Amazing to think he has come out of the other side of all that. Enough misery for ten lifetimes.
How many of them haven’t been able to see it through and have succumbed to violence, drugs or suicide? We will never know.
2 Likes
Not a word on SEN this morning or over the weekend although I didn’t tune in all the time.
Where is St Kilda and the AFL this morning?
3 Likes
I think there was a response from St.Kilda over the weekend, but I only saw it as an article on the ABC news website.
1 Like
Matt Finnis has met and provided a public apology to Rod that I read on-line. A lot of the stuff in the article was also new to them.
From that article.
An ABC Sport investigation has discovered that Briggs managed the Saints Little League from at least 1969 until 1980. Ray coached the Saints Little League to a premiership in 1973 and coached the team until the end of the 1977 season. It is not yet known whether he coached the Saints team earlier than 1973.
Under the rules of the competition, clubs had to field at least 100 boys per season to qualify for the finals, and by the late 1970s, the Saints were picking more than 150 boys per season, meaning that at least 500 boys were coached by Ray, and at least 1,000 managed by Briggs.
In St Kilda’s statement, Finnis said: “Rod, and others like him, must be assured that should you make the choice to disclose information of this nature you will be heard, you will be supported, and most importantly, you will be believed.”
“St Kilda will seek advice from police and expert agencies to ensure Rod and anyone else who may come forward is supported.”
Translation: St Kilda will do nothing to proactively seek out people these guys might have preyed on. St Kilda will not commission an investigation, they’ll just sit back and deal with individual cases as they come to light. All the onus will be upon the victim to take the extremely traumatic step of coming forward, then St Kilda will do their best to deal with it quietly. Nor will there be any sort of investigation to find out who at St Kilda knew what and when they knew it, because there’s a bunch of boats there St Kilda doesn’t want rocked and skeletons they want to stay in cupboards. I wonder if they’ll even bother stripping this Briggs of his life membership.
Basically, this is the action you take when you don’t want to take any action.
3 Likes
St.Kilda shouldn’t have the choice. The AFL really should be saying either they investigate fully, or we will run an investigation ourselves.
2 Likes
How would St Kilda run an investigation of this type, they don’t have the skills or resources to do anything like that. The AFL maybe.
1 Like
The AFL could lend them the resources. I’m guessing it’d be the same investigation whether run by AFL or St.Kilda, just a matter of who initiates it.
they should own it, be like we’re requesting the afl to investigate.
They wouldn’t have the skills in-house of course, they’d have to hire someone. Commission a retired judge or similar. The AFL needs to stay far away too, they haven’t got the resources for a large-scale historical sexual abuse investigation either, and if they try and blunder, it’d be even worse for them.
But frankly, given the way footy clubs in general were run in the 80s, and St Kilda in particular, I suspect St Kilda today knows next to nothing about what happened in the juniors 40 years back. There’s probably no paperwork, teamsheets were handwritten on scrap paper and then thrown away after the game, half the planning and organisation was done by phone or over a few beers in the pub. A investigation would have to go all the way into the weeds, hunting up team photos from kids who played little league, then detective work to identify and track down the guys in the photos. Interviews with all sorts of ex-St K staff who are probably very elderly now if they’re even still alive, and all without any legal power to compel testimony or take evidence under oath from a bunch of people who’ll be very keen to save their own skins. I mean, this journo couldn’t even track down someone as integral to the story as the actual abuser. Lots of time has passed. It’d be a very difficult task. Still needs to be attempted though.
2 Likes
royal commission into the pedo ring.
2 Likes
What are they attempting to investigate?
Of course the police should handle the real abuse angle and any criminal aspect of it.
If it’s just to find out if anybody knew, I think that’s so unlikely to ever surface. As you point out it was basically an amateur organisation and many involved are probably all ready passed on. I highly doubt any senior administrators even knew what was happening in the little league let alone they where pedos. Even on the off chance they do find someone that knew, then what? Name and shame them, take organisational responsibility because the unpaid bootstudder knew but didn’t go to police? People’s imagination jump to Ballarat activities of the church on these types of things, but StKildas FC’s unpaid volunteer community sports organisation is so far removed from the power of the Catholic Church it’s not funny. It’s just a ■■■■■■ up example of how kids where abused back then.
If it’s some kind of truth and reconciliation investigation to benefit the victims, that would be ok, but that doesn’t need to be fodder for the press. Their pain doesn’t need to be splashed on the backpage as people search for answers. An investigation could do more harm than good. We allready know the real perpetrators, why investigate to find ghosts that may not exist.
If the victims did want this, then I’d obviously support them.
1 Like
I doubt anyone in the popular media would even begin to know how to approach such a topic…
But yeah, if this was the church, etc. it would be a national scandal, as it should be.
1 Like
Involving the school as well…
Caefrul. That sounds suspiciously like you are suggesting they self report.
Imagine the St. Kilda Pres: Get Ziggy on the phone!
if its good enough for essendon, its good enough for saints.
2 Likes
Yes - I read the article - Unfortunately there have always been people in sporting organisations and the like, who in the past and even TODAY that have taken advantage of children and teenagers - It’s a long and difficult process to identify and then ‘weed’ out these people - A variety of investigations throughout the world are finding many types of abuse are happening all over the world in sporting organisations…
There was the case a few years ago of the Hawthorn trainer who committed suicide after being questioned by police for alleged sexual offences against children which i understand to be away from the club. This only got a limited run in the media and from memory little was heard from the HFC.
‘fun’