It’s two months since Rod Owen — the one-time prodigy at St Kilda — told his story about being sexually abused while playing Little League for St Kilda in the mid-1970s.

It’s been two months of frustration and despair about the lack of response from the greater media and from St Kilda and the AFL, and two months of utter distress as he learnt he was one of hundreds of kids who were raped, molested and abused by paedophiles under the auspices of the then VFL.

Think about that.

Hundreds of innocent boys, supposedly revelling in the joy of halftime Little League — today’s equivalent of Auskick — being abused, at the Saints at least, by a coach and a team manager for close to a decade.

It’s beyond comprehension — the trauma and the terror those kids experienced and how those same kids grew to become men and for some of them their lives have been overwhelmed with drug and alcohol issues and frail mental health.

Now, because of the courage of “Rocket’’ Owen, they are beginning to share their stories. Some of them don’t have the chance, for they are dead, and only now are family and friends understanding why their lives were a train wreck.

OWEN DIDN’T CARE IF HE LIVED OR DIED

Owens’ life was just that — a train wreck — from nine years of age until 2018, when, after failing a suicide attempt in his Port Melbourne apartment, he sought professional help.

Two months ago, he told his story to ABC journalist Russell Jackson. It was harrowing.

“I don’t want to bury St Kilda with this, but a person wants to write my life story and I’m going to be frank about everything from day one right through, because I want my children to know I wasn’t a waste of space, there were issues in my life that started with the St Kilda footy club,’’ Owen told the Herald Sun this week.

For 35 years, give or take, Owen, now 54, was a drug addict, an alcoholic and violent drunk.

In 2000, he spent nine months in jail for almost killing a man on Phillip Island after jokes were made about paedophilia. An incident occurred and Owen snapped.

“There were drugs and alcohol and it triggered something in me,’’ Owen said.

“I was going to kill him. I broke every bone in his head. How he lived is beyond me. I’m not too proud of that by any stretch of the imagination.’’

Not caring if he lived or died, Owen said he would often wander Port Melbourne’s Bay St at 4am and 5am with a knife in his pocket, ready to “slash or stab someone’’.

“It’s the insanity of the disease of addiction,’’ he said.

They are two of Owen’s stories. There are a thousand more. About the fights, the fury, the self-loathing and the self-destruction.

Asked about his drug of choice, he answered: “Everything.’’

Everything to mask the pain.

“I’ve never put a needle in my arm, the doctors did enough of that for me,” he said

Sipping a strong latte with honey in a Bay St bakery, Owen could be a character from a Quentin Tarantino movie.

His narrative dances from shock to horror and from near death to salvation.

It’s been two years, eight months and 13 days since he’s had a taste of alcohol, a puff of a joint or a nose full of narcotics.

It’s the uplifting chapter in a tragic life.

“For so long, it was poor me and self-pity,’’ he says.

“Until I got into recovery, the signs I showed were exactly self-centredness, self-obsession, self-pity … it was part of my life.

“I just don’t want this to be about my story, I want help for the kids who had it worse than me.

“I got fondled. But there’s kids who got penetrated, got raped. How did it happen? Where were all the people?

“After my story came out, I had one guy ring me and he was crying on the phone.

“He said he had lived up the street from me in Beaumaris. He said, ‘I just want to thank you for the courage you’re showing. I’m reading your article and I’m crying and my wife just asked me why I’m crying and I told her, ‘Read this, this is what happened to me’.’ Thirty years he’s been married and he’d never told her.

“You know, Moorabbin, Beaumaris, East Sandringham … It’s a paedophile ring we’ve uncovered.

“It goes deeper and deeper and we’re uncovering more, and more people are coming out.’’

THE HARROWING DETAILS OF OWEN’S EXPERIENCE

IN May this year, Jackson’s story revealed Owen was sexually molested by former Beaumaris primary school librarian and sports coach Darrell Ray at the school in 1976, and by a St Kilda life member, the late Albert Briggs, in the MCG change rooms the same year.

Briggs was the manager of the Saints Little League team, and Ray was its coach that year.

“At the footy, dads would drink from the Esky and the kids would go off into the rooms to get changed,” he said.

“They trusted people. It was a different environment back then.”

The school incident detailed how Ray molested Owen in between school photo shoots.

At the MCG, Owen said he was fondled by Briggs and remembers another time, when getting a ride home with Briggs, that Briggs exposed himself and touched Owen’s genitals.

There are other stories, too.

Jackson reported that in 2001, Ray pleaded guilty to 27 counts of indecently assaulting 19 boys at Beaumaris Primary School, and that Briggs had managed the Saints Little League from at least 1969 until 1980.

Owen played 52 games of Little League.

Clearly, Owen’s life was trauma-filled well before Owen made his senior debut for St Kilda as a 16-year-old in Round 1, 1983, the same year Tony Lockett made his debut.

The sexual molestation was compounded by the death of his father, Graeme, in January of 1983.

“When my old man died, my heart got ripped out and there was no counselling back then,’’ Owen said.

“If I saw a counsellor about dad’s death and about the sexual abuse, I would’ve been called a weak bastard, ‘come on, get up, brush yourself off and keep going’.

“And that’s the way it was. There was no help out there, there was nothing.’’

Owen left school in Year 10 and arrived at the Saints a budding superstar and immediately was thrust into a life of money, drinking and partying.

Years later, the Saints would concede they failed Owen during his time at the club.

The star shone brightly – but briefly.

Injuries hit, an Achilles in his first year and a knee reconstruction in his second year, and this prodigious talent was never the same player again.

In the end, he played 78 games at three clubs and retired.

Throughout, Owen was considered a wasted talent.

For much longer, he was considered a party animal. And he was. The drugs and drink were the bedfellows to his inner turmoil.

As Owen lurched in and out of crisis, Briggs meanwhile was awarded life membership of St Kilda.

It was stripped off him after Owen’s recent revelations, and off another paedophile who was also a life member at the club.

But it took the club eight weeks to do it, which Owen found distressing.

WHY THE AFL RESPONSE ANGERED OWEN

AFTER his ABC story, Owen was disappointed with St Kilda’s apology and the AFL’s response, although he says he has had counselling sessions with AFLPA psychologist Matt McGregor.

Owen said his last meeting with the Saints, with chief executive Matt Finnis, was the fourth time he had spoken to the club about getting help.

The first time was in 1996 or 1997.

In 2001, former president Rod Butterss visited him in jail.

More recently, there was a meeting with Simon Lethlean.

Even more recent was the meeting with Finnis.

So, what do you want?

“Why can’t they put their hand up, Gillon McLachlan, and say we weren’t there, what happened was disgraceful, we fill fix it,” Owen said.

“But, no, they want to sweep it under the carpet like it never happened. And they have that R U OK day, what a rort that is.’’

A lawsuit is being prepared.

“I want those boys who have been affected to come out,’’ Owen said. “They can email me at owenrod64@gmail.com

“I looked death in the eyes and now I just want to do what’s right for all the kids who went through what I did and get them the support they need.

“If it’s financial security for them, which they deserve, well and good, but also they need to be able to live their lives.

“This is for other people to come forward, for justice …’’’

He pauses.

“I really find it hard to let go of my anger when I talk like this.

“These blokes have f …. ed so many lives around Beaumaris growing up and now I’m talking to kids who I played Little League with who I haven’t spoken to for 30-40 years and they’re relating their stories to me.

“Why didn’t we say anything? We were seen and not heard.

“Imagine me, at 16, telling my story and then running out on to Victoria Park? Could you imagine the abuse from over the fence? I can.’’

Owen was insulted when it was suggested people would think this was a shakedown for money.

“They’re obviously twisted people who think that,’’ he said.

“I went to recovery because I wanted to show my kids their old man has got values, he wanted his kids to grow up knowing their old man loved them.

“I showed my kids the worst I could be. Now, I want to show them the best I can be.’’

INSIDE OWEN’S LIFE AFTER REHAB

OWEN began in rehab on October 25, 2018.

By then his marriage to wife Susan was well over. They were together for 17 years.

“She’s a great mother, we had two great girls. She had to put up with a lot, you’ve got no idea. It was insanity,’’ he said.

Asked if he was violent at home, he said: “I’ve never hit a woman.’’

That was saved for the streets and pubs.

“I hated authority. These people took my innocence. They f …. ed my life. They were supposed to be trusted,” he said.

“I hated bouncers, I hated coppers, I hated anyone in authority.”

His girls are Layla, now 21, and Zoe, 19.

He lost Layla for a period of time, but she is back in his life.

“It’s amazing when you have kids you never think you’re going to lose them, but yeah, but to lose the respect of your daughter is devastating,” he said.

“To change my lifestyle and my habits and realise I was an addict, to have her back is amazing.’’

Rehab has introduced him to transcendental meditation and spiritual learning, which has changed his life and, he hopes, his narrative.

“What you learn when you get counselling is you live with fear,’’ he said.

“My whole life was full of fear and silence. Fear of telling people and thinking what they’d think. Now it’s come out, I’m not fearful. I wish I had done this years ago.”

He told his girls about what had happened to him when he was a nine-year-old boy.

“My kids wouldn’t have known,’’ he said.

“They would’ve been told your father had all the skill in the world, but he was drunk, he was a bum.’’

He said he wrestled with his addictions every day.

“I’ve still got bad addictions,’’ he said.

“I still have a punt, coffee, chocolate, lawn bowls, everything has got to be all or nothing.’’

Lawn bowls?

“Yeah, there are good addictions.’’

Now with partner Kylie, also a recovering addict, he said life was all right.

“We’re two lost souls living in a fish bowl,’’ he said, borrowing a line from a Pink Floyd classic.

He tries to maintain daily rituals.

He swims in the bay as much as he can, he’s had cold showers for a year and a half, he meditates twice a day and reads books.

“Life has changed dramatically,’’ he said.

“I’ve learnt that as long as I don’t pick up a drink or a drug I’m miles ahead of where I was.’’