Too Drunk To Remember

Ched Evans

Too drunk to remember does not mean too drunk to act rationally ...

I just read a couple of short articles about a UK footballer, Ched Evans, who was, apparently, jailed for raping a woman a couple of years ago. He is currently vowing to clear his name.

From what I have read, it seems that both he and other men have been convicted of rape when the alleged victim was too drunk to recall what happened.

In these cases, where on Earth is the evidence to suggest rape coming from?

My guess is that juries in these cases are often hoodwinked into believing that just because a woman was too drunk to remember what happened, this must mean that she was incapacitated at the time - and that the alleged rapist should have noticed this.

But this is just nonsense

Think of the times that you, yourself, have gradually gotten really drunk over the course of an evening.

The following day, you can often barely remember what happened.

But this does not mean that you must have acted and thought like a completely mindless imbecile for the whole evening!

Goodness me. I can barely remembered what happened this morning. But this does not mean that I spent the whole of the morning behaving and thinking in a totally irrational manner.

And my point is this.

Just because a woman cannot remember what happened during a certain period of time, it does not follow that during this very same period of time other people would have noticed anything wrong with her.

It would be quite possible for her to think and to behave as normal  (or 'normal' as far as can be perceived by others) and still not remember on the following day what happened - presumably because the alcohol gradually builds up, gradually debilitates and then, later on, - when the brain is really zapped - messes up the laying down of the long-term memory traces of what happened.

(Indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that sleep, itself, is a crucial period during which memory traces are processed. And so, abnormal sleep (perhaps because of heavy-drinking) might well stop the brain from putting memories into Long Term Storage. As such, they cannot be recalled the following day.)

In short, the fact that someone has forgotten what happened does not mean that their brain was impacted by anything significant (or noticeable) during the period which has been forgotten.

Indeed, people often lose their memories, permanently, of events that preceded serious accidents.

And so, for example, a serious car accident at 2.pm can obliterate forever any memories of what happened in the hours of the morning preceding the accident - memories of events that had absolutely nothing to do with the accident.

Similarly, you could meet someone at a party who seems to be functioning perfectly normally and yet who, on the following morning, remembers nothing of meeting you.

Because she got drunk later on

Because she got drunk later on, - or while you were in the process of meeting her.

All in all, therefore, it seems to me to be a corruption of the justice system for men to be jailed when their alleged victims cannot actually tell the juries what actually happened.

Of course, other evidence might indicate a rape, but the mere fact that an alleged victim cannot remember anything about the alleged incident does not mean that she must have been so drunk at the time that any reasonable person would have noticed this.

(Also see AH's Is Everybody Conscious?)

Alcohol doesn't impair our ability to control our actions - it just makes us care less.