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The career of rugby league personality Matthew Johns is in tatters following the broadcast of a Four Corners programme naming him as a participant in “the depraved practise of group sex with vulnerable young women”.
And fair enough. The prevailing attitude within the NRL, that consensual sex is okay just because it fits some abstract notion of legality, has to end. We must remember the real victims: the imaginary victims.
It is a shocking breach of trust. Women who consent to sex are being preyed upon by the very men they are consenting to sex with.
Last Monday, Four Corners courageously allowed someone to anonymously trash the reputation of a public figure, costing him his job. Tragically, however, the imaginary victim appears to have failed in her stated aim of breaking up Mr Johns’ marriage.
This was not sexual experimentation. This was not regret after the fact. This was a calculated act of sexual savagery in which a group of blurry, blue-coloured men stumbled around in a dramatisation for several minutes.
That police did nothing explains why, even today, NRL players continue to engage in consensual sex on a massive scale. And their attitudes to that sex are corrupting a fan base that, increasingly, is turning to sex as well.
It’s in this culture, where consensual sex is considered acceptable, even routine, that women who regret consenting to sex end up blaming themselves.
But they should blame, I don’t know, NRL CEO David Gallop or that guy on The Footy Show or whatever.
The programme explored the tricky legal question of whether a nameless, shapeless blur can consent to sex.
