Did you see 60 Minutes last night? Liz Hayes interviewed the 17 year old girl at the centre of the AFL saga. It was pretty compelling. She admitted that she’d never been pregnant (something I have suspected for a while now and a part of her story I find particularly repugnant), that she’d never been abused by the football players, that the sex she’d had with the one she’d dated had been consensual. Also that she lied about her age and told the footballers she was 19.
So really, what she told us was that basically, a guy she was sleeping with broke up with her, she was devastated at being cut off from the glamorous celebrity AFL life she’d been part of for a short time and so she began to wreck havoc on people’s lives with false accusations.
Whenever her story risked fading from public view, she raised the stakes, thrusting herself back in front of the media.
It’s been an ugly incident and one that the media, somehow has copped much of the blame for. After 60 Minutes last night, Twitter exploded with condemnation for 60 Minutes and Liz Hayes, accusing them of gutter journalism.
What do you think? Has the 60 Minutes story and the girl’s admissions changed your view?
NOTE: Every time I publish a story about this girl, I am accused of exploiting her and inviting others to abuse her. Rubbish. I believe it’s possible to have a decent discussion about this case without resorting to personal abuse, just like any other post. Comment rules apply and will be adhered to.
Last week, we ran this post by Virginia Trioli:
What happens when you see someone making all the wrong choices? When you witness a person in pain and despair ? Do you talk to them ? Do you advise them? Sometimes the line between a journalist’s job and her ethical standpoint can get blurred. Virginia Trioli writes
A dilemma. A journalist’s dilemma. I should want to interview the angry and vengeful 17-year-old girl at the heart of the St Kilda football club and now Ricky Nixon scandals. I read the stories that explode around her as she wreaks her revenge on men she believes tricked her, took advantage of her, betrayed her. I follow the consequences, examine the fall-out.
But when it comes to this troubled young woman, my journalist instinct is missing. I don’t want to get her on air, or sit her down with a camera, tape or pen. In fact I never want to hear from her again. I want someone, anyone who cares about this girl, to take her to one side, wrap her up in their arms and pull her out of the limelight, off Twitter and into safety; to tell her, “enough now” and take her away from the celebrity that right now must feel like the only kind of love she can expect. I want someone to take care of her, and it seems that no one can or will, so I want to do it myself.
.
I won’t presume too much about her life, but I have read the comments of parents that seem to suggest despair and abandonment of a wayward girl. She seems to spend a great deal of time alone. She shifts from hotel to hotel.
But I follow the girl I’ll call K on Twitter, and I daily read, with a sinking heart, the arc of her outrage; the plummet to earth of fear and regret; the need to be loved; the astonishing abuse she cops; the loneliness of her life. My hands hover over the keyboard as I think, “send the message, send it now … ask her to meet you … buy her a coffee … and tell her to run away from this mess and never look back”.
The real story for me has not been the “woman scorned” one, even though the young woman’s tenacious fury has been something to behold. The real issue is about the questionable judgment of some men in the football world, the alliances they feel they can make, the stuff they can get away with, and the ever-sympathetic audience they know they can fall back on when their self-indulgent choices turn into mistakes: there are more men and women lined up to call this girl a “moll” and a “skank” than there are people who call footballers or Ricky Nixon idiots. I’m glad she’s done what she has. I’m glad she’s used the full force of the technology at her disposal to reveal the hypocrisies of the football world. But she’s climbed onto the back of a lion, and I don’t know how she’s going to get off.
In the conclusion of my book Generation F, a response to Helen Garner’s First Stone and the Ormond College affair, I wrote that if a friend of mine came to me with a story of sexual harassment, I probably wouldn’t encourage her to go through the pain and trauma of the public and legal process: let someone else take on the men, I would want to take my friend away to quietly heal. But, I said, “If my friend was strong enough to confront the pain of this process, then who among us could deny her right to do just that?”
This recklessly brave and angry girl is that someone else. I stand in awe of her fury. But enough now; shush now. Someone help her down off stage. Someone help her take care of herself.
This article was originally published in The Weekly Review and has been republished here with full permission
What do you think?
If you are commenting please do not use the St Kilda schoolgirls real name, refer to her as an alias or xxx.
Top Comments
Where are her parents?!?!
It's quite possible she has utterly rejected her parents. I wouldn't blame them unless you know what they've been through with her already.
I cannot believe all the media frenzy over this stupid little girls actions. How immature is she, going to a hotel in the middle of the night with men from a football team. What did she think was going to happen, or more the case, what did she want to happen. These silly little girls who carry on like this, then cry wolf after the event, and the media who put them up on a pedestal, it's just getting to much. Why is a 17 year old going to bars and hotels with men in the first place. Well we can thank the idiots who took away a parents rights to discipline their children for this one. Then the media offer them big brown paper bags full of money to tell their stories. Oh,and of course they feel better about themselves after they tell the whole world about sex life, and how many men they have slept with, doesn't matter how many people they hurt by telling their story, as long as they feel better about it. What it boils down to is that they are prostituting them selves, getting paid for telling all about their sex life. And this is newsworthy, so say the journalists. Get a life, forget the stories about these stupid little girls, donate the money to some one who realy needs it, like the cancer fund, and write about some real news.