In neither case were charges laid, and although at least twenty distinct cases have been reported in the Australian media, involving more than fifty-six footballers and officials, only one–NRL star Brett Stewart–has yet been tried. These two football codes are the nation’s most popular, with rugby league dominating the north-eastern states, with the southern, eastern and western the domain of Australian Rules. Two weeks later, two players from the St Kilda Australian Football League (AFL) team allegedly raped a woman following their pre-season cup victory. Rape and Football in Australia The issue of football and rape first came to mass public attention in February 2004, when six players from National Rugby League (NRL) team the Canterbury Bulldogs allegedly raped a woman while at a New South Wales resort. I will argue that the news media thus effectively provide footballers with a criminal defence, before the cases can even reach court.
I uncover several stock female “characters” which evoke doubt in the women’s claims: the Predatory Woman, who hunts down footballers for sex and is always sexually available to any and all footballers the Woman Scorned, who makes a false rape complaint out of revenge and the Gold Digger, who makes a false complaint for money. However, what happens when doubt, reasonable or otherwise, is embedded in the media reporting of criminal cases, even before charges have been laid? This paper will analyse newspaper reports of recent rape cases involving Australian footballers, and identify narrative figures that are used to locate blame solely with the alleged victims, protecting the footballers from blame. Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)“Beyond reasonable doubt” is the standard of proof for criminal cases in a court of law. The narrative cohering these disparate frames is that military sexual violence is a phenomenon that cannot be prevented or addressed and is therefore unproblematic for the institution.
The article then seeks to demonstrate that these seemingly disparate frames are not contradictory, but rather unify into a singular narrative. We analyze several frames used to depict the issue and conclude that military sex scandals, like other illicit military behaviors, tend to be publicly framed either as (1) a rarity that is atypical of the institution (“bad apples”) or (2) inevitable and so typical of the institution as to be unremarkable. The analysis covers an almost thirty-year period (1989–2016) during which several “sex scandals,” some of international import, broke out. How can we understand consistent public support and trust of the military even in climates of high rates of public awareness about military sexual violence? This article examines how the phenomenon of military sexual violence is mediated to the public through a media content and discourse analysis of newspaper reportage about military sexual violence in Australia.
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