Posted on 2015-01-08 | 01:44

Ched Evans was a high profile professional footballer prior to being convicted of rape. He served part of his sentence and has now been released on licence. He has shown no remorse and insists he was wrongly convicted.

Roger chairs a large football charity which engages with 10,000 young people every week and has won national and international awards for its work, and he is strongly opposed to allowing Ched Evans to resume his professional football career in the UK.

Says Roger: “I very much support programmes to rehabilitate offenders and this includes finding them employment. But to allow a convicted rapist – who is now on the Sex Offenders List – to resume his employment in such a high profile profession, with footballers viewed as ‘role models’ by many young people, would be wrong and perverse, particularly as he has not admitted that his behaviour was utterly wrong and reprehensible.

“Would it be considered appropriate, for example, to allow a convicted paedophile who worked in a children’s home to resume similar employment when they were released? Of course it would not.

“Ched Evans is entitled to find employment but it would be totally wrong of any professional club in the UK to employ him because it would send out completely the wrong message to young football supporters who idolise their heroes on the pitch.

“Any professional football club which employed him should be rightly condemned as putting greed and profit above morality.”