Kelli Stevens' angry mum slams book as old wounds opened

THE mother of the woman who fallen AFL star Wayne Carey had a notorious affair with has labelled his tell-all book "a version of the truth''.

THE mother of the woman who fallen AFL star Wayne Carey had a notorious affair with has labelled his tell-all book "a version of the truth''.

Kelli Stevens' mum said she was disgusted the former footballer had published lurid details of his liaison with her daughter, the wife of Carey's Kangaroos teammate, Anthony Stevens.

Lorraine Falla said Carey was reopening old wounds with no regard for others. He should have thought of his family -- and Ms Stevens' -- and never put pen to paper, she said.

"At this stage of their lives, whatever parties are involved should be thinking of their children,'' Mrs Falla said.

"There's no purpose to it. It can only hurt.''

Mrs Falla said she would not read the book - The Truth Hurts - but expected it to be totally one-sided.

"It's just his side of the story. How can you know he is telling the truth? It's just his version of the truth,'' she said.

In the book, Carey reveals he went on four-day drug and alcohol benders, often contemplated suicide, and never recovered from the fallout of his affair with Ms Stevens.

Carey, 38, dates his binge-drinking to the start of his football career, and admits to routinely turning up to training -- and later, media commentary work -- with no sleep after heavy nights of partying.

He says he has improved his life, which reads like a Hollywood screenplay steeped in drugs, womanising, violence and a fleeting jail stint. He makes regular visits to a psychologist and has a new awareness of trigger points that set off explosions of ``self-sabotage''.

On the Stevens affair, Carey remains filled with a ``deep shame and regret'' that fuelled his abuse of alcohol and cocaine, which he first snorted in Memphis in 2002.

The dark times also brought thoughts of suicide.

"There have been numerous times where I've thought about it,'' he writes.

"Every little thing that has happened, there has been a point where I've thought, 'That's it'.

"I was looking at it like I would be doing my friends and family a favour because they have to deal with the public scrutiny as much as I do.''

Carey says Ella, his daughter, was his "saviour''.

But her calming influence took time to take effect.

Three days after she was born in 2006, Carey turned up at the hospital to take Ella and then-wife Sally home after yet another night of heavy cocaine use.

He missed Sally's 30th birthday dinner because he was drinking elsewhere.

"I thought that's how blokes behaved, and young blokes behaved, and I really thought that was the norm,'' he writes.

"I didn't think there were too many doing it differently. That's how I rationalised it in my head.''

Carey traces his bad behaviour to his childhood in Wagga where his father Kevin terrorised the family.

"I'm terribly ashamed of what's in the book,'' Carey said.

"There are parts of it when I was sitting there with Charlie crying, or trying to hold back tears talking about it, because I am ashamed of my behaviour over a period of time towards people who love me.''

Kevin Carey, who has a criminal record dating back to 1957, says he will write his own book to expose his son's "lies''.

Carey's greatest regret is lying to Sally about the Stevens affair.

Despite her long suspicions, he denied any wrongdoing, even avoiding the issue after he knew Ms Stevens had confessed to her husband and the world was about to find out.

It was at that moment - I remember it very, very vividly - that I knew my career at the Kangaroos was finished,'' he writes in his book.

"That was the first thing that came into my head: I was going to have to leave the club, and give the game away.

"Obviously, I understood that it also probably meant the end of my marriage. But, strange as it may seem, and selfish as it may sound, the first thing I thought about was my football.''

Anthony Stevens and team-mate Glenn Archer confronted Carey at a friend's house in Albert Park.

Carey says he accepted that if punches were thrown, he would not fight back.

I listened to what Stevo had to say: that I was a weak prick and that I'd betrayed him,'' Carey writes.

He was very upset. He was looking at me like a guy who had just been stabbed in the heart. I was feeling as bad as I could possibly feel."