Footballers and impressionable young girls don't mix - very sad. My emotions on this story are changing every minute
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/inside-story-of/story-fn6bm6am-1225974672190SCHOOLKIDS had just returned from the long holiday. A few young stars from the St Kilda Football Club fronted a Mornington Peninsula high school.
The teens needed pumping up for their Victorian Certificate of Education year.
The players were there in their pre-season to give back to the community as part of their contracts.
Half the group were girls. And scores of those were Saints fans. Some of them wanted to hook up with them. Tall, muscley, confident, rich young men. How could they lose?
But that day in February was to come under scrutiny from the police and Education Department officials. Three months later, one of the girls in the crowd, 16 at that time, told her principal she was pregnant.
"Jane" (name withheld because the girl is under 18) said the father was young star Saints player Sam Gilbert who'd visited the school that February day. Bells went off and the principal reported the pregnancy to the authorities.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
Related CoverageThe teen who terrifies the AFL Adelaide Now, 6 hours ago
Teen laughs at Riewoldt 'lies' Perth Now, 11 hours ago
Riewoldt fury over nude photo Adelaide Now, 12 hours ago
Riewoldt "bitterly annoyed" Courier Mail, 13 hours ago
Saints exposed in naked storm Adelaide Now, 17 hours ago
.End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
Within hours, the AFL and the club knew. The manager of the player concerned knew. Then almost everybody else knew.
That was the beginning of this whole sorry tale. But underneath it all you have to remember that this has never been the story of a woman. It is the very sad story of a troubled young girl.
For months, behind the scenes, Melbourne has known - the AFL, the Saints, footy fans and the media - but noone would talk about.
This week the girl lifted the lid by posting online explicit photographs as she'd threatened to do many times before.
Jane, now 17, is articulate, intelligent and beautiful. She's tough but, to adults she likes, she's polite. She has an on-again-off-again relationship with her parents. Right now she's on holidays with them.
She dresses like an adult and is pretending to be one, when she's anything but.
And now she's dealing with some very grown-up problems.
The Saints club officials quickly doused criticism of their players over Jane's pregnancy. They claimed an investigation had cleared them of any wrongdoing. She says both she and the player agreed they'd had no contact on that day at the school.
She says she'd actually met him weeks later at a party after a match in Sydney. Her version of events is that in the hotel, someone held the room keys of Gilbert and another player. In a swingers' style game, she says she picked the hand holding the other player's keys.
But the next day, she claimed Gilbert got her phone number and texted her: "I wanted you". She felt the same. They started going out soon after, but when news of the pregnancy broke, the relationship ended.
Gilbert might have been cleared of misconduct, but Jane copped a wave of condemnation from locals who learned her identity on the grapevine. She says she endured put-downs as she crossed the street and that she lost shifts from her after-school job.
She claims there was an encounter with another AFL player who kept insisting that she join him and a friend for sex. The words she recounted were threatening and she, at 16, barely recognised then how inappropriate they were.
It is clear at the centre of her issues is her perceived treatment by players, mainly those who play with St Kilda but also from at least one other club.
A month ago she approached most of Melbourne's media outlets, including The Daily Telegraph's sister newspaper, the Herald Sun, to have her "dirt file" published but nobody would. Then, she claimed she wanted a way of getting her story told, in her own words.
In the past six months, the Herald Sun repeatedly refused to write her story without permission from her parents She turned up at the the newspaper offices late one night after downing a bottle of flavoured vodka.
She showed explicit photos - including the now infamous Nick Riewoldt nude picture - to a journalist, but her offers to publish them were refused.
Instead, the Herald Sun contacted the AFL with concerns about her welfare after offering her a taxi trip home. She was directed to find someone who could give her good advice.
In Jane's eyes, she has been let down everywhere she has turned. By the players, by her former high school, St Kilda Football Club, the AFL and Victoria Police.
More than a month ago, senior police were dealing with issues surrounding Ricky Nixon making a complaint Jane had tried to strip while in his office.
Nixon claims to have tapes of their meetings.
She told the Herald Sun he fabricated the allegation. Other issues had also risen to the surface concerning the force and the treatment of the 17-year-old.
In early June, Jane sat down with the Herald Sun in a Frankston coffee shop and ordered an iced chocolate. She applied lip gloss at least four times in an hour and whispered secrets into her friend's ear beside her.
Jane insisted she was pregnant and when a child miscarried, she thought it was over. She claimed that she discovered weeks later she'd been pregnant with twins and she was still carrying an unborn child.
She spoke often of her frustration that Gilbert wouldn't return her texts or calls. She said she wanted him to take responsibility for what she said was his child's life.
So much so, that she confronted him in Adelaide. Whether she followed him there specially, or whether she was there coincidentally isn't clear. Photos of her, heavily pregnant, appeared on her Facebook page. But not long after, she claimed the baby was lost. She was no longer pregnant.
While things were quiet on the surface, behind the scenes, on social forums, she was simultaneously trashed and hailed a hero. Explicit photos that weren't of her, but purported to be, went viral in cyberspace.
A few weeks ago, she said she wanted it all to go away and to have a normal life. She wanted to get a real job in the armed forces, but couldn't even contemplate it until the real story - her truth - got out.
Some of her claims seemed wild.
She has made claims she was offered "hush" money
She says that soon afterwards a six-figure sum of money lobbed in her bank account for about a week. Then it disappeared mysteriously, just as quickly.
On Monday this week she also claimed that St Kilda Football Club paid for her hotel accommodation, but the club vehemently denies this.
Jane described meetings with the AFL officers as disastrous. She said she was intimidated and made to feel like she was a criminal. But the AFL said last night that the league's Respect and Responsibility manager Sue Clark and other AFL staff had spoken to the young woman about 20 times since earlier this year.
"AFL staff went out of their way to liaise with social service organisations and Victorian police to ensure this young woman had access to support services, including counselling if she wanted to take it up, and also tried to organise accommodation when she had nowhere to stay," he said.
She said she felt like she was being stalked. She said she was sent text messages from an unknown person threatening violence and described in October how she ended up in hospital after being stabbed by a stranger on an afternoon run around her home.
Yesterday, she spoke of how she wanted everyone to "know the truth".
She says her parents were there for her.
"They're not supporting me in what I'm doing," she said "But they're supporting me, if you know what I mean..
