‘Victim’ took the lead in bed, Ched Evans rape retrial told
THE young woman allegedly raped by footballer Ched Evans was accused yesterday of ‘taking the lead’ and enjoying sleeping with him.
The waitress, who is ‘convinced’ her drink was spiked, said she woke up naked in a hotel room ‘confused and panicking’ and asked to see CCTV to see how she got there and with whom.
But at Evans’ retrial, the former Premier League striker’s barrister suggested the teenager consented to sex and had ‘lost her inhibitions due to drink’.
The alleged victim faced questions in court about her sex life, including suggestions that she used the same crude language to encourage the footballer during intercourse as she did with an ex-boyfriend and a one-night stand.
Evans, 27, denies raping the woman after a night out in Rhyl, North Wales, in May 2011.
The former Wales international star is on trial for the second time after winning the right to appeal against his conviction for rape.
The prosecution say Evans raped the ‘heavily intoxicated’ 19-yearold and left via a fire exit after a friend brought her back to their room at a Premier Inn.
The alleged victim, who gave evidence from behind a screen at the retrial, said the first time she knew the footballer had been in the hotel room was when the police told her days later.
She was questioned by Evans’ defence lawyer as the footballer’s fiancée Natasha Massey watched from the public gallery at Cardiff Crown Court. Judith Khan QC asked the waitress if she could remember having sex with Evans’ friend Clayton McDonald before he asked if Evans could ‘join in’.
The lawyer said: ‘ You then had sex with Mr Evans and it was consensual. You were making noises and moaning, showing you were enjoying what was happening.’
The barrister suggested she had ‘lost her inhibitions due to drink’, adding: ‘You, I suggest, were taking the lead. You were getting into different positions.’
But the waitress said she could not remember anything that happened in the hotel room.
When Miss Khan suggested she had used crude language during sex, the alleged victim disagreed that
‘Lost her inhibitions’
she would have used such words.
Prosecutor Simon Medland QC later asked the woman: ‘It has been suggested to you that you had consensual sex with Mr McDonald and you were happy for Ched Evans to join in, and you also took the lead. Is that right?’ She replied: ‘No.’
The trial heard the teenager had drunk two large 250ml glasses of wine that night before buying four double vodka and lemonades, and a shot of sambuca at a bar.
The jury watched a recording of an interview the woman gave police shortly after the alleged rape.
She told officers: ‘I remember dancing ... but then I can’t remember anything after that. I vaguely remember I had a pizza in my hand (at one stage) and the next thing I remember I woke up in the Premier Inn. Everything was dead blurred.’
The woman added: ‘I’ve drunk a lot more than that before and I didn’t blackout before and not been able to remember things.’
The court was shown CCTV of her falling over in a kebab shop and stumbling out in the street, before she got into a taxi to the hotel with Mr McDonald.
When police asked how she felt the next morning, the woman said: ‘I felt really shaken when I woke and I just felt drained and tired. I didn’t feel like this the night before, which is why I felt like I had been spiked.’
The trial continues.