Professional football Ched Evans was jailed two years ago for rape.The prospect of his release from prison this week raised the question of whether he should be allowed to return to football or should be barred from the game. Discussing the issue this week, Judy Finnigan sparked anger by appearing to play down his crime, and the TV presenter and her daughter, Chloe Madeley, have since been targeted by online trolls. In this detailed look of the crime behind the row, RICHARD PENDLEBURY examines what happened on May 30, 2011.

The still-disputed but undeniably grubby events which led to the jailing of footballer Ched Evans took place in the early hours of the 2011 May bank holiday, in a budget hotel room in North Wales.

At the time, Evans was a 22-year-old Welsh international striker with Sheffield United. Great things had been predicted of him when he was playing in the youth ranks at Manchester City.

But the expected breakthrough into the first team hadn’t happened, and now he was successfully rebuilding his career at the League One side.

Scroll down for video

Ched Evans and girlfriend Natasha Massey on holiday in Portugal 2011

Evans, who had a steady girlfriend of two years’ standing, had been on a Sunday night out in his home town of Rhyl with another former City junior called Clayton McDonald.

Evans had booked a room for McDonald at the Premier Inn in the nearby village of Rhuddlan.

At the footballers’ subsequent trial for rape, the prosecution would allege that the hotel reservation was made for the sole purpose of ‘procuring a girl or girls’ with whom the two men could have sex.

That girl proved to be a 19-year-old waitress.

She had finished work late that evening and had drunk two large glasses of red wine with colleagues before going home.

She then showered and went out again at 1.30am to meet friends at the resort’s seafront nightclub, Zu Bar.

Caernarfon Crown Court would hear that she arrived at Zu Bar at 2am. Within an hour she had drunk a further four double vodkas and a shot of sambuca.

When she left the club at around 3am and made her way to the nearby Godfather fast food shop, arriving ten minutes later, the girl could hardly stand.

Rapist: Footballer Ched Evans, due to be released within days, pictured left following his arrest and right, arriving at Caernafon Crown Court in 2012

In her confusion, she left her handbag in the takeaway and staggered outside with a pizza. It was now around 3.30am.

CCTV footage showed the teenager falling into the wall of a building, losing her balance and clumsily attempting to get into the back of a taxi she had flagged down.

By then, her clothing was already ‘disarranged, her bra visible’, the driver recalled.

It was at this point that she was approached by the 6ft6in McDonald who, along with Evans and others, had also been in Zu Bar, where they had allegedly tried to persuade at least one young woman to come back to the hotel room.

Now, the ‘suitable girl’ the prosecution would later allege that he and Evans had been looking for had literally ‘stumbled across their path’.

For his part McDonald, then 22, said that the woman had asked him where he was going.

He said he told her he was on his way to his hotel room and she replied: ‘I’m coming with you.’ They both got into the taxi, and McDonald paid the fare to the Premier Inn, three miles away.

During the journey he sent a text to Evans saying he had ‘got a bird’.

At 4.15am, McDonald and the teenager arrived at the hotel.

Evans had booked and paid for Room 14, but it was under McDonald’s name.

The girls holds the arm of former Manchester City junior called Clayton McDonald as they enter the motel

She walks back, apparently to retrieve a pizza

The footage shows her returning with a pizza box

The receptionist looks on as she heads for her room

The hotel’s night receptionist recalled that the girl was ‘extremely drunk’. He told the jury: ‘She wasn’t very steady on her feet and had a blank expression.

‘She seemed to use the man [McDonald] as somebody to grab hold of to steady herself.’

He heard McDonald say to his companion: ‘You’re not going to leave me, are you?’

Within half an hour of meeting her for the first time, McDonald was having sex with the waitress in Room 14.

‘Ten or 15 minutes’ after the couple’s arrival at the hotel, Evans also turned up.

He persuaded the receptionist to give him another key to Room 14. Once he had let himself in, he watched McDonald have intercourse with the girl, then had sex with her as well.

Two other men, said to have been friends of the footballers, stood outside the ground-floor room’s window, also watching. One of them used his mobile phone to try to make a video of what was happening inside.

Meanwhile, the hotel’s night receptionist had grown suspicious. He later told police that he had gone to the room door, where he had heard ‘a female squealing [and] a male grunting’.

There was nothing to suggest he should intervene.

Within 15 minutes of this exchange being overheard, Clayton McDonald left Room 14 and walked out of the hotel via the front reception.

JUDY FINNIGAN'S CONTROVERSY OVER 'RAPE WASN'T VIOLENT' COMMENT Judy Finnigan sparked fury during her debut as a Loose Women panellist when she suggested a convicted rapist footballer should be allowed to return to his club because the victim was ‘drunk’ and the rape was ‘unpleasant’ but ‘not violent’. But after a huge public backlash in which hundreds complained online about the ‘disgusting’ and ‘damaging’ remarks, the veteran broadcaster was eventually forced to ‘apologise unreservedly’ for the offence she had caused. Her comments came during a discussion on the ITV lunchtime chat show about whether disgraced footballer Ched Evans should be allowed to return to Sheffield United. The former Wales international, 25, was jailed for five years in 2012 after raping a 19-year-old woman at a hotel near Rhyl, Denbighshire, but will be released from jail within days. So far his former club, which cancelled his contract, has refused to comment on whether he will be offered a new one. But on the show, Miss Finnigan – who presented ITV’s This Morning with husband Richard Madeley from 1988 to 2001 – said: ‘He’s served his time. The rape – and I am not, please, by any means minimising any kind of rape – but the rape was not violent. He didn’t cause any bodily harm to the person. But before the programme had even finished, hundreds of viewers had taken to social media to express their outrage. Women’s rights campaigner Jean Hatchet – who has set up a petition calling for Evans to be banned and has been signed by 145,000 people – told the Daily Mail she was ‘stunned’ by Miss Finnigan’s comments, adding: ‘Drunk women don’t cause rape. Rapists do. 'Evans had sex with a woman without her consent. That is a violent act. [Miss Finnigan] is guilty of such internalised misogyny that I don’t think she was even aware of how hurtful and damaging her comments were.’ Advertisement

On his way, he stopped and told the receptionist: ‘You know that girl I was with? Keep an eye on her. She’s sick.’

At 4.47am, McDonald phoned Ched Evans to see if he wanted to leave with him. Soon afterwards, Evans exited the hotel via a fire escape so he would not have to pass by reception.

He would later tell police that after McDonald decided to leave: ‘I didn’t want to stay in the room by myself with another girl in case my girlfriend rang me. By the time I was dressed, she [the victim] was already asleep.’

He and McDonald met up outside and went to Evans’s home nearby.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told police that she woke up alone in the hotel room bed at 11.30am.

She was naked and confused, and had a pain in her right arm.

She had wet the bed and claimed she could not recall how she came to be there, nor any other events after 3am.

She said she went to a friend’s house in a hysterical state, and then contacted the police after working her shift that day.

She told officers: ‘I felt tipsy but not out of control. I usually drink more than that. I haven’t blacked out before, not being able to remember anything.’

She suspected that her drink had been spiked. Both footballers were arrested the next day, and subsequently stood trial on separate charges of rape.

At the time, Evans was a 22-year-old Welsh international striker with Sheffield United. Great things had been predicted of him when he was playing in the youth ranks at Manchester City

Theirs were not cases in which the fact that sexual intercourse had taken place was disputed, or that it had taken place under duress. Rather they hinged on the woman’s ability or otherwise to give consent to sex.

Both men admitted that they had sex with the teenager. Both claimed that it was consensual and that she had encouraged it. They denied they had been predators looking for girls for sex that night.

The ‘caddish’ McDonald later said that once he and the young woman were sitting on the hotel room bed ‘she grabbed me’ and initiated sex. He said in court: ‘She was moaning and groaning, enjoying herself. She got undressed by herself.’

Evans told police that when he arrived at Room 14, McDonald had asked the woman: ‘Can my mate join in?’

He went on to say: ‘She just said yes straight away.’

Evans added: ‘She wasn’t acting very drunk. She wasn’t slurring her words. I had a threesome with Clayton before when we lived together.’

We could have had any girl we wanted in that nightclub.

We were drinking, having fun there. It’s not uncommon we pick up girls.

Footballers are rich, they have got money, that’s what the girls like.

- Ched Evans

The jury heard that Evans also told police: ‘We could have had any girl we wanted in that nightclub. We were drinking, having fun there. It’s not uncommon we pick up girls.

‘Clayton’s an attractive guy. We are footballers, that’s how it is. Footballers are rich, they have got money, that’s what the girls like.’

The prosecution case was that the victim did not truly consent to sex, and that ‘neither man reasonably believed she was consenting’.

She was so drunk she was in no fit state to say ‘yes’.

Evans’s barrister claimed that the girl was lying in her assertion that she could not remember the events: she had readily consented to sex.

Judge Merfyn Hughes QC explained in his summing up: ‘A woman clearly does not have the capacity to make a choice if she is completely unconscious through the effects of drink or drugs, but there are various stages of consciousness from being awake to dim awareness of reality.

‘In a state of dim and drunken awareness you may, or may not, be in a condition to make choices. Was she in a condition in which she was capable of making any choice one way or another?

‘If you are sure that she was not, then she did not consent.

‘If on the other hand you conclude that she chose to agree to sexual intercourse, or may have done, then you must find the defendants not guilty.’

The circumstances in which the two defendants met the teenager were clearly different.