A rugby league player has once again been found guilty in another trial by media, writes Jesse Fink.
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Here we go again. The zeal with which the media rushed to condemn Greg Inglis, even before he appeared in Sunshine Magistrates' Court this morning to face charges of unlawful assault and recklessly causing injury, has faint echoes of the
Matthew Johns scandal that gripped the country a few months ago. Everyone got their pound of flesh and left the poor bastard as good as dead before all the facts had emerged in the story (and those that had been conveniently left out).
Johns has since,
in my view, been vindicated and arguably is more popular than he ever was (attested to by the phenomenon of Johns support groups on Facebook) but he will forever be a changed man for his experience. Arch-feminists will say good, he had it coming, as does every man who puts himself in the same position Johns was in back in that Christchurch hotel room in 2002, but that is their opinion. Just as mine is he didn't deserve the treatment he got.
In Inglis's case, Fairfax has already intimated it thinks he's done wrong, doing a story on footballers' partners who "
stand by their man" in the face of abuse.
Inglis's girlfriend, Sally Robinson, may or may not be telling the truth about having had botox injections to explain the bruising on her face, but that is something the courts are there to test, not
Roy Masters, who has already declared "the code's best player has given his partner
a black eye".
Really, Mr Masters? Were you there? Has Inglis admitted his guilt? Did Robinson report it to police? (For the record, she did not; rather she cooperated with officers who attended the scene after neighbours concerned by the noise of a domestic disturbance at the InglisRobinson residence called 000. Robinson provided a statement saying she was "pushed" in the face.)
We can tutter, we can decry, we can feel anger and revulsion, but until such time as all the facts of the case are heard and tested in court, all we are doing is wildly speculating.
We don't know what happened inside Inglis's and Robinson's Altona Meadows home last Sunday morning. We don't know what the circumstances were around the alleged incident. We don't know if there was provocation. How much alcohol was a factor. If there was intent or what is alleged to have taken place was an accident. We don't know jack.
So why, yet again, when we all should have all learned some lessons from the disgraceful way Johns was hung, drawn and quartered on the basis of a shoddy
Four Corners report on the ABC, are we threatening to make the same mistakes with Inglis?
It is not time for summary judgments on his guilt or kneejerk reactions, such as the
ridiculous suggestion by the Queensland Association of State School Principals that rugby league could be dumped as a school sport.
It is time to give him what every citizen of this country facing a criminal charge is entitled: the presumption of innocence.
Inglis's next court appearance is on August 26. So let's all take in a deep breath and let the justice system do its work. Gossip is not and will never be its surrogate.
