The proposed rehabilitation of the former Sheffield United footballer Ched Evans, a convicted rapist, has led to a huge amount of hand-wringing – and rightly so.

The Wales international was found guilty by a jury at Caernarvon Crown Court in 2012 of raping a 19-year-old woman in a hotel the previous year. He admitted having sex with her but claimed it was consensual. The prosecution claimed she was too intoxicated to have consented.

Evans was sentenced to five years in jail and was released recently after two-and-a-half years to a barrage of flash cameras and immense moralising.

His lawyers are claiming a miscarriage of justice and The Criminal Cases Reviews Commission has now fast-tracked an investigation to establish whether it should refer the case to the Court of Appeal.

The case is about as sensitive as it gets. The victim has had to start a new life away from her friends and family in north Wales after nine people were convicted of illegally naming her in 2012.

And, of course, people are concerned about the message that is given out if he is allowed to “waltz back to Sheffield United” as The Guardian put it.

The nearest comparison, perhaps, is with what happened when the world-famous music star, Chris Brown, pleaded guilty to assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna.

Inevitably, despite the violence of the assault – he choked her and punched her repeatedly – he has returned to full public prominence and recently released a new album.

For everyone who believes in second chances there is the uncomfortable feeling that these people’s lives have been made a little bit too easy and that they should not be able to resume their lives almost as if nothing has happened.

Claims by The Sun that 25-year-old Evans was to be offered a £500,000 contract by Sheffield Utd only reinforced the impression that it was business as usual, the underlying message being that he was just too valuable, too talented a player, to be allowed to disappear as a footnote in the professional game.

When it emerged that Sheffield Utd were interested in re-signing Evans, Katie Russell, of Rape Crisis England and Wales, said: “In any normal workplace, if someone was unanimously convicted of a serious crime like rape, their contract of employment would immediately be terminated and their former employees would have no ‘duty of care’ towards them.”

Her point was that re-signing Evans would make it appear as if sexual violence against women was being trivialised and it is hard to escape that conclusion.

But professional football and the music business reside in completely different worlds. They are billion dollar industries and however many petitions are raised it’s hard not to image Evans pulling on a Sheffield Utd shirt again.

His case and Brown’s, though, do pose genuinely troubling philosophical questions. I play chess across Yorkshire and occasionally am paired against a man who killed his female partner.

Should I shake his hand after our game, should he be allowed to continue playing and should I organise a petition against him? Of course, I say nothing and quietly get on with our matches.

Again, The Sun’s John Kay, is revered as a great journalist but should his conviction for the manslaughter of his wife on the grounds of diminished responsibility in 1977 have been held against him resuming his career?

How sad that this term compulsory workshops on the issue of sexual consent have been introduced at Oxford and Cambridge.

If the cream of this country’s students cannot work out this elementary aspect of life it is a poor do.

It made me think about my own time at Swansea University between 1983 and 1987 where in retrospect I appear to have lived an almost monk-like existence.

I was far more interested in playing chess, drinking beer and laughing and joking with my friends Richard and Eamonn than chasing women.

In those four years I had two ‘conversations’ with two female students. The first was to snap irritably at two who were chatting during an absorbing lecture on King Lear and the second being commiserated with regarding a personal matter.

So thirty seconds contact, tops!

I do not consider myself to be particularly prudish but I am not keen on public displays of affection.

In short, it makes my stomach turn. At one time it seemed impossible to visit Huddersfield Railway Station without couples draped across each other in a variety of embraces.

Now I read that transport chiefs have launched an investigation after a gay couple were reportedly thrown off a bus for kissing.

The Guardian said Jack James, 23, and his partner were ordered off a number 89 bus near Blackheath in south-east London by the driver, who subjected them to a volley of abuse.

It doesn’t matter if they were gay or straight, let’s have a Jordanian-style approach where all such displays are banned. As the Daily Mail says: “Get a room!”