THEY could be brothers, perhaps even twins. They have cropped brown hair, are close in age and both played for a club with a red-and-white strip. They even know each other from their early Manchester City days, although they didn’t play together. And they have both been convicted of sexual offences.
If you don’t follow the beautiful game very closely, it’s not easy to tell Adam Johnson and Ched Evans apart. Strangely, just as Johnson awaits sentencing for sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl, Evans has been given hope of a reprieve: his conviction for rape is to be reviewed by the Court of Appeal later this month.
You might say they both deserve punishment for being criminally idiotic, oversexed footballers, but Evans has my sympathy; Johnson not so much. I’m still deeply ashamed of the vengeful role played by feminists in preventing Evans from rejoining his old team of Sheffield United — or any other football club brave enough to hire him — after he had spent 2½ years in jail for rape.
He infuriated almost every woman I know by continuing to protest his innocence following his release, but for all the hue and cry he may yet be vindicated, since the Appeal Court has agreed to look at new evidence that has emerged. Until its verdict, we won’t know where the truth lies.
Evans was guilty of sordid behaviour, that’s for sure. He had a threesome with a fellow footballer and a young woman they picked up on a night out in Rhyl in north Wales . While I wouldn’t wish to accuse somebody of rape if I were too drunk to remember the circumstances, the woman had every right to press charges and a jury found Evans guilty.
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Once he had served his time, Evans should have been allowed back onto the football pitch. It was mortifying to see the tricoteuses of the women’s movement continuing to demand his head because he refused to grovel and show sufficient “remorse”.
He never asked to be a role model; he was merely good with his feet. To deprive him of the right to re-enter society and earn his keep was itself immoral.
I expected, likewise, to lean towards Johnson’s side. There is an argument to be made (not one I share) about lowering the age of consent to a more realistic 15, but that’s not why my sympathy was initially engaged.
The hero-worship, the stalking, the autograph-hunting from fans, combined with performance stress on the pitch — all that can swell heads and impair judgment. It’s a sex-obsessed world in which Louis van Gaal, the Manchester United manager, has just said, creepily, that he urges his team to play “horny”.
Johnson’s own lawyer described the former Sunderland player as “immature, arrogant, promiscuous — the only time he had to fend for himself was on the field, cheered on by thousands of adoring fans”.
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The girl he groomed for sex was a superfan: she would camp outside the Stadium of Light in a Sunderland shirt hoping for a glimpse of him. When they were snapped together, her parents put the photograph on her 15th birthday cake.
A bit of flirting and texting — these things can happen when a girl is that besotted. But within an hour of messaging each other, Johnson had established that his fan was only 15, yet he was the one who sexualised their banter and egged her on for favours.
Here’s a sample. “You owe me.” “Am I only getting a kiss?” And, after they had already had a feel in his £80,000 Range Rover: “Think we need to go in the back next time. Lol,” because he “just wanted to get ya jeans off”.
In all they exchanged more than 800 messages, including one from Johnson that warned her to “keep deleting our convos”. He also Googled “age of consent” but continued to pester her.
It is hard not to conclude that he was turned on by the thought that she was an underage, corruptible young girl who was not yet on the footballers’ seedy circuit of clubs and pubs, where — as Ched Evans fatefully discovered — loose women could be picked up and passed around at whim.
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Johnson already had a beautiful girlfriend, Stacey Flounders, whom he cheated on continually (she has now broken up with him), and a one-year-old daughter, Ayla, to whom the judge sent him home last week to say “goodbye” .
Friends say Johnson would often have a girlfriend in one corner of a bar while he chatted up other women. But it’s not his lack of morals we’re judging: he broke the law, knew exactly what he was up to and carried on regardless.
Sunderland now face some serious questions about what they knew and when. Did they keep him on the team (paying him nearly £3m) after he was charged so they could avoid relegation?
Johnson has admitted he knew “the game was up” when he threw his shirt to Sunderland fans after his last match in early February; he will never play for the club again.
A sentence of up to 10 years is a heavy penalty — I hope it is at the lighter end — but the fact remains that he sexually abused an underage girl and can no longer be in a game where he is surrounded by young fans.
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Evans’s accuser was an adult ; there is no reason to ban him. He kept fit in prison, and has continued to do so while in legal limbo, in the hope of playing again.
The victims of both men have been appallingly harassed and slut-shamed, and I hope Evans and Johnson will have the decency to apologise sincerely to them. But if Evans’s conviction is overturned, those who hounded him off the pitch should also have the grace to apologise to him.