where is the evidence? it's like carl sagan said: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
there's two possibilities in this case
a) alec loveually assaulted zoe
b) zoe is defaming alec
so far there are 3 people on this earth that corroborate scenario A and zero people to corroborate scenario B. in light of this very small but significant difference in likelihood between the two scenarios, it's pretty obvious that scenario A is more likely to have happened than scenario B. so believing scenario B completely without allowing any room for possibility makes you an idiot by default, and as evidence i present the fact that both Master Matthew and Lord Tony are taking this stance and they are certified idiots
the burden of proof is on zoe but in any case where proof cannot be obtained but multiple relevant witnesses can, that does count as evidence. unless all parties are lying for some reason which is extremely unlikely, or as carl sagan said: "extraordinary claims", that happen to have absolutely no evidence, much less extraordinary evidence