last January, I’ve been astonished by the positive reaction to my conclusion that Evans was a victim, and the trial a political travesty. Equally, it remains by far the biggest single post readership since The Slog began in 2011: over 800,000 hits.
None of the blokes covered themselves in glory, but the final verdict was deranged.
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/ched-evans-not-the-account-youre-being-given-by-the-mainstream-media/ -
October 6, 2015 at 11:05 am -
I seem to recall that at the height of the Leslie/Jonsson business, an issue of Private Eye contained a cartoon entitled “Money For Old Rape”. Can you imagine the Twitterstorm that would follow if anyone tried to make light of such things now? Pitchforks at dawn…
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October 6, 2015 at 11:09 am -
Meanwhile. What do we tell our sons and daughters of gentler mien?
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October 6, 2015 at 11:34 am -
Let’s face it. There is no requirement now in Britain to have done anything at all to be accused of rape and to be subject to the most heavy handed and comprehensive investigation on the basis of a mere dubious, bald accusation of something which might be being alleged to have occurred when Harold Macmillan was in office. The police might even say it’s “true” before it has even got to the CPS, never mind a jury. In an atmosphere of hysteria and guilt by accusation, there is nothing you can advise except for one sex to keep well away from the other – the situation the ideological gender extremists are attempting to create.
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October 6, 2015 at 2:33 pm -
I get the feeling that keeping well away from the opposite sex will not make anyone immune from accusations of rape these days;
accuser “your honour, even though he was in another country at the time, I’m sure he was thinking about raping me me”
judge “I believe her, lock the guilty bastard up!
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October 6, 2015 at 2:51 pm -
I’m sure he was thinking about raping me
From the people that brought you ‘3rd hand smoking’, now there’s ‘3rd hand rape’….or even ‘4th hand’ which is when the EVIL ABUSER was demonstrably clinically dead at the time he abused his victim (more commonly to be known as ‘shade rape’).
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October 6, 2015 at 11:39 am -
Like the Good Book (US Edition) sayeth, you give unto your sons and daughters the same sage advice that Mormon once gave unto his own son Moroni (“stop the barracking at the back there, boys!”) that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue
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October 6, 2015 at 4:32 pm -
” What do we tell our sons and daughters of gentler mien?”
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Or a dose of the clap. But don’t bring it home.
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October 6, 2015 at 11:33 am -
Sailing into choppy waters here, Petunia! For my part, sordid as the whole business is, I would find it rather difficult to see a solid basis for a conviction – but then I wasn’t at the trial. One thing I do know: when it comes to fact finding exercises, all courts, whether dealing with civil or criminal cases, are fallible to some degree, and occasionally in my experience, outrageously so.
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October 6, 2015 at 11:40 am -
I’ve woken up not being able to remember anything after consuming too much alcohol before and my drink hadn’t been spiked. I’m gonna assume she *did* have alcohol, as she not only said she did but I don’t think too much cannabis and cocanie have quite the same affect (although cannabis can put you asleep)? Did they find traces of any other substance that they might have used to spike her drink with and cause her to have no memory? If i’ve been that drunk i’ll usually spend the entire next day being sick, but when I was younger, maybe her age, i’d have been sick a lot sooner, i.e that night, avoiding a bad hangover, perhaps because most of the alcohol hadn’t had a chance to go though my system, don’t know of that could be a reason no alcohol was found in her system by the time they took blood samples?
A couple of problems I have with this are that all too many people, women in particular, are far too quick to assume that their drinks must have been spiked and blame others, instead of holding their hands up and taking responsibility for their own drinking habits, this may or may not have been the case here, but i’m sure it happens far more frequently than drinks actually being spiked, i’ve seen plenty people jump to that conclusion themselves even though the likelihood of them having been spiked, because of the people who where there at the time, the environment they were in, the fact no one went near their drink after it was bought cos they were going down too quick, but they were seen drinking a shit load all of their own accord, seems very slim.
The other is that, while she might well have been raped, if she has NO MEMORY of being raped and NO evidence can be found of her being spiked with a substance that would make her lose her memory in order for the men/man to carry out the attack, but she KNOWS and said herself that she’d consumed a fair amount of alcohol (that she remembers, she could have consumed even more after she started getting drunk and forgot, i’m sure that’s quite common), how can she KNOW what happened, how does she KNOW she wasn’t the one who made the first move or was at least an active participant? Alcohol makes people lose their inhibitions and do some crazy stuff, especially when consumed in large enough quantities that it causes your memory to be erased, not remembering the next day doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, or you didn’t do anything. This is a known fact about alcohol, and I doubt that if the men where saying ‘I don’t remember what happened that night’, or if someone used the ‘I don’t remember what happened that night I was drunk’ after causing a breach of the peace, vandalism, assaulting someone or getting into a fight it would cut much mustard.
Just because you don’t remember what happened because you we’re so drunk doesn’t mean you weren’t doing anything, and must’ve been unconscious the whole time. Do doctors and the police etc not know this? Surely a lot of them must, the police have to deal with the drunk and disorderly all the time?
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October 6, 2015 at 12:32 pm -
I’ve woken up not being able to remember anything after consuming too much alcohol before and my drink hadn’t been spiked
I’ve woken up in a police cell with no or little memory, the world’s worst hangover to the the world’s worst cup of coffee and the cheery news I was looking at 3 life sentences…depending on whether someone had ‘made it through the night’. Long and short I got ‘off’ because the prosecution couldn’t prove I was NOT absolutely Oktoberfested at the time. So I have a lot of sympathy for the view that if the woman was too drunk to give informed consent then her equally drunken male partner must also be accorded the same ‘right’ of ‘too drunk to f*ck’.
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October 6, 2015 at 12:52 pm -
You get off for murder in Germany for being totally drunk? Your lawyer probably felt dirty for coming up with that gambit – not that you weren’t totally innocent, of course.
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October 6, 2015 at 1:00 pm -
Actually I walked into court and pleaded ‘Guilty as sin’ to 3 or 4 counts of attempted murder, armed robbery, carrying a concealed and some other ‘small change’ much to my lawyer’s distress but he didn’t know about the deal I made with God -which trumped the deal the DA offered. I ‘got off’ with 2 years probation.
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October 6, 2015 at 1:08 pm -
With that result, you made a deal with the devil. You could have pushed your luck and asked for X-Ray vision or something into the bargain.
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October 6, 2015 at 1:40 pm -
It got better than that, the deal I mean. I said ‘walked into court’ because I did, I was out on own-recognizance bail for over a year before the trial on capital charges. Even the CID’ers who accompanied me to the Bail Hearing in the judge’s chambers looked gob smacked when he set me free. Gob smacked from sheer reverence for the miracle they had just witnessed (actually one of them looked like he was going to puke).
I know it says ‘put not the Lord your God to the test’ but no way I was going to buy a pig in a poke. Mind you, I have spent the last couple of decades reneging on that deal….in part anyways.
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October 6, 2015 at 1:21 pm -
The Blocked Dwarf,
Holy hell, that must have been a fright, hope everything turned out ok in the end?
My point is that with alcohol, a man might be too drunk to perform in the bedroom, but just because you can’t remember the night before doesn’t mean that you weren’t able to walk, talk, and do all sorts of things at the time.
Has anyone ever been so drunk the night before that they can’t remember how they got home? I have, but I got home, so I must have still been mobile and able to function just enough to achieve that task, even though I could not remember the next day. I’ve also been so drunk I couldn’t remember what happened the night before but seen myself on video walking about, talking nonsense and making a general tit of myself, so just because the alcohol caused my memory to fail, doesn’t mean that I was rendered completely incapable of walking about, finding my keys, unlocking a door etc, my decision making ability I dare say would have been very impaired. Most people know that excessive alcohol consumption can make people lose their inhibitions, act impulsively and affects their ability to make good decisions, the police deal with this all the time, yet when faced with a women who claims to have woken up naked but not remember what happened but admitted drinking a lot that night, they completely dismiss the the likelihood that it was the alcohol she consumed that made her forget and that she’d probably taken her own clothes off and been perfectly willing, perhaps even instigated it, at the time, and decide that the most likely scenario is that she was drugged and raped by these to young, probably not that unattractive, men. It’s a bit of an outlandish conclusion to jump to knowing what we, and they must know about the effects of too much alcohol, which she admitted she’d had a lot of that night, and couldn’t remember what happened, therefore she COULDN’T REMEMBER HAVING BEEN RAPED, and with NO EVIDENCE of a substance that would produce a similar effect as the alcohol she ADMITTED having in her blood samples, how is the whole notion that she was drugged and raped based on anything more than assumption and speculation?
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October 6, 2015 at 12:49 pm -
I would urge caution regarding this case. I do not know the quality of the evidence against Evans, or the new evidence that prompted this referral to the Court of Appeal, and nor does anyone else here. Such a referral does not make a not guilty verdict a formality. I don’t think some of the sweeping claims here about the CJS can be justified from the case.
(BTW, I wondered how Leslie had a £350,000 a year job, and yet had to sell everything he had to pay a £50,000 legal bill. I went to the article and found it was a £500,000 legal bill.)
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October 6, 2015 at 4:31 pm -
I’m accused daily of being a “self confessed rapist and child abuser”. It must be true because The Observer said so in 1992. It supposedly happened when I was 11. It never happened of course but if the Observer prints it happened then then it did. Didn’t it? We’ll see.
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October 6, 2015 at 4:51 pm -
U may not be a rapist in this case Laverty but you certainly are an abusive and prolific bully. It was only last night u referred to Margaret Jervis as a >> ‘gin soaked mong’ << on Twitter or are u going to deny that as well as all your other disgusting and degrading references to women on ur blog and Twitter accounts.
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