CHED Evans is a convicted rapist.

That is a fact, but a fact the football world seems unwilling to confront. In 2012, the Wales striker was found guilty of raping a 19-year-old waitress in a hotel room. After two-and-a-half years in Wymott Prison in Lancashire he was released on October 17 and returned to training with his former club, Sheffield United, on Armistice Day.

There have been protests against his possible re-signing, although last night it was reported the club were shying away from offering the striker a new contract. Three patrons of the club - TV presenter Charlie Webster, businesswoman Lindsay Graham and former pop star Dave Berry - have withdrawn their support, two shirt sponsors may pull out of deals and more than 160,000 people had signed a petition against his return. Olympic gold medallist Jessica Ennis-Hill has said she would want her name removed from a stand rechristened in her honour at Bramall Lane if Evans rejoined the squad.

FA chairman Greg Dyke FA spoke last week on BBC Newsnight. He had the arrogance to be unprepared for questions about one of the biggest stories of the week, a story about the industry in which he is a leading figure.

He was unwilling to be drawn on the Evans issue. Dyke said: "Are people who go to prison entitled to come out of prison and to try to rebuild their lives or aren't they? That's the dilemma. It's a dilemma and it's not clear cut."

He added that it was "not an important issue". Previously Mr Dyke had said, "whether or not it was rape, the whole story was pretty sordid."

And there you have it. At the heart of the issue, there are people who think there are degrees of rape and that what Evans did was not the worst kind. If Evans had been the type of rapist who looms large in dark imaginations - the type who drags an innocent woman down an black alleyway - there would be no question of him returning to professional football. But there are no degrees of rape.

Evans continues to deny his crime. There is a campaign to quash his conviction, bankrolled by his fiancee's father. His victim has twice been named by trolls on Twitter and had to change her identity, leaving friends and family behind.

Convicted rapists in England and Wales routinely serve half their sentence in prison and the other half under licence in the community. If Ched Evans commits any new offence he could be returned to prison. He has not quite yet "done his time", only the custodial part of the punishment laid down by the court. Prison is about punishment but it is also about rehabilitation.

To answer Greg Dyke, those who complete their sentences should be entitled to rejoin society. But an offender cannot be rehabilitated if he does not believe he has committed an offence.

So, while his victim is running scared like a rabbit from a pack of social media foxes, Evans has become engaged. He has been pictured out on shopping trips with his fiancee. He is enjoying family life, a social life, and he is on a pathway back to a career with rich rewards.

Meanwhile, his victim has been vilified. And when Ennis-Hill said she would ask for her name to be removed from the stand at Sheffield United if they took Evans back, she received rape threats on Twitter, a depressing response now almost ubiquitous for women who speak out against sexism.

Jean Hatchet, who started a petition on change.org calling on the club to break all ties with the player, said she had received up to 500 abusive tweets a minute from supporters of the footballer.

In 2008, when Marlon King was convicted of sexually assaulting and breaking the nose of a 20-year-old student who had rejected his advances - he was out celebrating his wife's pregnancy - he was sacked by Wigan Athletic. He was later signed by Sheffield United.

Maybe the club has a commitment to the rehabilitation of offenders. Maybe they just don't care what their players get up to in their own time.

Why hasn't the Sheffield United squad protested publicly about Evans returning to train with them? Is it because they know other footballers are guilty of similar behaviour, but it goes unnoticed and unremarked upon?

On learning that Ched Evans and his co-accused Clayton McDonald, who was found not guilty of rape, were with a woman in a hotel room, their team-mates came to film through a window.

We set footballers apart. They exist on pedestals in their own gated, gilded community. But it is not that Evans should be stopped from returning to football to deny him, as an ex-offender, access to the rich rewards that his career has to offer. It is not important to keep him from the game because of his status as a role model for young people.

It is his lack of remorse that should prevent him from returning. We have a moral responsibility to state clearly what kind of world we want to live in and that world is not one in which men may commit sexual offences against women and return to positions of prominence without the merest scrap of contrition about their crime.

A minority of men still think women exist as playthings for their own pleasure.

It is time the male-dominated world of football took a stand against this attitude.

It can start with Ched Evans.