Matthew Johns is one of the best-known figures in Australian rugby league circles. But in the last week he has made the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Within 48 hours of a television documentary on a group sex scandal involving Johns and 11 other rugby league players, he had lost his three main sources of income: presenting a high-profile rugby league show on Channel Nine; coaching the Melbourne Storm team; and writing a magazine column.
Details of the incident, which happened in February 2002 when Johns was a player with the Sydney-based Cronulla Sharks team, were told by a woman named as “Clare” on ABC television in a documentary, Code of Silence.
At the time of the incident, Clare, who was then aged 19, was working at a hotel in Christchurch, New Zealand, where the Cronulla Sharks stayed while on a pre-season tour.
After serving them dinner, Clare said she accompanied Johns and another player (whom she did not name but was later revealed to be Brett Firman) to their room. While Johns was having sex with Clare, other players entered the room. Some came through the bathroom window.
Johns says he left at this point, but Clare claims he was present throughout while up to six players had sex with her and another six watched. “He laughed and he joked and he was very loud and boisterous and thought it was hilarious,” she told ABC.
“They were massive, like big rugby players, I felt that I just had no idea what to do . . . I had my eyes shut. When I opened my eyes there was just a long line at the end of the bed,” she said.
Five days later Clare made a complaint to the police, but the players involved said she had consented to everything and no charges were laid.
Detective sergeant Neville Jenkins, one of the officers who investigated the case, has spoken to Clare several times in the intervening years.
“I saw a young woman struggling with life,” he said. “She was a nice girl. She was young, naive, not worldly, just a growing-up teenager. But even for 19 she was quite young I felt.”
New Zealand’s Accident and Compensation Commission found Clare was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, funded treatment for her and gave her a weekly compensation payment. A psychiatrist’s report said she was suicidal, had cut her wrists several times and bought a rope to hang herself with.
After the documentary was broadcast Johns and his wife Trish appeared on a Channel Nine programme. Johns apologised to his family, but said Clare “was a willing participant to everything that occurred” and that “at no point did she object to what was going on”.
Australia’s prime minister Kevin Rudd and sports minister Kate Ellis both got involved in the debate. Rudd said sporting organisations needed “to show leadership in demonstrating proper respect towards women”. Ellis said it was “disgusting, degrading and predatory behaviour”.
Of more immediate concern to the National Rugby League (NRL) is the threat by the Catholic Church to ban rugby league from Sydney’s 147 Catholic schools, which would remove a huge part of the sports grassroots following and future players.
Dr Dan White of the Sydney archdiocese said: “If, over the medium to longer term, we dont see really clear efforts on the part of the league to improve player behaviour, then we would have to seriously reconsider those close associations.”
The Cronulla Sharks incident is just the latest revelation in a very long line of sex scandals linked to sports stars in Australia. On pre-season tours in 2003 and 2004, players with the Sydney-based Canterbury Bulldogs rugby league team were accused of sexual assaults.
Following police investigations, charges were not laid on either occasion.
Steve Burraston, CEO of the Newcastle Knights club, says part of the problem lies with different expectations in behaviour both on and off the field. “On the field we want them to be aggressive. They’ve got to make tackles, they’ve got to be fearless, we want them to do things that other people don’t do. So we attract an aggressive, young, risk-taking male. We give him a shower, put a suit on him and then say, ‘Now we want you to be a submissive male. We want you to go out there and not have any problems.’ It’s very difficult to do that,” said Burraston.
Though the most notorious sex cases have involved rugby league, there have also been many cases in other sports. Sydney FC soccer player Sebastian Ryall was suspended by the club last week after being charged with engaging in a sexual act with a 13-year-old girl.
The head of the Australian Football League (AFL), Andrew Demetriou, admitted that in previous years the disrespect of women had been an issue in AFL too. He spoke for many, though, when he said, “It’s not just a culture that prevails in AFL football or the NRL, it prevails in lots of workplaces.”
Following last week’s revelations, some of Johns’s fans set up the Support Matthew Johns Facebook page. It already has around 100,000 members, including a great many women.
On the ABC network website the quotes are mixed, with one Johns supporter saying: “He has been trialled and found guilty by gossip. She went willingly, she stayed willingly.”
Another said: “I am absolutely disgusted in the manner in which women are treated by both players and sports bodies.”
Many are asking why Clare is speaking out now, seven years on. “I wanted at least their wives or girlfriends to know what they had done,” she said. “Part of me wanted them to know because I was so angry and I wanted their lives destroyed like mine was.”
Asked what she now thinks of Johns and the others, Clare broke down again and said: “If I had a gun I’d shoot them right now. I hate them, theyre disgusting. I want them dead. I hate them so much when I think about them, but I don’t think about them.”
Code of Silence, which also detailed several other cases of alleged sexual abuse and rape by rugby league players, is an intervention the game can’t ignore.
Phil Gould, a former player and manager, and friend of Matthew Johns, said: “This, to me, was the sledgehammer to the back of the head that the game deserved and needed. For so long we’ve been having incidents like this, whether it was drugs or alcohol or abuse of women, and we all say, “Well, that was a wake-up call”, but no one wakes up.
“What comes out of this report now should be a message to all players, and all young people and all young girls, that there are no winners in any of this. And that the behaviour has to be addressed. What you think is a bit of fun is going to turn to tears some day,” said Gould.
Meanwhile, as a result of the revelations, the Cronulla Sharks have lost $850,000 (€475,600) worth of sponsorship.
And the bad news for the club didn’t stop there. One of its star players failed a drugs test and faces a two-year ban, and it was revealed the club paid $20,000 (€11,190) to former employee Jenny Hall, who was accidentally hit in the face by Sharks chief executive Tony Zappia last year. The NRL has called a crisis meeting to discuss the club’s future.