Every week it feels like l write a new version of the same story. A woman’s trauma becomes theatre in the “will they, won’t they be charged” news cycle. The word “alleged” does overtime in media coverage that seems more worried about the men whose careers are “on the line” than about the person whose life might have been forever changed. I am sick of writing about it. I imagine you are sick of reading about it. And yet here we are again.
This week it is the Sydney Swans.
In the early hours of Monday morning, Victoria Police were called to the Pullman Hotel on Wellington Parade in East Melbourne, where the Swans were staying after a win that locked in a home qualifying final. Victoria Police confirmed they are investigating a report of a sexual assault that occurred at the hotel in the early hours of the morning, adding that the exact circumstances are yet to be established and the investigation remains ongoing.
The Swans’ official statement simply read, “The Sydney Swans can confirm several players were involved in an alleged incident in Melbourne last night. The Swans have notified the AFL and relevant authorities and cannot provide further comment at this stage.”
“Incident”. Not sexual assault or an allegation of sexual assault but “incident”, the kind of word you would reach for after a run in at work with a coworker or a car accident.
Speaking to media outside the Swans’ Sydney headquarters, chief executive Matthew Pavlich didn’t do much to shift that framing. “We can confirm that several players were involved in an alleged incident last night in Melbourne,” he said. “We’ve identified this to the AFL. We are working with them and also the relevant authorities on this matter.” He went on to say, “Safe to say that we’re extremely shocked and disappointed that this has taken place and that the players have found themselves in this situation.” Asked directly if anyone had been arrested, Pavlich would only say it was “a police matter ongoing” and that he wasn’t going to comment further.
“Found themselves in this situation”. As if the situation is the weather and they got caught unwittingly in a storm. As if it simply landed on them.
Seven Network sports journalist Tom Morris broke the story, describing it on social media as a matter “believed to be sensitive and potentially very damaging to star players.”
I read that line three times. “Damaging to star players”. Not to the woman at the centre of the allegation. To the players.
Sherele Moody, founder of Australian Femicide Watch and The Red Heart Movement, put it plainly when I asked her about the coverage. “The early language is worrying,” she told me. “The emphasis is on the welfare of the players involved, with little concern about the woman in the centre of it.” She went further, “The widespread distribution of a graphic photo and the ongoing references about sex workers and a dildo is very problematic. This is victim blaming, slut shaming and malicious. This material is all over social media and it is concerning what journalists, and the public may do with it.”
She is right, and it is not hyperbole. I had to sit my 14-year-old son down and talk to him about the pictures and innuendo already circulating online. He had seen them, the exact material Moody is describing. We talked about strippers, sex toys, consent, sexual assault and the presumption of innocence, all in the same breath, because that is how casually this stuff moves through a teenage boy’s phone.
Social media comments have been vile. One comment, shared publicly by Moody, came from a man who goes by Bert: “I’m with the Swans. Some bloody bitch is again saying she’s been grabbed on the tits or something stupid. And so what if they did? I’d be more worried about these footy players if they weren’t grabbing Sheilas on the tits.” Moody says comments like his are not a one off. I believe her. I have read the replies underneath and all-over social media.
This is the same worn-out script we return to every time. She was asking for it because she’s a stripper. Her dress was too short. Her top was see through. She flirted with him all night. As if any of that, even if true, cancels out a woman’s right to say no.
Why isn’t anyone asking if the woman at the centre of this is okay? Why does a club statement, echoed uncritically across headlines, quietly frame the accused men as the ones caught up in a “situation,” while she becomes a footnote, or worse, a punchline in someone’s comments section?
It is not all men but it is mostly men. And it is a media and football culture that, allegation after allegation, decade after decade, reflexively protects its stars first and asks questions about the women later, if at all.
Gendered violence is a national crisis. The AFL is the biggest game in this country. If the league, its clubs and the journalists who cover them want to prove they take that crisis seriously, it starts with something as basic as the language they reach for the moment a woman says she was violated. Because there are 14-year-old boys out there right now, on the cusp of manhood, absorbing every word like a sponge. And I am sick and tired, as a woman, of doing the heavy lifting of society.
If this article has raised issues for you, 1800RESPECT is available on 1800 737 732, or text 0458 737 732.