Seven just gave a TV job to a high-profile convicted stalker. Women deserve better

Earlier this month, it was announced that former AFL player Ben Cousins will join the Seven Network’s commentary team. For every Fremantle and West Coast home game on Sunday this year, he’ll be broadcasting alongside three other former players. This comes after the recent news of his permanent breakfast radio role on Mix 94.5 in Perth, his 2024 stint on Seven’s Dancing with the Stars, and his 2023 appointment as a 7News Perth sports reporter.

Former Eagles star Ben Cousins after being arrested in 2020. Credit: Nine News Perth

He’s got a diversified media career, which many would argue is fair, given his 12 years of on-field excellence. Cousins was a club captain, he won a premiership and he was awarded the Brownlow Medal. He probably would’ve been admitted into the AFL Hall of Fame by now, had he not been arrested, charged, and jailed for a number of criminal offences over the past 20 years. The Hall of Fame, it appears, doesn’t want the game to be brought into disrepute. The Seven Network isn’t so concerned.

Each time Cousins emerges with a new media opportunity, there are references to his “troubled years”. We’re reminded that he was a “wild man”, that he’s “back on track” after a “fall from grace”.

Cousins’ struggle with drug addiction has been widely reported, including in the 2010 documentary, Such Is Life: The Troubled Times of Ben Cousins. The Seven Network paid six figures for the rights to the film. Cousins, however, continued to have run-ins with the law because of drug use and possession. He was arrested three times in two weeks in 2015. In 2020, the Seven Network aired an interview with Cousins about his battle with addiction, which he was paid for. Later that year, he made headlines again when he was arrested for alleged drug possession.

I have a lot of empathy for the emotional pain a person is experiencing while they’re in the throes of a drug addiction, and the cascading effects of substance use on a person’s mental health and behaviour. I also believe that those who have experienced addiction should be given as many chances as it takes, as much support as it takes, to recover.

What makes Cousins’ media career more complicated, however, is another element of his criminal history. In 2017, he was charged with – in addition to offences relating to drugs – aggravated stalking of his domestic partner. He was given a 12-month prison sentence. A magistrate said his former partner and the mother of his children was subjected to “nine months of terror”. The court heard he tried to contact her up to 103 times a day for months and that he breached an apprehended violence restraining order. Cousins’ behaviour, as revealed in court, towards his former partner and his children was harrowing.

In 2020, he was jailed again, for seven months, for stalking his former partner. And yet, in a lot of reporting around the former sports star’s past, the details about his time in prison for aggravated stalking appear almost buried. Those crimes are mentioned after his issues with substance abuse, or are linked directly to it, as if to minimise his culpability. The seriousness of harming a woman, it seems, comes second to the harm a man may have done to himself.

I’m far less concerned about whether the person on my television screen has abused drugs, and far more concerned about whether they’ve abused another human being.

Here’s another story, for comparison.

In 2021, Georgia Love shared a post on Instagram of a cat inside a Chinese restaurant, with the caption, “shop attendant or lunch?”. She deleted it five minutes later, after she said she realised it was offensive, and she publicly apologised. At the time, Channel Seven said it was investigating the incident, and later that week, Love was taken off-air.

Georgia Love in 2022, after being taken off air by Channel Seven. Credit: Getty Images

In a statement, the Seven Network said: “We have addressed this matter internally and disciplinary action has been taken. Seven does not condone this inappropriate conduct and all of our staff have the right to work in a safe, nurturing workplace free from prejudice.”

Love was moved to the production desk, before eventually leaving her role. She has not returned to the Seven Network.

Culturally, we seem to be able to fold men’s mistakes into our nuanced, multifaceted understanding of who they are as people. We don’t give the same grace to women – not even when they haven’t committed a crime at all, but simply posted something tone-deaf on Instagram.

When Cousins appears on our screens, we’re being asked to entertain his redemption arc – an arc I think he deserves. But can it not come in the form of grassroots work with your local community, the likes of which Cousins is already engaged in? Can it not come in the form of quiet, private acts, rather than sports broadcasting on a major commercial network?

This is, as a side note, the same network that paid rapist Bruce Lehrmann’s rent for a year. The same network that employed Ben Roberts-Smith as general manager of Seven Brisbane for five years after The Age and the Herald reported that he had murdered unarmed civilians while serving in the military in Afghanistan. Instead of firing the war criminal, Seven funded his defamation case against the newspapers.

It seems bizarre, frankly, that it was Georgia Love’s behaviour that was publicly declared as “inappropriate”, in the context of staff deserving a “safe” place to work.

Some AFL fans have expressed anger in response to Cousins’ new role.

“I’m all for someone turning their life around, but for a known DV offender … I think it’s for the best they do it out of the public eye,” one said.

“If you are convicted of stalking, I don’t want you beaming at me talking about errant hand passes,” said another.

But shouldn’t AFL fans have a say in who is commentating a sport played by over half a million young people in Australia? Kids who might wonder who those familiar voices are, booming over a game more and more girls are becoming involved in? Girls who hopefully won’t grow up to be stalked by the father of their children?

No doubt Ben Cousins will settle into his new role and we’ll all move on, waiting for the next media frenzy about a bad social media post or a person who makes the kind of mistake we prosecute online because it’s not serious enough for a courtroom.

I just feel for the women – like Cousins’ former partner – who are living with the lifelong impacts of men’s abuse, having to watch him on television. Or having to read the news about the latest phase of his very public, very decorated redemption arc, which was – it’s worth mentioning – published on the weekend of International Women’s Day. Or having to see that the harm he did to you, the harm he went to prison for twice, is worth only a brief mention in the media story of his “troubled, wild” past.

Clare Stephens is a Sydney-based digital content creator, screenwriter, editor and podcaster.

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