Ricky Nixon releases book ‘My Side’ which addresses the schoolgirl scandal
RICKY Nixon has explained his role in the controversial St Kilda schoolgirl saga in his new tell-all book. But was it really a tell-all?
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“MOST people can look back in life and recall an incident they regret or an individual they wish they’d never met,” controversial AFL player agent Ricky Nixon said.
“That incident for me was meeting a girl in a hotel room.”
Nixon was one of the most high-profile men in sport when he was caught on a bed in his underwear in the hotel room of the St Kilda schoolgirl.
Following the infamous meeting, he quickly hit rock bottom and he was ruined.
He had lost his business, money and family and the only thing he gained through the whole ordeal was a cocaine addiction.
Nixon is speaking out about the incident in his “warts and all” book, My Side, which the schoolgirl, who isn’t named for legal reasons, tried to stop being published.
She won a temporary injunction to postpone the book but he published the hard copy in full earlier this year.
So how did one of the most successful men in sport get to this stage in his life?
Six years after the whole saga began, Nixon is now telling what he says is his side of the story on what happened with the schoolgirl.
THE ST KILDA SCHOOLGIRL
It started in February 2010 when St Kilda players visited Monterey Secondary College in Frankston where the schoolgirl was a 16-year-old student.
Weeks later, she went to Sydney to see the Saints play and ended up giving her number to footy star Sam Gilbert, who she then started a relationship with. Nixon claims Gilbert was unaware of her real age.
Gilbert dumped the schoolgirl when he discovered she was still a teenager.
“With the relationship finished the s*** hit the fan in a big way,” Nixon wrote in his book.
“Maybe revenge played a part, I’m not sure. The reasons are only known to the girl, but perhaps she felt slighted in some way.”
After Gilbert and the schoolgirl broke up, rumours she was pregnant were circulating around her school.
Nixon sought proof and that was when he first got involved with the girl.
In September, the schoolgirl went to visit Nixon in his office at Etihad and showed him a positive pregnancy test.
“I would find out later that it belonged to another woman,” Nixon wrote in his book.
“Honestly, who would use someone else’s pregnancy test? The girl even posted supposedly pregnant photos of herself on Twitter and told me that one twin was stillborn and the other had miscarried.”
The schoolgirl appeared on 60 Minutes and admitted she made up the story.
THE NUDE PHOTOS
“I’m at your office. I need to see you now … I’m in big trouble”.
That was a text Nixon saw flash on his phone in November 2010 while he was at a race day at Flemington in Melbourne.
Nixon thought the message was from one of the players he managed, but it was from the schoolgirl.
He met with her at his office “more through curiosity because I had to know what she was up to”.
“I saw her as a smart-arse who was popular on social media and who was enjoying bringing my clients down,” Nixon wrote in his book.
Nixon invited the girl into his office and said he taped the conversation.
“The girl had well and truly moved on from the pregnancy claims by then but offloaded another surprise,” Nixon recalled.
“She had nude photos of several St Kilda players, namely Nick Dal Santo, Nick Riewoldt and Zac Dawson. I was managing the two Nicks but not Dawson, and after the pregnancy nonsense I wasn’t sure what to believe but I listened politely all the same.
“She was saying all sorts of weird stuff in my office. Her repeated claims of having nude images of some high-profile players was concerning, though I was unconvinced by her genuineness.”
Nixon claims three days later, the schoolgirl showed up at his office again and the player agent called one of his staff members to come down to the office so they weren’t alone.
In December, just before Christmas, the schoolgirl released the photos of the players on Facebook and the images went viral.
The book alleged the schoolgirl took the photos from Gilbert’s computer while they were dating, and sent them to her Hotmail account after the footballer fell asleep.
“As a player agent I always had the interests of my players at heart and up to this point the meetings with the girl in my office had been professional and above board, at least from my perspective,” Nixon said in his book.
“Over the next couple of months we exchanged about 500 text messages from early November until early January and while people will probably assume it was 250 text messages apiece, that wasn’t the case. I’m not suggesting for one minute that I wasn’t texting the girl but it was very lop sided in her favour.
“Many of my messages were about the nude photos, her actions and the unnecessary hurt she’d caused, whereas a lot of her texts had sexual connotations. I never encouraged any sort of relationship with her and it was the most distant thing from my mind. She was an immature teenager who developed an infatuation for me, but I admit I wrongly played her game with some of my texts and I shouldn’t have been distracted by her adolescent folly.”
THE HOTEL ROOM
It all started to unravel in 2011 when the schoolgirl was 17 and a video was leaked of Nixon on a bed in her hotel room.
But how he got there and what he was doing has remained a mystery.
Nixon himself admits there are only two people in the world who will ever know the truth.
There were reports Nixon did drugs and had sex with the schoolgirl at the Causeway 353 hotel in Melbourne’s CBD.
The schoolgirl said she did have sex with him and took a lie-detector test on the Sunday Night program, which found she was telling the truth.
But Nixon has refuted the claims in his book and said while there’s no denying he was filmed on a hotel bed in his underpants, there was no proof in the video he was having sex or taking drugs.
Nixon claims in his book he went to the hotel in February 2011 because he was worried about the schoolgirl.
“I was on my way to speak at a cricket luncheon at Sydenham in Melbourne’s outer north west when the girl rang,” Nixon wrote in his book.
“She was incoherent and was mumbling, so this time I didn’t hang up on her straight away. I remember driving around for a while deciding whether to go to her.
“I decided to drive to the city because I was concerned for her state of mind.”
Nixon said going to that hotel room was the worst decision of his life.
He said when he got there the schoolgirl offered him a drink and Nixon claims it was laced with GBH, a drug that can’t be tasted when mixed with fruit juice.
“Do I remember how I came to be in my underpants? No, and I don’t believe I had sex with the girl, and I don’t even think all the footage was taken at the hotel room that night.”
The schoolgirl denies she gave Nixon GBH and claimed Nixon took cocaine and offered her some during a drug-fuelled bender in the hotel.
THE AFTERMATH
Following the video and intense scrutiny, Nixon was on a bridge in London ready to jump.
He was done. His entire life had crumbled around him, his career and his family were gone.
Following his downward spiral, Nixon was admitted to rehab.
It was costly and he didn’t think it was something he could afford with his depleted bank accounts, but discovered his ex-wife Jude was secretly paying his health insurance, which would cover the cost.
“Without my beautiful ex-wife Jude there is no doubt I would be dead,” he said.
The schoolgirl is now keeping well out of the spotlight and says she just wants to move on with her life.
Nixon said in his book his life was now on the right track.
“So what have I learnt? We all live in a make believe house. Very few of us sit in the dining room all our lives eating prawns and sipping champagne. At some stage we all enter the dark room out the back. Some of us end up in the dungeon of the dark room unable to find the exit door to happiness,” Nixon wrote.
“The first step is to understand yourself and what makes you tick. We all have strength and weaknesses.
“So, why do you need to understand yourself? Because the very traits that made me successful have also held me by the throat in the dungeon of that dark room.”
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