Friends of a young woman allegedly raped by the footballer Ched Evans described her distress the morning after as she desperately tried to piece together what had happened, a jury has heard.
The woman, who was 19 at the time, has told the jury she woke up naked in a hotel room with no memory of getting there and fearing she had been attacked after her drinks were spiked.
On day three of Evans’ re-trial at Cardiff crown court, statements made by close friends of the woman and her mother were read by the prosecution.
One friend said the alleged victim arrived at her home and banged loudly on the door. “When I opened the door she was crying hysterically. She was sobbing, trying to catch her breath and I gave her a hug to calm her down,” the friend said.
“When she calmed down, she told me that she had woken up in the Premier Inn naked and had no idea how she had got there.”
Another friend said in her statement: “She was in a state on the phone. She was difficult to understand. She said she had woken up at the Premier Inn naked. Her phone and bag had gone. She did not understand why she was naked and thought her drink may have been spiked. I told her someone must have been with her and paid for the room.”
In her statement, the alleged victim’s mother described her as “sensible”. The mother was not worried when she did not return home that night as she often stayed out with friends.
She said her daughter called and asked her to pick her up from the hotel. “She got into the car and said: ‘I haven’t got a clue what happened last night,’” said the mother. “She said she just couldn’t remember how she got to the Premier Inn. She was frustrated, upset and getting more and more upset.”
The jury at Cardiff crown court has been told that Evans’ friend, Clayton McDonald, “hooked” the teenager when she was heavily intoxicated following a night out in the seaside town of Rhyl in north Wales and went with her in a taxi to the hotel in the early hours of 30 May 2011.
Evans, 27, who has played for Manchester City, Sheffield United and Norwich, arrived at the hotel soon afterwards and allegedly raped the woman before leaving via a fire exit.
He denies the offence, claiming that both he and McDonald had consensual sex with the woman. The prosecution argues she was so heavily intoxicated she could not have consented. The jury has been shown CCTV footage of the woman in a kebab shop before getting into the taxi with McDonald.
The kebab shop owner, Sohail Aslam, said in a statement that the woman had been “really drunk”. “She fell,” he said. “She was helped up by people in the shop.”
Giving evidence via video-link from north Wales, Lee Jones, the taxi driver who took McDonald and the woman to the hotel, also said he thought she was drunk.
He said during the 10-minute trip the woman sat in the front eating a pizza, while McDonald was in the back on his phone.
Simon Medland QC, prosecuting counsel, asked Jones whether he had heard McDonald say anything while on the phone. Jones replied: “I think he said he was with a girl and that he was going back to the Premier Inn.”
The taxi driver agreed that in his original police statement he told officers that McDonald had used a “slang” word to the person on the phone, which he understood to mean “girl”.
The night receptionist at the hotel, Gavin Burrough, described the woman as “very drunk” when she arrived at about 4.10am. “She was unsteady on her feet. Her eyes were glazed over, she had a vacant expression. She didn’t seem to know I was even there. She seemed to look straight through me. I did ask her if she was OK. There was no reply whatsoever.”
Soon afterwards, Evans arrived with his brother and another man. He had booked and paid for the room earlier in McDonald’s name but after showing ID was given the key.
When he patrolled the hotel soon after, Burrough heard a woman “squealing” and a man’s voice coming from room 14. He also said he saw the two men who had arrived with Evans outside the hotel appearing to look into the room.
Under cross-examination, Burrough said the alleged victim and McDonald had seemed like a “normal couple” and agreed that the woman had only glanced at him as she walked through reception.
He also agreed that he told officers the woman had said to McDonald when entering the hotel: “You are not going to leave me here, are you?”
The trial continues.
