Ched Evans rape claim woman ‘was in control’

Port Vale defender Clayton McDonald, 23, and Wales striker Evans, also 23, deny the alleged attack on the 19-year-old complainant at a North Wales hotel in May last year.

The jury at Caernarfon Crown Court has heard the defendants admitted having sex with the woman after McDonald, of Marys Gate, Crewe, Cheshire, met her on the street during a night out with childhood friend Evans, of Ashtree Gardens, Millhouse Green, Penistone, South Yorkshire.

The woman told police she has no memory of the incident and the prosecution says she was too drunk to consent to sexual intercourse.

In police interviews read to the jury, Liverpool-born McDonald said Evans, from Rhyl, had invited him on the night out in the seaside town on the bank holiday weekend.

Questioned by Detective Constable Philip Williams, McDonald said he met the complainant at the end of the night out, in the early hours of Monday May 30, as the footballers were standing with friends near a takeaway.

“I was looking to get a taxi, I just wanted to go home,” McDonald, who was staying at a Premier Inn, told police.

At that point he “bumped into” the woman on a corner and asked her where she was going, to which she replied: “Where are you going?”

He said he told her he was going back to his hotel and she responded: “I’m going with you.”

He added that she was carrying a pizza box and said: “She wasn’t slurring her words and falling all over the place. If that was the case I would have got into the taxi by myself.”