Australia's Disgrace: Football Culture and Rape

Four Corners aired women speaking out against rape and degradation from footballers.  Since this occurred, Matthew Johns has been removed of the football show and fans have rallied in a brutal online attack against the women that spoke out.  One of the most common themes that have arisen is claims that they had made false allegations for money.  None of the women were paid and Four Corners were the ones that requested the interview.  Some of them were accused of "bragging", whilst others had publicly labeled them as "whores" and "head cases".

After this aired, "Clares" parents were informed by the media for the first time.  Just imagine if this was your daughter, who had finally spoken out against an incident that had left them emotionally destroyed after an incident that occurred seven years ago and the first person who told you was a journalist who had just entered the headlines, "She bragged about it".  This is what has happened in the past week, whilst football fans are petitioning to return one of the participants to a football show, lives are torn apart.

Women need to know that if their bodies are invaded by those without consent, that they have a right to be treated with dignity and equal access to justice.  The excuses that are made for the participant were appalling and degrading.  Much like the excuses made by Father rights groups about child sexual abuse.  

The Fact that if these women were to become pregnant from this incident, the Family Court can order them to become victimized over and over again.  As rapists have rights to children too.  As the shared parenting bill was brought in by a similar bunch of thugs, a "Unsubstantiated" was redefined as "False allegations" and if the victim or the victims parents could not accumulate more than what is required for a homicide, they were ordered costs to the alleged sex offender.  What is an outrage is that child and domestic violence advocates have been saying for years have provided a basket full of solutions in providing more evidence, but seldom has been done.  Years have gone by as more laws to protect abusers have been created against women and children whilst their lives have become unbearable and intolerable.  

The football supporters who have been apart of this violence supportive culture is a mere reflection on why rapists are walking around whilst a majority of the women's jail cells contain rape victims.  They have lost faith in society as a community and a disenchantment with the law that bred the in-just circumstances.  Australia's male dominated police force is ready to charge women but when it comes to situations such as rape and violence,  somehow their evidence is "not important".  The criminal justice system breeds injustice when there are more laws and clauses that can charge costs to  police for raising a complaint that was "not important".  What is more important to this system is "fraud and deception", the biggest crime from women.  How many have resorted to these acts to escape a perpetrator is not publicly known or even acknowledged.   

How Far Should The Football Fans Go

Should we support or shame Matthew Johns? 

By Matthew Bock

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I'm sick of people inviting me to join Matthew Johns 'support groups'. This is really a disgusting effort to make Mattie Johns look like the victim in this whole scenario.

If you've been living under a rock and don't know what I'm talking about, read this transcript from Four Corners 'Code of Silence'

Irrespective of whether or not it was 7 or 70 years ago, it was wrong and he shouldn't have done it. The responsibility that he has is even greater given that he has launched himself into a very high profile position, where he is a role model to many young boys.

I've looked at many of the groups I've been invited to and I'm disgusted by the attitudes of its members. The guys are completely disrespectful to her, saying that she was a "whore" and a "slut". Some of the girls are chiming in too saying that she's "a stupid bitch". That's the exact attitude Channel 9 wanted to distance itself from, and rightly so I reckon.

Now there's been a lot debate about "rape" and "consent".

"Consent" it's presence or absence is not the key factor in this situation. She was able to freely give consent UP UNTIL 12 others walked into the room. At that point, it became almost impossible her to withdraw consent. I don't think it can be disputed that consent is a very grey area in this regard.

However, even if consent was given at the beginning, and you accept that as being legitimate. You need to look at their conduct after consent was given. 

They rubbed their penises on her face and ejaculated on her. Demeaning her, calling her names, and treating her like a piece of trash.

No woman deserves to be treated in such a degrading way, and no woman enjoys that kind of treatment. To suggest she consented to that treatment is ridiculous.

If you've seen the four corners program you'd know that it says:

"Four Corners doesn't say that what took place in room 21 of the Racecourse hotel was sexual assault.

But a woman involved in degrading group sex can still be traumatised whether she consents or not."

I'd totally echo those sentiments.

Mattie Johns has done wrong, he knows he has, and he should pay the price. He knows that being a celebrity he puts himself under the scrutiny of the media. He knew that as soon as he signed a contract saying that he wouldn't put Channel 9's reputation to harm.

People have been writing to me saying that this whole situation is a 'trial by media' which has resulted in the norm of 'innocence before proven guilty' has been breached here. This is particularly unsophisticated analysis. Mattie Johns hasn't been put in jail. He has had his contract torn up, presumably for breaching a term of the contract around not causing reputation damage. This is particularly standard for professional sport contracts and TV celebrities. 

Mattie Johns has never said that he's innocent. He apologized to the girl after the incident, and has apologized again since. If he had the courage of his convictions of innocence he could defend the breach of contract on the grounds that he didn't cause reputational harm. However, he's shown no such defiance, instead he has shown guilt and remorse.

Nevertheless, what is particularly disgusting about a facebook group celebrating and supporitng a man who degrades and abuses women is that one in three women are victims of some form of sexual violence. Consent is not always crystal clear in these cases, but the degrading manner in which they are treated is.

Supporting and endorsing this behaviour has upset and will continue to upset victims of sexual assault, who fear exactly this type of reaction should they disclose their history of abuse by seeking police or other support.

Australian Football Gang Rapes

"Clare," Charmyne Palavi, and Australian Football Gang Rapes

After a woman who, fearing for her safety, called herself "Clare," revealed the disgusting details of a gang rape that was perpetrated against her by an Australian football team, 100,000 people responded in support of the man who orchestrated the gang rape against her.

Charmyne Palavi, who also went on TV to reveal the reality of the football gang rape scene, was denounced on the Internet as a "lying head case," and hateful messages were written toward her both by women and by men.

"Clare," Charmyne, and everyone else who has experienced this and similar crimes: This is for you.

In an Internet discussion, an Australian man referred to Muslim men who gang rape young women in Sydney as "imported Muslim scum." While that is indeed a fitting description of those people, I pose a question. Why is not the same epithet – minus the imported Muslim part - being applied to Australians who do the exact same thing to Australian women and teenage girls?

The people who are behind the "lying head case" statements are clearly abusers and liars. They are seeking to discredit and beat down the person who is coming forth to tell the truth. Telling the truth is a part of character and a part of integrity. So then why would the people who claim to have character and integrity be against it? 
There is a single reason for it. They have neither of the preceding.

To women who have been joining in the attack on Charmyne and on "Clare": Perhaps you deserve to go through what "Clare" had gone through. You would inflict it upon your fellow woman, so then why should it not be you that is being gang raped? This woman is somebody's daughter, as well as a human being. As a man, and a father, I say quite clearly that if anyone did anything like this to my daughter, I will not rest until they all are in jail.

Now there are many football types who think that they're real men who deserve to do this to women, and there are many women who think that they are real powerful men who will protect them and give them status and power. I pose this question. What are they up against a nuclear bomb? The French, whom they see as cowards; the Chinese, whom they see as blockheads; the Russians, whom they see as losers; the Americans, whom they see as conmen; and even a tiny nation like Israel; has enough real power to wipe them off the face of the Earth. The Taliban in Afghanistan, who believed that a man who does not beat his wife "does not have a penis," thought they were real men as well, and for the same reasons. They did not last very long against real power.

And it is only the nobility, the self-restraint, and self-discipline, of those who have real power – the self-restraint and self-discipline which history shows repeatedly to be the necessary component of real power - that allow thugs like the Taliban, the military dictators, the "imported Muslim" as well as Australian football gang rapists, to get away with thinking that they are kings.

This laissez-faire attitude on the part of real power allows for creation and perpetuation of all kinds of hideousness and absurdity. Petty despots, criminal organizations, terrrorist groups, paramilitaries, thugs, and all kinds of barbarians, then start claiming that they are the real men, or the genuine article, or the true culture of the places that they infest and use this usurpation to commit horrendous violations against the people whom they are claiming to represent. Gangsters start thinking that they are the true black people; militias start thinking that they are true Americans; Taliban starts thinking that they are true Middle East; and groups like the Black Shirts and the football gang rapists start thinking that they are the true Australian men. All of these are wrong. They are not the truth of the people they claim to speak for, they are the worst and the ugliest in the people they claim to speak for. And it is time that the people for whom they claim to speak stop letting them get away with this usurpation of their authority. There are far better men in Australia than Black Shirts or gang rapists, just as there are far better black people than gangsters, far better Americans than militiamen, and far better Middle Eastern people than Taliban; and it is time that these better men in Australia start to speak as true men of Australia and put these degenerates in their place.

The people – and I use the term loosely - who think that it is part of manhood to brutally gang-rape teenage girls and young women – or to beat their wives, or to molest their daughters, or to assault women who've left men who beat them and molested their children - are not real men that they claim to be. What they are, is swine. And like swine flue is wiping out people, so are these swine the leading cause of death and disability in Australian women. It is time that better men speak for Australian manhood and put a stop to this vile affliction that is eating away at the soul of this beautiful country and the people who live in it.

one woman's descent into hell

Drugs, lost custody: one woman's descent into hell 

May 16, 2009

For the woman involved in the Coffs Harbour group sex allegation, life has become unbearable, writes Jessica Halloran.

Before that night, she lived a simple life with her mum, dad and her baby son in a sleepy street in Coffs Harbour. But since that evening, which led to her accusing up to six Bulldogs players of gang raping her, her life has been in ruins.

Now 25, Jane (not her real name) has battled drug addiction and homelessness. She no longer has full custody of her young son. On the day he started school last year, his mum was not there to wave him off as he walked through the school gates. She had no fixed address and was battling drug addiction.

The little boy, who has his mother's eyes, had sensed something was wrong. "My mum is not very good today," he said after one of her visits.

Every few weeks she sees her son, but she is not allowed to have him by herself. In the past, she has stolen from his money box to help fund her addiction. She has stolen thousands of dollars from her sister. She has stolen from her parents. Her mother and father are deeply saddened by their daughter's decline.

They found brief hope after they sent her to a rehabilitation facility in Sydney in 2007 and she showed signs of recovery. But her return to Coffs Harbour saw her fall into a spiral of drug use again. In recent years she's been seen wandering the Coffs streets with her head shaved. Fingers have been pointed, words have been muttered.

Before the Bulldogs came to town, her life was relatively normal. She was a single mum. The father of her son helped look after the boy, but she was considered fragile. Those close to her said that February 22 was the catalyst for her decline.

"Her life is worse than the other two that spoke [on Four Corners]," a source close to her says. "She's a victim of major proportions."

The woman has chosen not to speak about that fateful night, after which no police charges were laid. She has turned down $100,000 from a tabloid television program and lucrative magazine deals. When the Herald approached her earlier this year, five years to the day after the Bulldogs sex scandal, she crumpled in a sobbing heap. Her distress and trauma were palpable.

The Herald last year interviewed her child's grandmother, Alice (not her real name), the mother of her former partner. She spoke of the immense worry the woman's state has had on the whole family.

"Worry - it's just something you do about her," Alice said. "She's one of those such likeable people and [her mother] she put her down in some rehab place in Sydney, that went really good. [Her mother] was getting her really good help. [Her mother] was doing heaps for her and then they let her out and it was too soon."

Following that rehab stint in 2007, Jane ended up on the streets but her mother would find someone to watch over her and give money to the local soup kitchen. When the Herald met Jane earlier this year, she had recently returned home to live with her parents after being by herself in a unit block in Coffs Harbour. A life that had become desperate suddenly had at least some stability.

"When she is on the streets, [her mother] gets somebody to watch out for her," Alice said last year. "But there's nothing anybody can do for her now until [Jane] gets the help that she wants. [Jane] is not to pick [her son] up from school. She's not to go near the school. You don't know what might happen, she used to steal money out of his money box. I think it's just the way she is, she's just not well. Her parents, they still care. [Her mother] is giving money to the soup kitchen to watch out for her, she definitely still watches out for her. If she ever wants to get help again, [her mother] will be 100 per cent there to help her do it."

When the Herald talked to Alice last year she also spoke about her concern for Jane's child. He was six last November and is in his second year of primary school. Alice believes he is now "used" to not having his mother present all the time.

"I don't think he knows any better now, it's just the way it is, I don't think registers because she's never been there," Alice says. "But his dad has."

Alice believes that Jane had problems before the Bulldogs incident but says that night tipped the then 20-year-old over the edge.

"I think the big story that was made of it may have pushed her too far," Alice says. "It was the stories afterwards, it kept going and going. But that doesn't mean they did not do something wrong. I think it was pretty sad on both sides. I think about their mothers, too …

"[Her son] very rarely sees her now. It might be once every two or three weeks. It might be once a month. It all depends if she is here, or if she rings up. [The child's father] sometimes thinks it might be doing more damage than good. He doesn't know why she's not there. They know that she is not to ever have him on her own."

Jane and the child's father were together for 12 months before she fell pregnant. After the incident with the Bulldogs, the child's father still cared greatly for his ex-partner and the trauma she went through.

"He still cared about her, so it was pretty bad," Alice says. "He never discussed it with anybody, he never talked about it with anybody, any of the reporters approached him he wouldn't talk about it. He'd never talk about [Jane], he still won't talk about [Jane]. He never put her down. If he hears things like what she's up to, he might tell me, and feels really bad for her. He's just not a cruel person."

Jane's pain and her family's pain is a stark contrast to what a former Bulldogs footballer, who took her back to the Pacific Bay Hotel that humid night in 2004, had to say about the incident in a recent interview with the Herald. He spoke of her with disdain and blamed her for the scrutiny placed on today's footballers.

"It's a shame to think one person has done," he told the Herald. "I think it's changed a lot of other things now. Even in general life as well as sport, everyone is getting too uptight. They're trying to take the fun out of everything."

He wished that Jane had been charged with being a public nuisance.

"I hate it [the allegations]," he said. "I don't understand how someone can do that. Be nice if she could have got a bit of justice her way. We were told pretty much that we could have had her charged with being a public nuisance. They said you're as close as that to having her charged, to pretty much have it proved."

Today Jane is living with her parents on that sleepy street in Coffs Harbour.

The Herald understands her son spends the majority of his time living with his father.

Alice hopes that one day everyone's lives will find some calm.

"You hope everyone gets their lives back," Alice says. "I get my life back to do the things I'm doing.

"[My son] and bubby get theirs, [Jane's parents] and me will always be there for [the child]. It's going to be really all right."

Sympathy For The Abuser

With the recent report from "The Code of Silence", pride and denial raises its head as the football team bombards the Australian Community with their macho rethoric on the right to rape and shame their victims. They couldn't get out of the fact that they had participated in some type of sex, so "She Consented" has become the starting point of a major attack on women that dared to speak out against their actions. In some headlines, this has been labeled as "group sex" and a sympathy parade has gone out to support a man who participated in it.

The women known as "Clare" had suffered from post traumatic stress disorder after being treated like a doll by six men. "group sex" usually defines a group of equal numbers in sex, but in this experience it was 6 males against one 19 year old girl. With or without consent, this was a slaughter on one young women.
She consented to two of them whilst the others intruded upon her body.

Charmyne Palavi bravely spoke out about her experience of date rape by one of the football players and how difficult it is to report considering their fame and support. Whilst she has been a willing participant of the scene and the men that she had dated, this act was one of many outrages experienced by female supporters of football that were not consented to. She spoke out against the exploitation of girls as young as 16 who were taken by these footballers. Since the episode went to air on four corners, hate groups and degrading attacks have been launched against them within the media and online.

It does not matter whether a women is beautiful, ugly, elegent, plain, black, white, rich or poor - It is the message that is important. As human beings we all have flaws and they are often raised when a greater injustice has occurred. Audre Lorde stated, "To degrade someone, even with that person's expressed consent is to endorse the degradation of persons. It is to affirm that the abuse of persons is acceptable.
It is certainly true in this circumstance and evidential in the media that condones violence against women whether it be apart of a religion, sub culture or way of life - there is no reason why it is acceptable. Federal Sports Minister Kate Ellis said in nine news report, "The group sex session involving rugby league personality Matther Johns was predatory, degrading and offensive". A poll currently shows more support for the man who took part in the group. Add your vote here.