Erin Molan reveals the toll taken by horrendous online troll

Erin Molan has defied vile online trolls in one of the toughest, darkest fights of her life to become a mainstay of Nine’s NRL coverage.

• Saint, Sinner, Shoosh: Eels have eye on Latrell Mitchell
• Raelene Boyle: I want my gold medals

League great Gus Gould describes Erin Molan as a “fighter”.

“She’s the kind of person you would want by your side if you were walking down a dark alley,” Gould said.

“She’s also a very soft, beautiful person. She has a really good soul, a very hard worker.

“I know some of the criticism over the Footy Show stuff last year really hurt her, I rang her a couple of times to support her. She does take things to heart, but she’s a fighter …”

That she is. Unknown to Gould until now, and her fellow Channel 9 rugby league colleagues, was that this time last year Molan was in one of the toughest, darkest fights of her life.

Erin Molan has taken a stand against online trolls.

In April 2018, a man started Facebook messaging the first female host of the NRL Footy Show. His initial message? “Get the f*** off the footy show yiu fake fukn slag … guarantee you are killing the show … maybe go do the weather report on channel 2 wheir ya belong yiu fukn rag”.

Sadly, this is not uncommon abuse in Molan’s world, so it didn’t have her in floods of tears. Molan even messaged him back in an effort to gently shut him down; “Hey Dave. Can predict your world is pretty cloudy — sunny where I am!!! Have a great day.”

But the lightness left the Facebook conversation with this message to Molan, then nearly seven months pregnant. “I wish u a fukn still born I wish u a fukn still born AND U DIE IN THE PROCESS … hip hip hooray hip hip HOORAY.”

The messages were relentless and violent. So Molan did the right thing and blocked him.

But the predator kept coming for her via different identities sending her a stream of horrific and terrifying messages, including “ya need to be face f**ked violently”.

“I then reported it to Facebook but they didn’t deem the messages to be abusive and offensive …”

Now Molan, as she puts it, is not a “snowflake”. As her father Jim, a retired army general, says: “Erin is a tough as nails.” On a daily basis she endures a wave of criticism from various online platforms around her clothes, hair, face, shoes, whatever. But this was different — this was a death threat against her and her unborn child.

And rather than “ignore” the horrendous abuse — as many often say you should — Molan stood up and reported it to police, who have since charged and convicted the man.

Erin Molan pictured with her daughter Eliza. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Molan is brave but not fearless, recounting this trolling still makes her shake and tears fall from her eyes as she tells of her hell.

“She made him accountable, that’s the only way things can be changed, if you stand up,” says New South Wales Origin coach Brad Fittler and Nine colleague. “She’s a pioneer.”

By telling her story publicly today for the first time, Molan has joined the ranks of small but powerful and growing group of women working in sport who have drawn the line in a sand when it comes to online abuse.

Like AFLW star Tayla Harris, who was subjected to disgusting commentary on a Facebook photo of her kicking for goal, rather than shirk away from the issue, Molan has called it out.

As Harris remarked during her media storm; “I can see in people’s photos they’ve got kids, or they’ve got daughters or women in their photos even, and that is the stuff I’m worried about.”

And like Harris, Molan was openly disturbed by the fact in her troll’s photo, there were little children in his avatar.

Molan says the moment she realised had to do go to police was on an autumn night last year. She had been woken sharply by a loud bang. In the dead of night Molan thought the troll was in her house.

“I was hysterical,” Molan said. “I thought he had smashed in a window or broken in the door. I started screaming thinking he was going to hurt me or my child.” Her fiance, a police detective, bolted towards the noise.

In the laundry, Sean had found a shelf had fallen off the wall. No one was in the house.

Then there were the recurring nightmares her troll would be waiting in her garage, hiding in her home.

“It makes me emotional now,” Molan says. “I was just so on edge. I thought then, enough is enough.”

Nine sports commentator, author and former Australian netball captain Liz Ellis said the power of Molan’s actions can’t be underestimated.

“She is extraordinary in the way she goes about her job, sometimes under horrific duress, not only online from trolls that live under a toadstool, and from the mainstream media, all for just trying to do her job,” Ellis said.

There’s probably not a woman on television that has been more unfairly torn apart and (incorrectly) blamed for a television show’s demise than Molan.

“That was disgraceful,” Gould said. “The people who criticised her were the same people who were bagging the old Footy Show. But that’s just the world we live in.”

While it was a hellish start to the year taking on the troll, Molan also had to contend with demise of the NRL Footy Show, where she was subjected to relentless trolling and criticism around “killing” the show.

“I know there are people far worse off than me, but it was a really tough time,” Molan said. “It was the first time I had been professionally been questioned. I learnt a lot of lessons. It’s made me a better host …”

What does hurt Molan was the suggestion she somehow had the power to orchestrate fellow host Paul “Fatty” Vautin’s exit from the Footy Show.

“I was devastated when I saw the front page of the paper reporting he was being moved on from the show. In my opinion; he was the show.”

During the show’s demise, she said she felt her own career was done. “I look back now and there were moments where I thought; ‘I am done. Career over.”

But life is good now. Her baby daughter Eliza is 11 months old and now saying her first words, and Moran and Sean are enjoying the wild ride of the first year of parenthood.

She says it is total joy to host the footy alongside the likes of Gould, Fitter, Billy Slater and Peter Sterling.

“I feel really at home on Friday Night Footy, I love hosting the coverage,” she said. “Love hosting Sunday Footy Show, Twenty to One, being on 2GB, I love it all.

“A year on, I am genuinely in a great space.”