Seems like The Wail taking another opportunity to post some salacious but family-friendly photos & copy with no concern for whom they may hurt.

They, along with the police, seem to be the only people in denial about the fact that the girl needed professional help far more than she needed a court appearance

It could be argued that most people who end up in the dock actually need professional help more than they need a court appearance - However, should people, whose lives have been massively disrupted, really be denied justice simply because the alleged perpetrator is 'unwell' in the head??

Only by an imbecile

50% of people who are brought before the Courts have problems with either mental health, drugs or alcohol. Or a combination of all 3.

The 'unfit to stand trial' bar is a high one to clear. And quite rightly so.

The girl in question made a groundless and incredibly serious allegation against a man, which could have resulted in him serving a substantial prison sentence, mention nothing of all the other difficulties he would have experienced after a conviction for rape.

The decision to prosecute her was entirely correct And there would have been preliminary hearings at which the defence could have raised any issues about public interest / fitness to stand trial.

I definitely agree she should've been prosecuted if that's what the bloke involved wanted, however she deserved some help alongside being prosecuted. But, sadly, those kind of services are virtually non-existent or inaccessible to most people.
As the VR points out, there are lots of people involved in the criminal justice system who require and deserve some kind of help.

I agree about the decision to prosecute, if indeed the evidence does point to her making a false rape allegation.

However, while I do think he puts forward a very strong and compelling case, we are trusting that her allegations were exactly as he says them. People are very quick to equate "inconsistencies with her evidence" with *lies*, but the problem with that is that a prior sexual relationship, mental health issues and an occupation that hints at prostitution are probably enough to end a case even if there was a rape.

If the timing is exactly as he said then obviously he is the victim of sleeping with a nutter and everything turning almost as bad as it could. He deserves sympathy. HOWEVER, if a man ever was to commit a rape and get away with it, he pretty much chose the perfect victim and put forward a legal defence which was bordering on attack. It's glossed over a little, but let's just go through his defence throughout. 1. When sent a message from her cousin saying "How could you do that to her?" (It doesn't go into details over what the allegations were or how he responded) he ended up sending her to the tantric "escorts" site, busting her out as a possible hooker. That's a little extreme for a girl he was happily having sex with the day before. 2. A few days later he was running straight to the police with allegations of being harassed. That was 3 hours after she was at the police reporting a rape. On the one hand if he is an innocent victim of her then he was probably spot on by going to the police when his friends are hearing talk of being a rapist, but it just seems to be a little too quick for him to be going to the police. 3. After being released by the cops he contacted her and tried to get her to retract the allegation. That is clearly witness tampering and he'll have been told he was not in any way to contact her. 4. When the police announced they were dropping the case he was pretty much straight on to pushing for a private prosecution against her. He says he spent 40k going after her, the Mail have previously reported that he spent around 200k. 5. Even now he's fighting hard to put forward his case and publicising the seedy life of a dead girl. He's putting all the blame on the police, but he's the one who has pushed so hard for this and is now causing further pain by blabbing to the Daily Mail.

For me his actions are a pretty much perfect example of why the state cannot allow a failed rape case to then become a prosecution for making a false allegation. What he's done would probably become the standard form of defence for rape trials. It is very hard to prosecute rapists right now, but if rapists were defending themselves like this then the situation is made significantly worse.

A prime example being that of the 16 year old girl who was taken into custody by Devon & Cornwall police on Thursday. It was obvious to those in the custody suite that she had mental health problems and was in urgent need of professional help. By Saturday, after being told that there wasn't a bed available ANYWHERE IN ENGLAND, a clearly exasperated Assistant Chief Constable took to twitter to publicise this girl's plight.

It was only after a twitter-storm that the NHS managed to find her a bed and interim support in her cell. NHS England also took the opportunity to announce that they were going to provide 50 additional beds for mental health patients. 50 fooking beds? That's less than one per county.

Mental health is the cinderella section of the NHS, little spoken about and kept in the shadows like a Victorian "problem child".

What we are seeing now is a combination and culmination of: Care in the Community, The Big Society and Austerity in action. I have no doubt things will get a lot worse before we see anything approaching an improvement.

Spot on Coddy, when I worked for the NHS I spent a few weeks working in the mental health hospital at York. The staff were complaining then about not enough beds and how funding was only ever prioritised for frontline, "regular" hospital care. But the biggest complaint was how patients they knew should really be an in-patient were being released (or never admitted in the first place) to care in the community. And then that care in the community was woeful.

A good mate of mine took voluntary redundancy/early retirement from the HNS at the beginning of the year, after getting sick and tired of being pi[iss[/ied around and undervalued over the last few years. He was an experienced mental health nursing sister. He did some agency work for a while after leaving, getting paid £350 a shift, often working at the hospital he'd just left. But even that got to him in the end and now he's doing a couple of days a week for a local spice-supply company.

When the coalition crow about all the managers they got shut of from the NHS, they conveniently forget that many we -re-employed on a contract basis, often at greater cost. But that money comes from a different account and is effectively off-balance sheet and is therefore viewed as a saving

Back to Evans, today the CCRC has begun its review of his case, which could take 9 months

It'd be interesting to see a poll on whether the public think Evans is guilty or not.

I hope if he's found innocent people who have publicly come out in criticism of him and Sheffield United have the stones to publicly apologise.
Likewise if it's upheld, start looking for another job Mr E.

It's not their job. The most he can hope for is if they decide there are grounds to refer the case on to the appeal court. That wouldn't mean any appeal would automatically succeed.

Well over 50% of cases that the CCRC refers to the Court of Appeal get quashed.

This one could be interesting. I just hope Jessica Ennis et al have the decency to eat their words if it gets quashed on appeal.

I don't particularly think Ennis has reason to "eat her words". I imagine her objection was to having a convicted rapist at the club. A position I have a lot of sympathy with. If his appeal is successful then he won't be a convicted rapist.