A YOUNG man accused of a sexual assault. No criminal charges, no admission of guilt. A talented sportsman, he continues with his career until a fan revolt and, in the face of increasing public pressure, he is ousted. Heads roll in his wake.

That's a short story in which you could change the protagonist's name for a number of men without having to change a single other word.

Most recently, the lead character is one Lasse Uusivirta. When the ice hockey player was 24 and living in America he was charged with the alleged rape of an 18-year-old fellow student but never stood trial because he left the country to return to his native Finland.

Prosecutors in the US did not seek to have him extradited to face justice but the charges are waiting for him, should he ever return to the country.

Uusivirta, meanwhile, played ice hockey professionally in Austria, Germany, Italy and Finland, the allegations seemingly causing no issue during his career. That is, until the now-33-year-old reached Scotland and was announced as the newest signing of the Glasgow Clan.

The team's management announced the signing at 7pm and just two hours and 21 minutes later confirmed the deal had been called off. By the following morning senior management, Clan chief executive Gareth Chalmers and the Clan head coach Malcolm Cameron, had been suspended with immediate effect.

Yet that wasn't enough to halt the damage done as sponsor after sponsor announced it was cutting ties with Glasgow Clan and the team's owner, several days later, revealed that he would be putting the club up for sale.

At first glance it looks like the management of the club acted swiftly and decisively but fans were still not appeased, saying that the signing should never have happened in the first place in what is a sport that appeals to a "family environment".

Summarising the tone of comments from fans was one tweet that said the signing showed an "obvious lack of respect for anyone who's been a victim of sexual assault".

Roll the microfiche back to February this year and you see a similar narrative around the Raith Rovers signing of David Goodwillie. The Goodwillie case will take less of a refresher as it was so much more widely publicised.

Former Scotland striker Goodwillie never faced criminal charges after being accused of rape but was ruled to be a rapist in a civil case in 2017. Despite this, he played for Clyde FC for five years before being signed to Raith Rovers in a two-and-a-half year deal in January this year.

Val McDermid, crime writer and life long Raith supporter, was having absolutely none of it and led a vocal charge to have him booted. McDermid withdrew her sponsorship of the Championship club and instead gave her support to the women's team, which formed a new breakaway side.

A couple of weeks ago, and eight months on from his signing, Goodwillie was released from his contract at Raith Rovers. His mooted return to Clyde was a bust as the Clyde women's team and general manager quit in protest.

Back when the Goodwillie story was making headlines, several female Clyde fans wrote to me to express frustration at the radio silence from the press during Goodwillie's tenure at their club. Bang to rights.

They suggested that the furore and resulting coverage was only occurring because a celebrity - Val McDarmid - had made a fuss. Bang to rights again.

The women felt frustrated and let down and two spoke spoke of how, disillusioned and supported, they had given up on supporting Clyde altogether, which is grim but unsurprising.

Glasgow Clan's signing of an alleged rapist passed relatively quietly too. Ice hockey is a far less dominant sport than football, of course, and because the club acted so swiftly there was little of the ongoing outrage narrative that fuels stories.

Away from sport, but also in the last fortnight, I wrote about a former Church of Scotland minister who had been found by the Kirk to have acted inappropriately with female members of his congregation and to have fallen short of the standards expected of a man of the cloth.

Elijah Wade Smith had been hired by the University of Glasgow but, following contact from The Herald, it was understood to be the case that he was no longer employed there. It was swift and decisive action from the university, just as with Glasgow Clan but less so Raith Rovers.

There were never any criminal charges against Smith and so no avenue for the public penance of a court mandated sentence. Like Goodwillie and Uusivirta, then, what is missing from the situation is remorse and rehabilitation.

Sport is not short of stories of rehabilitation - defender Declan Gallagher or manager David Martindale - but these tend less to be for sexual crimes.

I took part in a radio segment a couple of years ago, discussing the merits or otherwise of strife-hit Tiger Woods returning to top flight golf. I was up against legendary golf commentator Peter Allis who became agitated by what he clearly thought was a nonsensical discussion, ending his participation by simply hanging up the phone which is a bold move, live on the radio, but I suppose once you've reached the age of 88, as he would have been then, you give few flying hoots about these things.

Mr Allis was able to compartmentalise private life and professional life to an extent that made the notion of judging a man for his off-pitch actions somewhat a nonsense. There is an argument to be made that sport is not an authority for meting out justice but there are arenas where non-rehabilitated men accused of sexual crimes do not belong.

Sport should be a moral arbitrator. It's easy to see why someone accused of sexual crimes might not be the best hire to work with young students. But sport isn't merely about games, it's about sportsmanship. It's about - it should be about - decency and community. Sports people are role models and it's a nonsense to say otherwise.

The swift action from Glasgow Clan feels like a positive step and the well articulated outrage of Clan fans shows, I hope, that exhaustive, long-running campaigns about violence against women and girls are finally piercing through.

The end point of all this is the necessity, eventually, to be able to have a conversation about rehabilitation, redemption and forgiveness, about what we do with men who - even allegedly, as in these cases - transgress and where there might be space for them to repent.

We're not there quite yet but, in the meantime, hats off to Glasgow Clan fans for putting blind loyalty aside to hold the club to account.