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Ched Evans trial: woman awoke confused in hotel room, court told Ched Evans trial: woman awoke confused in hotel room, court told
(about 2 hours later)
The woman allegedly raped by footballer Ched Evans said she woke up naked in a hotel room alone and could not remember how she had got there, a court has heard. A young woman allegedly raped by the footballer Ched Evans said she woke up naked in a hotel room with no recollection of how she had got there or if anyone else had been with her, a court has heard.
Evans, who plays for the League One side Chesterfield, is facing a retrial over allegations that he carried out a sex attack on the complainant at a hotel in north Wales in 2011. The woman told police she could not remember anything after leaving a kebab shop following a night out and believed her drinks may have been spiked.
The 27-year-old striker was previously found guilty of rape but a jury has been told that the conviction was quashed by the court of appeal. He is now on trial at Cardiff crown court and denies the charge against him. In a video of the interview, shown to a jury at Cardiff crown court on Wednesday, she said: “I felt in a daze. I felt still intoxicated. I was dead drained and tired. That’s why I feel I may have been spiked.”
It is the prosecution’s case that the complainant was too drunk to have consented to sex with the Wales international and that the defendant “left surreptitiously” via a fire door afterwards. The woman, who was 19 and working as a waiter at the time, dabbed away tears as she told officers: “I don’t know what happened.”
On the second day of the new hearing, jurors watched a DVD recording of the complainant speaking to police. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told police: “I was in the bed on my own and I wasn’t dressed. I couldn’t really remember … I’ve tried to think what happened in between but I can’t remember anything. Jurors have been told that a friend of Evans “hooked” the teenager when she was heavily intoxicated and went with her in a taxi to the hotel in the early hours of 30 May 2011.
“I felt dead confused and did not know where I was. I did not know what to do or where I was. I started panicking.” Evans, 27, who has played for Manchester City, Sheffield United and Norwich, is said to have arrived at the hotel soon after the pair and allegedly raped the woman before leaving via a fire exit. He denies rape.
In the police interviews, which took place in 2011, the woman told officers she had two large glasses of wine after work before drinking four double vodkas with lemonade and a shot of sambuca at a bar. “I felt tipsy,” she said. “I was still in control. I usually drink more than that. I’ve drunk a lot more than that and not blacked out.”
She remembered dancing but had no memory of leaving the club. “I’ve got a vague recollection of being in a kebab shop,” she said. “I remember trying to have a piece of pizza. There were voices around me. It’s like a blur.”
The next thing she said she remembered was waking up naked in a bed in a hotel room at 11.30am, her clothes scattered around.
She said: “I panicked. I was confused I didn’t know why I had gone there or who I was with. I didn’t know anyone had been in the room with me. I was dazed and confused.”
From behind a screen in court, the alleged victim watched CCTV footage of herself in the kebab shop. She is seen stumbling and falling over at one point.
In his opening speech on Tuesday, Simon Medland QC, prosecuting, told the jury there was no suggestion that Evans had spiked her drinks.
But Medland argued that the woman could not possibly have consented to sex because of her intoxicated state.
He said: “We submit that she was that intoxicated – for whatever reason – that she didn’t really know what on earth was happening and that what the facts of this case show is that she was raped by this young footballer in that room, not that she had consensual sex with him.
“It is not a proper description, we suggest, to say that he had sex with [her]; it is more accurate perhaps to say to that he ‘did’ sex to her. Sex without consent is rape.”
Medland said the woman would tell the jury she did not consent, adding: “How could she? There is good reason to conclude, we submit, that she didn’t even know Ched Evans was having sex with her.
“She had to piece together some fairly fragmentary memories of events later the next morning … long after this defendant had slipped away into the night through the fire escape door.”
The jury heard how earlier that night, Evans, then 22, and a friend, Clayton McDonald, had been in the same bar as the woman in Rhyl, north Wales.
The woman ended up at the kebab shop, where as well as falling over she collided with a delivery car outside, and dropped and left her handbag.
“He [McDonald] had managed to hook the intoxicated, stumbling [woman],” said Medland. “They got into a taxi and the taxi driver formed the view that [she] was ‘drunk, very docile and not with it’.”
From the taxi McDonald made a phone call to someone saying: “I’ve got a girl.” The prosecution alleges he was speaking to Evans.
McDonald, the woman and Evans ended up in the same hotel room, where the alleged rape took place.
Jurors were told that Evans and McDonald have already stood trial. Evans was convicted and McDonald was found not guilty. Evans successfully appealed against his conviction and is being retried.
The trial continues.The trial continues.