Even though Ched Evans walked free from Cardiff Crown Court after being found not guilty of rape, the court of popular opinion still has him in the dock.

Even when the woman in question never initially even accused him of rape.

Even though the jury took less than three hours, including a break for lunch, to reach its decision.

Innocent of the charges he faced: Ched Evans leaves Cardiff Crown Court with his fiancée Natasha Massey after being found not guilty of rape last Friday

Even after serving time for a crime he didn’t commit, after losing the career he loved and five years of normal life.

‘He’s still a rapist,’ said one commentator on social media. ‘What he did that night was disgusting’. Looking for likes from the mob online.

'He will always be guilty to me' said the aunt of the woman at the centre of this story.

A junior barrister specialising in criminal law told us to remember that this verdict doesn’t mean Evans is innocent. In his blog, The Secret Barrister, he reminds us the jury were not sure he was guilty. Throwing semantics about, hoping some will stick.

A former Solicitor General says this case sets women back 30 years, dragging us back into a time before they had the right to vote.

Other women (those with nipples like bullets ready to fire on automatic) have been more incendiary, saying his case has created a Rapists’ Charter.

Julie Bindel believes that in future no woman, unless she is a teetotal virgin with a lot of support, will want to report rape because there is a risk that her sexual history will be reviewed in court for the world to hear.

All this, they say, is Ched Evans’s fault.

Even though Evans (pictured with Miss Massey) walked free from the court last week after being found not guilty of rape, the court of popular opinion still has him in the dock

Well here’s some new news for this lousy kangaroo court, a court full of bitter women so busy fighting everything they’d shadow box their own reflection.

Evans is innocent of the charges he faced.

Maybe not innocent of offending you with his footballer’s pay packet, his inability to shave cleanly or his utter disregard for decency. But innocent all the same.

Jessica Ennis-Hill wanted her name taken down from a stand if Ched (above) were allowed to return to Sheffield United to train

Of course his behaviour was disgusting. But fortunately for many of us, we don’t end up in court for being rancid.

Go to any city centre on a Saturday night and you will see much of the same strewn about.

Life’s detritus; fat women, shoeless in the gutter, their tremendous thighs chafing at the kerb, shoving KFC in their face. Do you want them in the dock charged with public indecency for being too fat in a Primark frock?

As for setting women back 30 years: you want one scruffy footballer to be responsible for case law as well? Is there anything else you would like him to be accountable for? The world’s migration crises? Climate change, perhaps? The self-combusting Samsung Note 7?

And to Julie Bindel, who has accused him of creating a Rapists’ Charter: he didn’t commit rape, so he cannot have created a Rapists’ Charter.

And if simple logic isn’t your thing, then let’s play emotional chess instead.

If you are determined a woman’s sexual history should have no bearing in a case of this sort, you are actively encouraging women to jiggle their wares around town and complain if someone asks to give them a wobble, or later regrets asking them to ‘wobble me harder’.

Scene: Room 14 at the Premier Inn hotel in Rhyl, North Wales, where Evans cheated on Miss Massey with a teenager in 2011

If my daughter told me this woman’s story, the whole truth, from The Godfather kebab shop to the Premier Inn, I would not want her anywhere near a police station.

I’d want her in a bath of Dettol and attending a Tough Love course called ‘Why I am better than on my back’.

And you know, perhaps the woman in this sad case knew better than that herself.

New team: Evans now plays for League One football club Chesterfield

Because she has never accused Ched Evans of rape.

She only ever went to the police station to report a missing handbag.

If the biggest thing on your mind after a night like that is the whereabouts of your plastic handbag you probably have a very different understanding about the relationship between actions and consequences.

So this is not about that woman in the dock, either. She needs to get on with her life just as Ched Evans does his. She does not deserve to be harassed.

People need to move on.

However, there are a few individuals who have managed to stay below the radar in the latest episode of this sorry affair who now owe us their opinion, given how desperate they were to have a view on Ched even after he served his time in prison.

Jessica Ennis-Hill, for example, who wanted her name taken down from a stand if Ched were allowed to return to Sheffield United to train. As a professional athlete does she not understand the word ‘rehabilitation’?

One man had his reputation, career and freedom taken away for a charge which should never have been brought

Or Charlie Webster, a TV nobody, who resigned as patron of Sheffield United in protest against ‘a convicted rapist’ training there. Now what, Charlie? You were so keen then to use his downfall for your self-promotion, will you use his vindication for a few column inches too?

Or the 150,000 people who clicked on a petition not to give Ched a fresh new start at the club after being inside.

Given they were so brave to have a say back then, in secret, I wonder – if similarly exposed - which button they would like to click on now:

A) Sorry

B) I was wrong

C) I clicked on a petition because it made me feel better about being paid less than him?

Perhaps the biggest crime of all here is the fact that one woman’s complaint about a handbag turned into a rape case prosecuted by the CPS.

Surely if there is fault or blame, if anyone has put the law back 30 years or created a Rapists’ Charter, it is the Crown Prosecution Service? It was determined to prosecute a footballer — for what?

Charlie Webster, a TV nobody, resigned as patron of Sheffield United in protest against ‘a convicted rapist’ training there

Because he was a famous face, enabling them to pursue a high profile agenda to show women are always in the right no matter how they behave?

One man had his reputation, career and freedom taken away for a charge which should never have been brought.

If the Ched Evans case has taught us anything, it is that in the digital age anonymity no longer exists.

It did not protect the woman in question, now looking to start a new life in Australia. It would not have protected Evans even if it were on offer. Anonymity is worthless in a hyper-connected world.

It has revealed the insidious human appetite for public shaming, and for perpetuating that shaming long after time is served or innocence established.

And it reveals the salacious underbelly of all our lives, to some degree – behind closed doors, the stuff we wouldn’t want other people to see.

More positively, the Ched Evans case may serve as a cautionary tale to young people on a night on the town: you are your own keeper.