by Anna Krien
The public idea of a rapist is, it seems, that of a twisted loner, most likely a male with an underlying mental illness, who seeks out his victims with the full intention of raping them. Popular footballers most certainly do not fit this category – and in spite of it making them extremely slippery to prosecute, that is a good thing. After all, the lone rapist shows little sign of changing. He has no culture, no friends and no support – and all of this makes him easier to convict, but it also makes him unanswerable. Society gave up on him, and he on society, a long time ago.
Players, however, who tread the grey zone of rape and treating women badly, can be made accountable. More than managed, they can be changed, if their codes make it so, if their clubs quit covering up and if the world of football stops being a sanctuary for tired old sentiments such as ‘boys will be boys’ and instead becomes a sanctuary for boys who not only want to play good football but also become good men in the process.
But now? For everything that Justin and his mates had been through, I couldn’t say I detected a nuanced understanding of what had happened in the wee hours of the morning after the grand final, let alone any humility. Justin told me that he and his friends – including Dayne Beams – had changed since his rape charges. ‘No more one-night stands,’ he said. ‘Not unless it involves a contract.’ But was this indicative of true change? Sure, they might be more wary, but was it because they had reconsidered or simply had their beliefs about certain types of females affirmed? To them, Sarah is a liar, a bitch and a slut. And the disrespect and inhumanity with which they treated her and thought of her is one quality they may find themselves sharing with the lone rapist. Malice, after all, can be built on ignorance.
Court, it seems, is not where progress is made. It’s just where things end up.
*
The jury was almost ready to deliberate on Justin’s fate. They were gathered before the judge one last time to receive his instructions before disappearing into the back room. Judge Taft outlined the charges. The central issue, he said, was whether Sarah did not consent and whether Justin was aware of her not consenting.
Each charge must be established beyond reasonable doubt – and the elements of each charge that must be proved are that Dyer sexually penetrated Wesley in the alleged way, that he did this intentionally, that Wesley did not consent, and that Dyer was aware that she was not consenting.
If you believe there is a possibility that Dyer believed Wesley was consenting, then the prosecution has failed in proving that element.
Consent, he said, means free agreement. Sarah Wesley says she did not consent and clearly conveyed that.
Taft reiterated the importance of ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’ ‘Even if you think Mr Dyer is not telling the truth in his police interview,’ he said, ‘you put that aside and ask, is Sarah’s evidence honest, accurate, reliable?’
The jury members left to begin their deliberations. It was 11 a.m. on a Tuesday. It was twelve days from when they had been selected. Twelve days since they had first encountered Sarah and Justin. Now they had to decide what to do with them.
*
It’s a long wait.
The kind of wait where you imagine every possible scenario, where each outcome is weighed, held to the light and checked underneath for markings, a sign of some sort.
I sit outside, with Justin and his family mostly, all day.
It’s the kind of wait that clocks can’t measure and yet when it hits 4.30 p.m., and the lights inside the locked courtroom go off, we stand and go home.
It’s exhausting, this waiting.
In the morning, everyone is already there when I arrive. No one has heard anything.
The Dyer family sits, empty seats staggered between them, each alone with their thoughts. Justin’s father, I learn, who has been on chemotherapy during the trial, has been taken to hospital in Queensland with chest pains.
Carol holds her phone close. He has been put on oxygen, she tells me.
The hours continue to pass, each one feeling like a drip slowly developing on a tap before pulling away and falling to the ground. Vanessa sits on her hands, rocking slightly. She says that last night she lay with Justin and wondered if it was for the final time.
Lunch comes and goes. Malcolm Thomas’s confidence, his smooth swimming-pool surface, seems to crack a little – tiny waves of worry lapping. He begins to talk to Justin about jails, that the jail closest to his family on the Gold Coast is known for its violence and instability, that it’s not an option he should consider applying for. He is told to expect about three years if they convict him.
Justin is pale and quiet. He goes to the toilet.
Then, abruptly, the journalists appear. The verdict is in.
And when the tipstaff unlocks the courtroom door, it’s as if she is unlocking time. Justin stands up, but doesn’t move. I wonder if he has to tell his legs to move, as if he is on a precipice and suddenly he wants to stay out here, in the dead space of this long wait. I hold my breath, watching him.
Finally, he moves. He enters the court and walks toward the dock.
EPILOGUE
‘I’m already sick of it,’ said my neighbour when I said footy season was about to start, aware he was an avid AFL fan. We had stopped to commune over our green bins and his face soured at the mention of the game. Even in the off-season, he growled, football didn’t stop. It was at the height of the St Kilda Schoolgirl affair, the media seemingly unable to focus on anything else, but his discontent was not solely the handiwork of an angry teenager. It was the belief that footy is more than just a game that annoyed him.
In 2010, the then Carlton captain, Chris Judd, won the Brownlow Medal. Known as an all-round good guy, he looked uncomfortable as he accepted AFL’s highest honour at the televised black-tie and ball-gown affair. Standing on a podium, he answered questions from the event’s host with the usual ‘not really saying anything’ air of a role-model footballer – but then he did something different.
‘I think footballers and Brownlow medallists get put up on pedestals,’ he said in response to the host’s question of what it meant to win a Brownlow. ‘Football, if you like, is sort of make-believe, it’s like a self-indulgent pastime where you go out each week and announce to the football public the type of person you and your mates are. It’s not real.’
Struggling to articulate himself, Judd clung to the oft-used example of the late Jim Stynes, a former player, then a club president, a philanthropist and youth worker, as doing valid work in the real world. When Judd paused, the room erupted into applause. But it felt like a smother. The host quickly moved on: ‘You touched on it earlier, how tough was it to leave the West Coast Eagles?’
*
I need to swim laps every week. I need to run. Playing basketball is one of my greatest pleasures. This book is not anti-sport. ‘Jock culture is a distortion of sports,’ the American author and sports journalist Robert Lipsyte once noted, warning that America was in danger of finding its values in the locker room. It’s not the game, the pleasure of play, that’s dangerous. It’s the piss stains in the grass, the markings of men who use sport as power and the people – teammates, fans, coaches, clubs, doctors, police, journalists, groupies – who let them do whatever they want.
Of course, this is not to say that all footballers are the same. But you don’t have to look too far afield to see that there is a problem here – one that has the potential to become far more ugly if left unchecked.
In 2004, Lipsyte suggested at an American Psychiatric Association general meeting that ‘psychiatry has not taken enough interest in jock culture as a window into other American pathologies.’ By dismissing sport ‘as all fun and games,’ he said, analysts were ignoring ‘the values of the arena and the locker room [which] have been imposed on our national life.’
*
Later, after the trial, I arr
anged to meet Justin at a shopping centre in the eastern suburbs. He had flown down from the Gold Coast to see his girlfriend. I waited outside one wintry morning for him to show up. He arrived with Vanessa, wearing thongs, jeans, a jumper and a beanie. ‘He didn’t bring any proper shoes with him,’ his girlfriend said, laughing, pointing at his blue toes. ‘He’s already forgotten what it’s like down here.’
At a café, we sat outside behind a clear plastic tarp and under the heaters. I asked him how he felt and he smiled: ‘Better, so much better.’ He confided that he had been suicidal after the charges were laid, that he had thought about driving his car fast and smashing it into a tree. ‘Now, I wake up in the morning and remember that it’s over. It’s such a relief.’
When I asked if he and his footy friends talked trash about women when they hung out, he shook his head. ‘No.’
Vanessa laughed and picked up Justin’s hand. ‘Yes, you do,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’ Justin asked her, looking surprised.
‘I’ve heard you guys when you’re all together. You say horrible things about chicks.’
Justin looked at her wide-eyed, then back at me. He shrugged. ‘Maybe we do, but I guess ’cause I’m in it, I don’t hear it like that.’
‘So, what happened that night?’ I wanted to know. ‘In the bedroom. What happened?’
Justin sighed. ‘It was stupid, really.’ Vanessa leaned forward to listen.
‘I walked up the stairs and got to the bedroom where there was stuff going on.’ Someone opened the door and Justin walked in.
‘And then the door shut behind me. It was dark and it was just Beams and the girl on the bed. I was like, what? Then Beams yelled at me to “Get out” and the door opened and McCarthy ran in. He turned the lights on, was saying, “Where’s my tie?” They wanted to go to Tram nightclub and you need to wear a tie to get in. She was just in the bed and didn’t seem to mind everyone, her boobs were showing, she didn’t pull up the cover or anything.’
‘Three of the guys had been with her,’ said Justin. ‘She got dressed and I struck up a conversation with her on the stairs, asked her how she was getting home. She said she was walking home, it was a strange thing’ – Justin looked at me, shaking his head – ‘but I thought, imagine if something happens to her.’
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Night Games was far from a solo effort. I could not have written this book without the brave in-depth reporting of frontline journalists such as Sarah Ferguson, Ticky Fullerton, Jacquelin Magnay and Jessica Halloran. The same goes for the documentary-makers Rebecca Barry and Michaela Perske of Footy Chicks and Miriam Cannell of Game Girls.
A huge thank you to the Literature Board at the Australia Council for the Arts, whose generous Book2 Grant meant I was able to write Night Games without having to waitress a few nights a week. The only problem is that I’ve gotten used to this rather nice way of living – how do I go back to my old life?! Thanks also to Griffith REVIEW for giving me the Emerging Writers Prize, which included a week’s residency at the wonderful Varuna.
The number of hands on deck for Night Games was outstanding.
No word went unturned, thanks to my team of readers: Sarala Fitzgerald, Julie Clayton, Sophy Williams, Bridget Costelloe, Erik Jensen, Peter Krien, Nick Feik, Sacha Krien and Tom McGuigan.
At my beloved stable, Black Inc., thanks to editor Nikki Lusk for her eagle eye and designer Peter Long for the striking cover. Also to my good friend and publicist Elisabeth Young – I’m so lucky to have you in my corner.
And of course, Chris Feik, my editor and right-hand man. You make me sound a hell of a lot smarter than I am.
Thanks also to Black Inc.’s lawyer, Geoff Gibson, whose sound advice and steady hand saw us skirt all manner of terrible scenarios.
Which brings me to the book’s darkest hour, a difficult time in which I can’t thank Helen Garner, Scott Spark and my honorary husband Benjamin Law enough for their support and solidarity.
And there’s more.
In the middle of writing this book, I had a baby. Warmest thanks to my family and friends for helping juggle the little fella while I typed madly, in particular the beautiful Lesly Carbonell and my mother, Elisabeth Krien. Thanks also to my darling friend Romy Ash for organising a dinner roster in the first couple of weeks.
Thanks to my main man, Emilio, who held me up when all I wanted to do was fold and had to put up with me reading gloomy titles such as The History of Rape in bed at night. That was fun, wasn’t it, honey?
And finally, my thanks to the people whose voices are in this book – be it on the page or behind the scenes. There are too many of you to thank individually, but you know who you are. People who spoke to me on and off the record, who trusted me, who told me things I didn’t know and who helped clarify my thoughts – people who shared their wisdom, insights and contacts. Thank you.