Written by Earlier I wrote “Sex, Lies, and Who Can Score the Most Points” about a certain lewd act in a public toilet being filmed and distributed by someone looking over the top of the stall. It seems that the person who is in the most trouble is the one who filmed and exposed it. Rugby League legend Phil Gould has put in his two cents on the matter, saying of the Parramatta Eels, that players need to consider their lives as being lived in a ‘reality show’. Gould seems more concerned with the technicality that someone invaded the privacy of the two people … ‘having sex in a public place!”
“Who in their right mind climbs up on the toilet to intervene in what people are doing inside the toilet, I don’t know,”
“This will be fought on two lines. One’s the player doing that and is that the way the game is to be portrayed.
“But why does someone film it without their knowing and then distribute it amongst the media?
“They (the Integrity Unit) are going to look at whether or not this behaviour is what is expected of an NRL professional footballer, as against what is privacy and where does privacy stop.” – Phil Gould
Oh he does concede that the perpetrator of the act will have questions to answer about their conduct, but that they are more sinned against than sinned in this case, and he warned that “players needed to be smarter”. He reserved his real annoyance for the person who filmed the act.
Yes, it must be said that the film maker was acting out of bounds, but when I last checked it was not appropriate nor legal to perform sexual acts in a public place even if it is hidden in a toilet cubicle.
This situation is reminiscent of issues suffered by whistleblowers, not that I believe this person was acting for any other reason than to cause scandal, but at what point does the perpetrator of a crime become absolved because the ‘messenger’ delivered ugly news. Why is it harder for we the consumers of the news to apportion blame on the person doing the wrong thing rather than the person revealing it. Perhaps it comes down to the psychology of being given unpalatable news, the messenger delivers the bad news, regardless of motivation, the messenger become the maligned intermediary between two parties that end up hating them for being the one to expose it.
The alternative is that the worthy sports star is too valued a player to risk having to chastise and possibly penalize; is he being protected so that he can continue playing.
The culture that should be being promoted in this case is to behave in a manner that isn’t skirting the edges of the law or the edges of morality. The culture that recognises these players as fallible humans but wants to help them to develop the desire to become role models to the next generation of sports stars.
NRL 2021: Phil Gould weighs in on Parramatta Eels sex tape (yahoo.com)