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“You said I love you,” Tash prompts gently, “You said I understand if you don’t want to be with me. Two and a half years is a long time. I read it and I got comfort because I thought, my God, he can compose a letter. I couldn’t see him so I said to the barrister, Will you just let him know that I love him with all my heart?”
In prison, Ched refused to attend the sex offenders’ course, which would have got him privileges such as his own clothes and more family visits. “Rapist to me is a disgusting word,” he says, “Before this happened, I think a rapist is a man who attacks a girl, hurts women, quite a horrific crime… a lot of pain. When I was getting questioned [by police] I told them everything, even though there was no evidence against me. I could have put myself in a nicer light, but I didn’t think there was a problem because I knew she had consented.”
“Do you remember what you said to me in prison?” Tash asks. “You said I would rather be in here for life and murder rather than being in here for rape.”
With his one GCSE in PE (“I think I got a B”), Ched Evans is never going to be a moral philosopher, but bitter experience has forced him to take a hard look at his values. He had a decent upbringing in Rhyl, with a very strong mother who banned alcohol, but too much money came to him too young. Before he was 18, he was earning £15,000 a week and he’d traded the Peugeot 306 he bought for £300 for about £140,000 worth of supercars.
The girls came like iron filings to a magnet. He remembers being shocked when, one night, a woman accosted him in Manchester saying she knew he’d be out on the town because she’d just seen him score on Match of the Day. The striker was himself a goal. Girls, he says, were “interested in what watch you had, what car you had”. Ched still had The Simpsons watch he’d worn as a kid.
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