Football and Sexual Crime, from the Courtroom to the Newsroom

Transforming Narratives

Deb Waterhouse-Watson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030337049
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030337056
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Journalismus

This book interrogates the process of court reporting on rape and other sexual crime cases involving Australian footballers. At the intersection of sport, gender, media and the law, it uncovers the story behind rape myths and stereotypes in media. This book analyses newspaper reporting alongside transcripts of the trials they represent and interviews with the journalists themselves. Waterhouse-Watson's work maps structural factors within newsrooms, and the complex relationship between the judiciary and media, that affect the practice of court reporting. This book approaches key journalism concepts like objectivity and balance critically, illustrating the layers of mediation that surround a complainant's testimony; the way sport shapes the meaning of courtroom and media narratives in these cases; and the tension between racism and sexism when race is thematised or otherwise highlighted. Ultimately, the book proposes an ethics of court reporting that protects individual complainants, aswell as advancing public understandings of the crime.

© The Author(s) 2019

D. Waterhouse-WatsonFootball and Sexual Crime, from the Courtroom to the Newsroomhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33705-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Deb Waterhouse-Watson¹

(1)

Independent scholar, Melbourne, Australia

Deb Waterhouse-Watson

Email: [email protected]

#IBelieveHer

Keywords

JournalismRapeGenderNarrativeUlster rugbyMajak DawBlake FergusonAndrew LovettBrett StewartStephen Milne

End Abstract

It was Northern Ireland’s #MeToo moment: thousands took to social media in response to the acquittal of two international rugby stars for rape. In March 2018, after hearing nine weeks of evidence, a jury took less than four hours to acquit Ulster rugby union players Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding of raping a woman they met at a nightclub. Two other men, Blane McIlroy and Rory Harrison, were acquitted of exposure and attempting to pervert the course of justice respectively. The complainant—let’s call her ‘Moira’—had gone to Jackson’s house with the men and three other women whom she did not know. Moira said that she had kissed Jackson in his bedroom and prevented him from undoing her trousers, and after spending some time downstairs with the others, she put on her high heels and returned to the bedroom to get her handbag, intending to leave. She did not know whether Jackson followed her upstairs or was already in the room, but said that he pushed her onto the bed and raped her. According to Moira, Olding came in, undressed, and forced her head onto his penis, although she had clearly said ‘no’. McIlroy then entered the room, naked, demanding that she ‘fuck’ him, to which she replied, ‘How many times does it take for a girl to say no for it to sink in?’ (McKay 2018). She fled the house. Harrison helped her to get home and comforted her in a taxi as she sobbed.

The next day, the men boasted on WhatsApp about ‘spit-roasting a bird’, and ‘Belfast sluts’, sharing pornographic videos (see Beattie 2018 for a complete transcript). Moira texted friends that she ‘got raped by 3 Ulster fucking rugby scum brilliant fucking night’, telling them that she did not want to report it for fear she would not be believed. She had been bleeding profusely, and a rape exam showed a significant vaginal tear. Immediately after Moira texted Harrison that ‘what happened was not consensual’, and he replied ‘Jesus. I don’t know what to say’, Harrison texted McIlroy: ‘mate the scenes last night were hilarious’. Several messages between the men were deleted and never recovered. Ulster rugby suspended Olding and Jackson for the duration of the trial, but, contrary to the popular myth that rape complaints ruin male athletes’ lives (addressed in Chapter 5), they both secured contracts with French clubs for the European summer of 2018. London Irish drafted Jackson in May 2019 (although not without controversy, as the club’s main sponsor Diageo withdrew their support).

Thousands of protestors took to the streets as well as Twitter , both during and after the trial, expressing frustration with the implicit misogyny in the men’s social media posts, the fact they left Moira bleeding and hysterical without showing any concern for her welfare, and the failure of the justice system to protect rape victims. The #IBelieveHer movement coalesced around a footballer case because of the unprecedented amount of coverage it received. Olding and Jackson were well-known in Belfast, as stars of one of Northern Ireland’s main men’s sports, and interest in the case was strong. The public galleries were full each day, but only a tiny fraction of the city’s population of around 626,760 (World Population Review 2019) could attend in person. A section had to be cordoned off to accommodate the influx of media (McKay 2018).

Of course, as is the case internationally, the media is the point of access to the courts for the overwhelming majority—they understand the courtroom events and the crimes that are prosecuted in them only through the stories told by journalists and their editors. This places a large amount of responsibility on journalists who cover the courts—court reporters,¹ as they are called in Australia—to give a fair and accurate view of the legal process and the justice system as well as an individual case. In the case of footballer rape, which attracts public interest worldwide and occurs with alarming frequency, media reporting can play a significant role in furthering public understandings of the crime through debate and raising awareness about sexual violence. The significant role that men’s football plays in the national imaginary of countries like Australia, New Zealand, the USA and the UK (not to mention most of Europe and South America) ensures that such cases will attract a high volume of media coverage. This means that cases like Ulster rugby can shine a spotlight on misogynist attitudes that are often rife in these sports, as even the men’s admitted behaviour showed a disregard for Moira’s welfare, and the humanity of women in general. However, these cases can also prominently feature rape myths , stereotypes and the victim-blaming strategies that defence lawyers employ in an attempt to create ‘reasonable doubt ’ in the minds of jurors, sometimes reinforcing these myths and stereotypes. Research shows that jurors’ judgements in rape trials are more strongly influenced by what they already believe about a sexual crime than what they hear in the courtroom, or how it is presented (Taylor 2007). Media reporting can have a profound influence on public adherence to such myths, which influences juries (who are drawn from the public after all) as well as widely held understandings of the crime. Renae Franiuk et al. (2008) found that participants who read news articles that reinforced rape myths were more likely to believe that an accused athlete was innocent, but conversely, participants exposed to media reporting that challenged rape myths were less likely to believe that the accused was innocent. This was true whether the article was about the specific rape case or a different one. Thus, as well as being fair to the accused, an ethical court reporter should endeavour to represent sexual violence in a way that is also fair to the complainant, and avoids endorsing myths and stereotypes.

Football and Sexual Crime in Australia

From 1998, media reports surfaced periodically of sexual crime involving players from Australia’s two main football leagues, the Australian Football League (AFL ) and the National Rugby League (NRL ). However, it was not until February 2004, when at least six players from the Canterbury Bulldogs rugby league team allegedly raped a woman at a Coffs Harbour swimming pool, that football and sexual crime became front-page news. Just a month later, in March 2004, St Kilda AFL players Stephen Milne and Leigh Montagna were investigated for rape. Although no charges were laid at the time, many began to publicly question the sexual culture around men’s football, and why such cases are so frequent. However, such questioning was not always constructive. While journalists like Jessica Halloran and Jacquelin Magnay continually drew attention to problematic sexual cultures and the tendency to dismiss or downplay rape complaints (e.g. Halloran and Magnay 2003, 2004), others put the blame squarely on women (e.g. Sheahan 2004).

Previous research has shown that gendered myths and stereotypes characterised media reporting on these earlier cases that did not reach court (Waterhouse-Watson 2013). There are similar findings of stereotyping in international cases such as the retrial of UK soccer player Ched Evans , convicted of rape in 2012 and acquitted at a retrial in 2016 (Royal 2019), and proceedings against US basketballer Kobe Bryant , against whom rape charges were dropped in 2004 (Franiuk et al. 2008, Franiuk, Seefelt and Vandello 2008); Bryant settled a civil suit out of court in 2005, on undisclosed terms (Johnson 2005). In the Australian cases 2004–2009, narrative and discourse analysis revealed that popular woman-blaming stereotypes were often evoked, including the ‘predatory woman ’, who hunts down footballers for sex ; the ‘woman scorned ’ who makes a false rape complaint out of revenge; the ‘gold digger ’ who makes a false complaint for money; and the ‘groupie ’, who wants to have sex with any and all footballers and therefore cannot be raped (Waterhouse-Watson 2013, 20–26). Grammatical constructions were also used repetitively to deflect blame for anything that occurs in relation to the cases away from footballers and onto women (Waterhouse-Watson 2009, 2012a, b, 2013), resulting in a ‘narrative immunity’ for footballers against being held accountable for rape. When the accused is a person of colour, racist stereotypes also typically feature in media reports (Moorti 2002; Lawrence 1999; Markovitz 2006).

Significantly, why these kinds of narratives are so prevalent has not been investigated, and it would be simplistic, unfair and defeatist to conclude that all such stereotyping occurs just because journalists are sexist and/or racist. Court reporters can only work with the source material provided in the courtroom and must abide by strict rules and legislation, as detailed in Chapter 2. But how do they transform that material—often several hours of arguments and evidence each day—into a 200-word story? What processes and practices do court reporters follow, and what factors within media organisations and the courts shape the stories that are told? Media reports follow different narrative conventions from the courtroom and will inevitably evoke different meanings from those a spectator who witnessed the proceedings, or a juror, might. Thus far little is known about the complex factors at work, and previous research has typically focused on the reporting itself without comparing it with any source material, or gaining the perspectives of those who produce such reports.

As this book shows, journalists are often navigating sexist and racist narratives that are presented in court, and a tension may arise between what might seem a fair and accurate representation of the case at hand, and a fair representation of sexual crime more broadly. Even journalists who endeavour to present an unbiased account may at times perpetuate myths or stereotypes about sexual violence through a range of factors, including...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Media and the Law, an Uneasy Relationship
• 3. The Ethics of Court Reporting: Storytelling in the Courtroom and Newsroom
• 4. (Re)Telling the Complainant’s Story
• 5. When Football Enters the Courtroom
• 6. The (In)Visibility of Race
• 7. Conclusion: Breaking the Cycle
• Back Matter