There appear to be no winners in the Hawthorn racism scandal, with the AFL announcing on Tuesday that there were no adverse findings against the three accused former staff members, Alastair Clarkson, Chris Fagan and Jason Burt. The First Nations complainants who were part of the process also agreed that no further investigation should occur.
There are likely to be subsequent actions, including Hawthorn being investigated for its botched handling of the initial investigation and claims lodged with the Australian Human Rights Commission (a process that would likely take years to resolve), but from the AFL’s perspective, the issue seems finalised.
Clarkson, Fagan and Burt were accused of the most grievous allegations, including the forced separation of families and compelling a pregnancy termination. The AFL’s investigation essentially exonerates them, but they will forever be tainted by the allegations.
Clarkson, former Hawthorn senior coach and the most high-profile accused, recently took indefinite leave from his coaching role at North Melbourne, citing a need to focus on his physical and emotional well-being. The First Nations players have received no financial compensation, though it’s too early to say whether they may receive something informally or through legal action. Nonetheless, they were forced to endure emotional hurt, pain and anguish, and would no doubt be questioning whether it was all worth it.
In a further bizarre twist, Burt last night claimed that two of the primary complainants, referred to as “Zac” and “Kylie”, were not Indigenous.
There was a very clear villain in this story though, and it wasn’t the Hawthorn coaches and certainly not the players. Rather, it was the media, led by (but far from exclusively) the ABC, which rushed to pronounce guilt. Making matters worse, Phil Egan — the author of the original damning report (which was intended originally as a welfare check and morphed into an “external review”) — was arrested in February for fraud offences relating to allegations of illegally obtaining funds from the Murray Valley Aboriginal Cooperative. Egan denies the claims.
The media pile-on was spurred by the ABC’s award-winning journalist Russell Jackson. Jackson’s article on September 21 last year broke the allegations that Clarkson, Fagan and Burt had allegedly “bullied and removed First Nations players from their homes and relocated them elsewhere” and “demand[ed] that one player should instruct his partner to terminate a pregnancy”.
Neither Egan nor Jackson spoke with the accused — though the ABC clarified that Jackson offered the accused an opportunity to respond before publication. Burt yesterday claimed that the Egan report “presented a selection of unproven and unreliable grievances and allegations which were not checked with me or many other Indigenous and non-Indigenous players”.
Despite the investigative and largely preliminary nature of the Egan report, the media — with only fig leaves of doubt — rushed to convict the coaches. Mark Robinson, New Corp’s chief football writer, wrote:
This story will sweep the globe, just as the Essendon supplement saga did. But this is much worse. That was about needles. This is about killing an unborn child, as the player described it. If true, the legacies of high-profile people will be destroyed forever.
Nine’s Caroline Wilson claimed:
The review, which both the club and key investigator Phil Egan believed would unearth a series of incidents that would lead to a Do Better-style term of reference going forward, has instead shaken the foundations of the game. The findings also blindsided the AFL, which has been privately critical of the review’s parameters and its alleged scatter-gun approach. And yet, say those who have known of the trauma largely buried by the families and who have supported them for some years, only the unusual mixture of blunt but sensitive questioning undertaken by Egan and his team could have led to this.
Crikey’s writers, characteristically, went even further, ignoring notions of evidence, presumption of innocence and natural justice. Bernard Keane accused the Hawthorn coaches of modern slavery, claiming:
What the ABC’s Russell Jackson has revealed in his stunning, sickening report on the treatment of Indigenous players at Hawthorn — including players being coerced and manipulated into severing contact with family and partners and in one case demanding a pregnancy be terminated — is akin to modern slavery, and incorporates elements of it.
Notwithstanding that Egan’s report never sought the views of the accused, Keane needed no further convincing, demanding “punishment for these outrages, exemplary punishment that sends a signal to perpetrators that they will be held to account”.
Crikey’s legal correspondent (and lawyer for its parent company Private Media) Michael Bradley stated:
When secrecy and due process have become part of the architecture of suppression of the ugly truth, then a different approach is warranted. The truth is ugly. Our reckoning with it is overdue. If an institution like the AFL is serious about breaking with its own history of racism, then what happened this past week with Hawthorn, in full public glare, is exactly what’s required.
No presumption of innocence either for Michael, who must have missed the class at law school — instead the allegations were an “ugly truth”. Bradley is acting for one of the complainants in the matter who chose to not be involved in the AFL investigation.
There’s a good reason the legal system has a high bar to prove guilt. Investigators get it wrong. Lawyers get it wrong. Judges get it wrong. The Innocence Project has helped release 243 wrongly incarcerated people in the US (the majority of wrongful convictions were of course for minority groups, in particular Black people).
This entire debacle, which has no winners and plenty of victims, has proven that the way to resolve the historical wrongs suffered by our First Nations peoples isn’t to propagate a different injustice onto others.
Correction: This article originally stated that Phil Egan had been charged with fraud offences. This was incorrect. He was arrested but was not charged. The article has been updated to reflect this.
Oh, for goodness sake!
Nobody was “essentially exonerated”.
Nobody spoke to the review, because they had no confidence in it.
Play for many years as champions – then retire to second thoughts and the career beyond……?
Well, they did sign a statement expressing confidence in the investigation.
Excellent points, well made and yet another sorry example of “…the squalling of a few opportunistic outrage merchants…” (May31st article on a different subject) but the same appalling lack of standards or editorial responsibility.
A good example being the 2yrs of publishing here of ranting from a failed travel agent about the damage to his business, allegedly, caused by the government covid restrictions.
oopsies….
Hawthorn investigated itself and found nothing wrong. Which part of that was anybody to take seriously?
Terrific piece, and a lot of credit is due to Crikey for running it too, given its pretty tough pozzy on in-house writers. Some of us have been trenchant critics of Crikey’s too-often lynch(ish) mob(ish) enthusiasm for public trials over these last few years of #MeToo, but there’s not much point in rehashing it (much less smugness), given that now the penny is finally, and thoroughly, dropping right across the media more widely, particularly as the Sofronnof Enquiry unfolds. A lot of very experienced legacy journalists (and politicians) got a lot more wrong, a lot more ruinously, than Crikey on many of these stories, and a preliminary reckoning like this is the best thing for any would-be independent organ that just got itself a bit swept up in an ill-judged tide. The news-cycle momentum of the Sofronnof Enquiry, associated pending lawsuits, potential future Commonwealth claims (from figures like Linda Reynolds and her CoS Fiona Brown, say), lingering questions about the Rachelle Miller and Brittany Higgins settlements, on-going leaks from various camps, an upcoming Bruce Lehrmann interview, other related stories yet to break, and especially the nature of political partisanship and the LNP’s resentment at how the ALP ‘played’ the misogyny issue…it all means that this process of media and political reckoning will have a long way to run. My guess is that legacy mastheads like the Guardian, Channel 10 and the ABC Citadel especially will fiercely resist any kind of similarly self-honest reflection – much less any mea culpa by or on their individual journalists’ misfires. That in turn risks leaving the legacy field open to News Corps to recalibrate a ‘post-#MeToo’ narrative to their agenda on their lonesome…which isn’t necessarily any reassuring recipe for political, ideological and even legal evenhandedness in future. However broadly vidicated the Molochian position on legal procedural matters has been shown to be by unfolding events – be fair, soft paps, Janet Albrechtson and The Oz’s legal editor Chris Merritt got this stuff in essence right – they sure are getting a lot of tacky mileage from their own ‘true crime’ brand of vigilante justice, ever since Teacher’s Pet demonstrated how much of a market there clearly is for it. The civic dangers for the proper administration of justice are the same, whether journalists turn their attentions too recklessly to allegedly pedofile Cardinals, alleged high school groomers, alleged historical rapists or alleged Parly House abusers.
So however bracing, that all makes this kind of deliberative, therapeutic ‘re-setting’ of Crikey’s gyros and perspective on these stories now…all the more crucial, for freeing your writers up to go forward with a re-invigorated, sceptical, independent mind. So bravo, AS and Crikey. The thing to keep in mind about ‘the news’ is thatr it’s dynamic. Stories change, and so journalists need to be ‘allowed’ to get things ‘wrong’ yesterday, otherwise they will become too cautious in their efforts to get things ‘half-right’ today, in order to open up stories, and better get them ‘mostly right’ tomorrow. Like the ‘science’, ‘journalism’ is – should be – a process, not a product. The trick for good journalists is not ‘never being wrong’; nor – this is crucial – assuming that we your audience expects and demands that you ‘never be wrong’, either. We don’t (if we’re smart, anyway…which natch all of Crikey’s audience is :-)). The only key to us trusting you – your byline, your imprimature – is that when you realise you are, or have been, ‘wrong…just say so. And get on with being right next time.
There’s lots still to get right on all these #MeToo stories. Have at it, and good luck.
You tried hard here, Jack with a hint of honesty. Goodo.
Crikey earns a lot of respect for publishing this article. I hope both Bradley and Keane keep writing on these issues, too. Both have a lot of good, pungent things to say on them, and these stories have a long way to run. They’re complex and important, for all sorts of reasons.
It’s also fair to note that Russell Jackson has done plenty of excellent work exposing historical sexual abuse in elite sport, notably with stories on the Western Bulldogs and junior cricket. These are nightmarishly difficult stories for journalists to get right all the time, every time. On we should all plod on them, with measured scepticism, goodwill and a resistance to any kind of groupthink.
The article is crap. To suggest that somehow these serious allegations is the media’s fault is BS. No wonder this stuff doesn’t usually get reported if this is the prevailing attitude. The victims deserve their say regardless of how uncomfortable it is for you or anyone else
Ewan, a key part of the responsibility to deal with genuine episodes of racial abuse and worse is to maintain a degree of critical perspective. If we respond to every accusation with unexamined acceptance, and the media treats every accusation as equally plausible and valid, then we render all accusations less meaningful. We also damage the credibility of the various systems of redress all alleged victims have. One of those mechanisms can, when all else has failed, be the media. Russell Jackson has, as I said, done plenty of excellent work in this area. Pointing out, as AS does, that this particular episode hasn’t to date been among his or most of his media colleagues’ finest hour, is doing more in the long run to help alleged victims than uncritical acceptance of the Hawthorn allegations.
The families are now pursuing their grievances through the AHRC. That next process may still provide them with the redress they are seeking, although at this stage it’s very hard to understand what exactly that is. They have walked past a lot of open doors to redress so far. No-one wishes them any ill, but at some point the media has an obligation – to other alleged victims – not to take their continuing accusations automatically as gospel truth.
Well done, and no doubt a difficult piece to write, and judging by the comments thus far you seem to have identified an inconvenient truth in amongst a whole lot so called truths. It is nothing short of astounding the extent to which allegations are reported as fact. The rush to condemn seems to be a key feature of the 21st century with journalism at the forefront of the charge. It is worth reminding we great great great grandchildren of the Enlightenment that the presumption of innocence has a long tradition, stemming from both religious and non religious influences and now enshrined as a right under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. We trample on those rights at our peril. I know everything in the 21st century has to happen immediately, but it would be good if just for once the media didn’t rush to condemn on the mere assertion of wrongdoing. Thanks again for a timely piece.