Bulldogs players need to realise schoolgirls can’t consent
For a century rugby league has been a game for Australian working-class men. But since when did that involve having sex with children off-field, asks Claire Harvey.
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Here we go with all the normal excuses.
The girls were up for it.
It’s a high-pressure environment for these young blokes.
Many of them come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
They’re very young.
The fame is overwhelming for them and they don’t know how to react.
For a century rugby league has been a game for working-class hard men. Since when did that involve having sex with children?
Is it the game that’s completely lost its moral compass, or is it our society in general?
My great-grandfather, Claude Corbett, was a pioneering Australian sports journalist of the first half of the 20th century. Himself the son of a famous Sydney sports journo, WF Corbett, Claude went on the first Kangaroo tour in 1911 and was the first journalist to be made a life member of the NSW Rugby League.
He helped change sports reporting forever in 1933, when Australian test cricket captain Bill Woodfull was struck over the heart by a “Bodyline” ball delivered by England’s Harold Larwood.
Reporters including Claude revealed a furious dressing-room clash between Woodfull and England management – one of the first times off-field drama had been the subject of press reporting and the source of enormous controversy. Claude believed the sporting public had a right to know.
I’ve no doubt that when Claude and the other journalists went along on those long football and cricket tours, they saw a lot of drinking and a bit of fighting. But I’m pretty sure the Kangaroos of 1911 weren’t having sex with schoolgirls and I’m confident that if they were, Claude would have reported it.
I’ve written frequently in support of Catharine Lumby, an academic who has for two decades advised the NRL on helping players navigate the complex moral and sexual environments in which they find themselves. The theme of Dr Lumby’s advice has been, in large part, that the most important factor is consent: that sexual interaction is fine, as long as everyone is enthusiastically consenting and feels safe. In theory, that would be fine – if all players were capable of understanding words like “consent” and “ethics”.
But on the latest sorry drama to beset rugby league, I think Dr Lumby has it wrong, and it is time for the game to radically rethink the way it talks to players about sex.
Clearly rugby league is tolerating the presence of entitled, overpaid creeps who don’t understand that they are paid to be, essentially, children’s entertainers. They can’t grasp that the privilege of making school visits makes it totally unacceptable for them to then solicit schoolchildren for sex.
This week, after Bulldogs players Jayden Okunbor, 23, and Corey Harawira-Naera, 24, were stood down for taking young girls back to their team hotel rooms, Dr Lumby rightly, said the men have “done nothing criminal as far as we know.”
But in her view the only problem was taking the girls to team rooms – a breach of the code of conduct.
“What we need to focus on is whether sex is consensual, safe and ethical,” Dr Lumby said. “That is the whole focus of the education I have worked on with the NRL. I have huge concerns for these young women. They can make their own decisions and they have a future and let’s leave them out of this. This is not a sex scandal, this is a workplace conduct issue.”
No. This is not a workplace conduct issue.
It is a moral catastrophe.
I don’t think a schoolgirl can ever properly consent to sex with an older, much more powerful man – especially if he only has access to that minor by virtue of his privilege as a famous athlete.
Clearly there’s a small number of entitled, overpaid dickheads playing league who don’t, or can’t, get this. They have to go.