Paula Doneman
May 17, 2009 12:00am
THE WOMAN at the centre of a sex scandal involving three Broncos in a nightclub toilet last year has revealed the speed at which the situation got out of control and the anguish she has since endured.
"After a few kisses, things went drastically wrong," she said, speaking for the first time about what happened at the Alhambra Lounge nightclub in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley on September 13.
The incident led police to question Broncos Karmichael Hunt, Sam Thaiday and Darius Boyd (who now plays for St George Illawarra) as part of a six-week investigation.
Police said the players said they had consensual sex with the woman.
She alleged to police that she was sexually assaulted.
No charges were laid after the investigation and evidence which included video taken on a mobile telephone was independently reviewed by barrister Tim Carmody SC.
While the three men continue to play top-level football, the 24-year-old feels she has become a forgotten victim in a sexual-attitudes crisis that has engulfed top-level rugby league.
The woman said she had not seen an ABC TV Four Corners report on Monday that suggested a culture of extreme sexual promiscuity existed among some players within the code. But she has watched reports in recent days about TV personality and former Cronulla player Matthew Johns, whose career is in ruins after he admitted involvement in a group-sex incident after a 2002 football game in New Zealand.
The woman said she had decided to speak publicly for the first time because those reports had prompted her to wonder what the Broncos players she met were thinking over the past week.
The well-spoken, hardworking professional woman, who is a petite 160cm and 60kg, said she felt degraded and discarded.
She has worked with a psychologist to get her life back on track, but said the encounter which she refers to as The Incident follows her around like a "dark cloud".
She said: "The case (police investigation) has been closed, so it's history. But it's not history . . . I will never forget. I'm still functioning and my life is not over by any means, but I will never ever forget this.
"Whenever I think (about it), I just want to spit, it's just disgusting, absolute disgusting."
Before that night, the woman said, she had a healthy self-esteem.
Now, she said, she has trouble looking in the mirror because all she feels is "dirty".
She did not go out for almost three months after the incident.
"When I did go out I kept my sunglasses on. I just felt people knew it was me. I felt like I had a tattoo across my forehead which said (what had happened)."
And she now despises the game she previously loved to watch.
"I feel sick when I change the channel to Nine and it's football," she said. "Part of me is jealous that I don't feel that love or excitement any more for football . . . or do things like the footy tips."
The woman says she clearly remembers the events that led to her meeting the Broncos trio. She had been with two long-time female friends, both in their early 20s, for several hours at the Valley Fiesta.
She had been drinking and estimates she was probably over the legal driving limit (.05) but felt in control.
They first went to the Mustang Bar where they saw Thaiday talking to other patrons.
"It was excitement for us to see a footballer and I was a (Broncos) fan," she said.
She said Thaiday soon left, telling them they would have to find out which nightclub he was going to next.
When the three women walked into the Alhambra Lounge about 8pm, they were the only females there.
She said she went to the bar with one of her girlfriends to buy a drink and exchanged eye contact with Hunt.
"I think he shouted something along the lines of 'Hey, good looking' or 'Hey, sexy'. I went over to him . . . he took my hand," she said.
The woman said she eventually accompanied Hunt to a cubicle in the men's toilet. She said she felt safe. "Yeah, I was (starstruck) . . . I was thinking, '
Oh, my God, I have got Karmichael Hunt in a toilet cubicle.'
"After a few kisses, things went drastically wrong."
She said that in a "blink of an eye" Thaiday and Boyd were also in the cubicle.
"That was when The Incident happened," she said.
Mobile telephones belonging to several Bronco players at the nightclub that evening were seized as part of the police investigation.
The woman said she was not aware, until told by police, that the incident might have been filmed, but she suspected a photograph had been taken.
"I looked up and there was someone standing on a toilet seat (in the next cubicle) and they had a phone. My immediate reaction was a photo had been taken," she said.
Soon after, she left the cubicle and returned to the main area in the nightclub looking for one of her friends. She said she at first declined to reveal to the friend what had happened.
She eventually told her and said she had to leave the nightclub immediately.
"We left and I remember saying to my friend, 'I need to run' . . . and I bolted, I was gone," she said.
The friend followed her and calmed her down. They went back to the Mustang Bar, where they had a cigarette before getting a taxi home.
"I don't think we talked the whole way in the cab. I think we were both inconsolable and in absolute shock. We came back (home) and that's when it really hit me," she said.
The woman said she began crying inconsolably and ran out of her house before collapsing in a neighbour's yard. A family friend contacted police. By then, it was less than two hours after the toilet encounter.
She was taken by police to hospital and was interviewed the next day.
"I was still running on empty, I had no sleep. It was very hard . . . just having to relive everything," she said.
She and her family at first monitored the news reports, but it quickly became too much for them to handle and they stopped reading and watching anything about it.
She said she was angered by the club's decision not to stand down the three players pending the outcome of the police investigation.
On November 10, police announced no charges would be laid over the matter, citing "insufficient evidence".
She said she cried when police telephoned her.
Deputy Police Commissioner Ian Stewart later said it was unlikely the investigation would ever be revisited.
"This has been quite a rigorous investigation. I would suggest that the findings as they now stand will remain, unless something quite dramatic was to come to light," he said.
The players never publicly commented on the incident. The day after police concluded their investigation, the three were each fined $20,000 by the Broncos for a breach of the club's code of conduct by bringing the club and game into disrepute, Broncos chief executive Bruno Cullen said.
Last night, a Broncos spokesman said: "The club accepted the police version of events and from that we believe we disciplined the players appropriately." The players' managers declined to comment.
The woman said she has had no contact with the players or the club. She said she was angry when the three men did a television interview after the police announcement and apologised to their families and fans: "I was royally pissed off when they apologised to everyone but me."
She also despises the superstar status the men returned to after the controversy. All three are first grade regulars and, since the nightclub encounter, Hunt and Boyd have been picked in Australian teams.
"I was so frustrated, angry, I still am . . . if you take away who they are, they are just three men," she said.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25494239-952,00.html
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