Matthew Johns had group sex with his footy mates and a 19 year old girl. Another nightmare day for the NRL.

Did you catch Matthew Johns’ ‘apology’ on the 2009 Logie winning NRL Footy Show last night? What? You don’t watch The Footy Show?
Yesterday, Johns was tipped off that the Four Corners program will be running a report about the behaviour of NRL players on ABC1 on Monday night at 8:30pm. This will include an interview with a woman who says she had group sex with Johns and other Cronulla Sharks players seven years ago while the club was…..

….touring New Zealand.

The woman, who has declined to be named, claimed she suffered psychological and emotional problems following the incident. “Every time I looked up there were more and more people in the room. There were lots of guys watching,” she told the ABC.“Maybe two or three were on the bed that were doing stuff to me.”

Four NZ police travelled to Sydney in 2002 to interview Matthew Johns with
Sharks teammates – also allegedly involved – but no charges were laid.

To discuss these allegations, Matthew Johns used the Footy Show, which he co-hosts to launch a pre-emptive strike by apologising:

“For me personally, it put my family through enormous anguish and embarrassment and for that I can’t say sorry enough. Police investigated the situation, the allegations and there were no charges laid. This has been a cause of major embarrassment for a lot of people.”

“It happened seven years ago, it caused great pain to my wife and family,” Johns told The Daily Telegraph. “It took us a long time to get over it. It pains me they have to go through it again.”

What she says happened – and what Matthew Johns has admitted – is revolting and astonishing. Ever since these kinds of stories started coming out about NRL players having group sex, I’ve struggled to comprehend what these guys might be thinking.

Sharing a woman like you would pass around a beer? All having sex with her AT THE SAME TIME? Actively participating in the degradation of the woman, even if she supposedly consents (and I maintain that any sober girl who does ‘consent’ to such a thing is seriously disturbed and is being utterly abused and exploited by the men who participate in group sex with her), what kind of man wants to do that with his mates?

What Johns did in this instance was seven years ago but it’s still apparently going on. The latest despicable act – according to a former groupie who still has close associations with many NRL players and who was on Kyle & Jackie O’s radio show last month – is that some of these footy players use their phones to record not just the sex, but they make the girl say she is consenting to it.

This is designed to protect the players in the future just in case the girl sobers up and realises she has been exploited and degraded and tries to tell someone about it. While it’s highly unlikely such a ‘confession’ would be legally binding and exempt any man from rape or under-age sex charges, these poor young girls (allegedly as young as 14) don’t know that. They’re intimidated and terrified of having the sex footage appear on the internet. So they shut up.

Yet again this morning, when my NRL-loving son wanted to read the newspaper, I was forced to get the scissors out and cut out the first few pages. How the hell do you explain to an 11 year old why his footy heroes would want to have group sex or even what group sex IS?

My sympathies go to NRL head, David Gallop – and all the other decent football players who DON’T behave like this. I’ve met David Gallop before and he seems like a smart and lovely guy who – like so many – is passionate about the game of football. Like so many footy fans (and mothers of young fans), he must have his head in his hands yet again today…….