Controversy erupts after Ched Evans rape victim tweeters fined just £624
The decision by a judge to doll out a fine of just £624 each to nine people who tweeted the identity of the victim in the Ched Evans rape trial has stirred controversy in the press and further afield.
Rounding on the apparent leniency of the compensation, which falls well short of the £5k maximum, the Daily Mail described it as an ‘insult to a rape victims and former Tory MP Louise Mensch, who reported the nine defendants to the police, agreed claiming that the sentence ‘sickened her’.
Mensch added: ‘A teenage rape victim was insulted, demeaned and named – and the perpetrators get fined just a few hundred quid. The law must change to protect victims.’
The victim was said to have been traumatised after reading the derogatory remarks posted on Twitter and Facebook, with some accusing her of being a ‘money grabbing whore’.
When quizzed on this by a judge at Prestatyn Magistrates Court however the nine claimed not to have known that identifying a rape victim constituted a criminal offence.
Evans was jailed for five years for having sex with the 19 year old in a hotel bedroom following a drunken night out.