This crime, as alleged, was at the bottom end. There was no violence and thankfully the victim has no recollection of it. This, I hasten to add, does not make it right, or anything close to it, but it is nonetheless a mitigating factor. It’s not easy to muster up too much sympathy for Evans but there is surely nothing worse than being accused of a crime which you genuinely believe you didn’t commit. The argument against that is that a jury convicted him of the crime.
The same applied to the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. They got no public sympathy either.