Club investigates after ‘funny’ chat on FaceTime turned explicit
THE Rabbitohs are investigating a young woman’s claims that a Facebook video chat with several high-profile players turned lewd without her consent — with two stars exposing their private parts.
A club spokesman yesterday confirmed the 23-year-old sent an email the day after the May 26 incident, revealing how a “funny” FaceTime chat “with the group of boys” turned explicit and left her “violated and disgusted”.
The players had been celebrating the team’s win in Auckland against the Warriors. In screenshots taken by the girl and seen by The Daily Telegraph, one of the players pulls his pants down to show off his genitals while in another a player bares his backside to the woman.
The woman made contact with one of the players through Instagram.
She says phone records show one player repeatedly called her, even after she had made it clear she wanted to be left alone.
Several of the club’s biggest names are involved in the videochat. The Daily Telegraph has chosen not to name the players or publish the screenshots.
The woman contacted The Daily Telegraph after she said repeated follow-up emails to the club demanding action had gone unanswered.
After questions from The Daily Telegraph, a Rabbitohs spokesman confirmed that the woman’s initial email was received by the club’s football operations manager Brock Schafer on June 1.
In that email, seen by The Daily Telegraph, Mr Schafer assures the woman the matter was being taken “seriously” and the club “will work to understand what has occurred”. However subsequent emails from the woman on June 5 and August 31 were never responded to.
“I feel quite disappointed that my email has not been responded too (sic) since a few months ago,” she wrote in August.
“I find it disgusting how these boys think they can get away with this crap.”
A spokesman said the club had late yesterday hired an “independent contractor” to trawl through emails to verify if the woman had sent follow-up emails. He said this contractor could “confirm” that these emails were not answered because they “were tagged as spam”.
“As per the system junk email policy these emails were subsequently routed to a junk mail folder,” he said.
The club would not answer detailed questions from The Daily Telegraph about the claims of player misbehaviour.
South Sydney Rabbitohs chief executive Blake Solly last night said that now it had been proven that the woman had repeatedly “tried to reach out” they would make contact with her today.
“We are proud of our position on the Code of Conduct and if someone has breached that we want to investigate it,” he said. “Now we have more information we can speak to the players in the morning (today).”
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/n...t/news-story/4a5d41c5f50c33e34667d0d8d28bb333