Jackson won’t win any friends by playing victim card

FIRST things first. Nobody disputes that Paddy Jackson is an innocent man.

After a lengthy and high-profile rape trial, he was acquitted by a jury of his peers and walked from court without a blemish on his character. Except, of course, it isn’t that simple.

Quite understandably, most right-thinking people were disgusted by the vulgar and objectionable WhatsApp exchanges

in the aftermath of the fateful night. But he made a further mistake by failing to appear sufficiently contrite over those messages.

Frankly, Jackson did himself no favours with the brief, perfunctory statement he made outside Belfast Crown Court at the end of the case. He looked like a man who was simply going through the motions.

So it didn’t ring entirely true when he issued another statement a week later in which he said he was ‘ashamed that a young woman’ had left his house in a ‘distressed state’. He also ‘unreservedly’ apologised for the ‘degrading and offensive’ texts. Four words came to mind at the time: too little, too late.

Now Jackson’s legal team has been back in court seeking his costs. The hearing was told that he had paid ‘an enormous price for the events of that night’ and remains without employment.

Meanwhile, it also emerged in court that Ma and Pa Jackson had to dip into their retirement fund to pay the lawyers’ fees. The only thing missing was the sound of the world’s smallest violin playing a lament.

It remains to be seen whether Paddy Jackson’s application will be successful. But he isn’t going to win any friends by trying to portray himself as a victim. He’d be better off crawling back under whatever rock he currently calls home.