Shaun Metcalf has been given a second chance at playing for the New Zealand Warriors after repeatedly kicking his 15-year old girlfriend in the stomach in an attempt to cause her to abort their baby.
Metcalf, now 23, was sentenced to 18 months jail in 2004 where he spent five months before and being released to home detention (despite the entreaties of the victim and her family). He and his two rugby mates Geoffrey Ruaporo and Kyle Donovan tricked the girl into meeting them in a park where they set upon her. Three beefy blokes ganged up on a pregnant teen in an attempt to cause her to lose the baby.
Somehow the girl and her baby survived the attack – the infant was born four months later.
Metcalf has just signed a two-year contract with the New Zealand Rugby League. He says he’s sorry for what he did. I really hope that’s the case.
But there is something especially disconcerting about arguments used to restore Metcalf to the sporting life. Arguments which come close to violence apologism.
One of Metcalf’s key defenders and outspoken advocates is Celia Lashlie, described as a “social justice advocate and author”.
Lashlie put a case for Metcalf being returned to the game to the NRL in 2005, arguing, basically that we should just all move on.
We can all get caught up in the emotional image of young men booting a young woman in the stomach to cause her to abort her baby, but these were two young people … she got pregnant, he was way out of his depth, and he did a really cruel and dumb thing.
‘He was caught in the moment, and what he did was the equivalent of a young man putting a noose around his neck because his girlfriend tossed him out. He has to be allowed to move forward and put his life together, and I think the ability of the NRL and the Warriors to take this young man in and help him do that is role modelling and something they should get credit for.
Oh no, we wouldn’t want to get caught up in an image of young footballers playing football with the pregnant womb of a 15-year old girl now would we?
Lashlie wants us to be rational about this. Let’s not get overwhelmed by emotion because that would be distracting. The girl “got pregnant” – as girls often so magically do. He was a mere spectator – perhaps it was even her fault for letting it happen?
He was “way out of his depth?” But don’t lots of people find themselves out of our depth and manage to refrain from lashing out in obscenely violent ways?
“The equivalent of putting the noose around his neck”? No, it was the equivalent of putting a noose around her neck – and the neck of her child. Laskie paints the act as some kind of self-punishment. But he wasn’t assaulted. He wasn’t trying to protect the child he was carrying. It wasn’t he who might lose his life.
Note those he invited to the kicking session. Not school friends or family members, but his NRL mates. Because this is what footie mates do for each other, they help out a buddy in need and stomp on whoever needs to be stomped on, even a defenceless girl.
Cruel and dumb? Breaking up by text message is cruel and dumb. Attacking a pregnant girl with your thug mates isn’t dumb. This is not a footballer drunk and disorderly and urinating in public. This is a footballer engaging in a vicious, criminal, callous and pre-meditated act.
Lashlie’s comments trivialises the seriousness of this crime. They are an insult to any woman who has experienced violence. And that is already just too many.
Published today in The Drum.
11 Responses
I feel sick after reading that. Criminals do not belong in sport!
As far as I’m concerned, any person with a criminal background should be barred from football of any kind. I love watching AFL but the number of drug addicts, drunks and violent behaviour coming from some of the players is unacceptable! I don’t want these blokes paraded around as role models for my children to look up to.
The majority of footballers do the right thing. Get rid of the ones who don’t and replace them with any number of the young, up and coming guys who are begging for a chance to play.
What about the poor defenceless baby… what a terrible thing to do to a 15 year old girl and her baby, by an adult man. Unbelievable. Stupid comments by Lashlie, does she even know what social justice means? If she did, she wouldn’t be defending Metcalf.
Clearly the NRL has not learned a thing about respect for women.
Any form of domestic violence is abhorrent, but this is sickening. It was premeditated, thuggery by not just one but three bullies.
This is not something that you just move on from.
I was disgusted when I heard about this. “Cruel and dumb”??? I agree- breaking up by text is cruel and dumb. Saying something nasty to her is cruel and dumb. Doing what he did was criminal, premeditated, disgusting. I can’t believe he only got sentenced to 18 months jail for this- attempted murder of her unborn baby, assault of a teenage girl- and to think he only served 5 months is despicable. I’m sure if I, a regular person, committed the same crime, I’d be dealt a longer time in jail- or at least I should be for such a heinous, premeditated crime.
Once again society condone the vile treatment of and attitude to pregnancy! What a role model this thing (I will not call him a man) is! Can you imagine it … ‘Hey buddy don’t worry Metcalf knocked his girlfriend up & kicked the s*** outta her & now he is a huge football star, don’t worry mate we will fix it”! You have sex you run the chance of getting yourself/her pregnant!
This condones the social belief that there is the perfect pregnancy & that if a woman dares become pregnant out of that square then she basically deserves all she gets including this!
Regardless of whether she was pregnant or not, what kind of animal rounds up his mates to kick someone else??? The fact that she was pregnant makes it doubly worse because their crime was aimed at 2 people, not 1.
Animal. Why do so many footballers perpetuate the stereotype that footballers are stupid and violent by BEING stupid and violent?! And why aren’t these people hired/re-hired based upon their conduct as well as their sporting abilities?
Poor girl. Miscarriage is traumatic enough without having it caused by another person. She has to live with that while his life rolls merrily along. 🙁
It just makes me feel ill.
I can not imagine how anybody can trivialise human life below the value of a “game”
Surely this is the worst example of ‘sociopathic’ behaviour being accepted in today’s society.
He’s only sorry for what he did because he got caught.
As for that Lashlie woman, she’s obviously blinded by some sort of attraction for this Metcalf dropkick, and can’t see that a vulnerable 15yo girl and her obviously much loved bub have no power to repel such brutes in their egocentric crime.
I don’t have an opinion on whether Metcalf should be allowed to play NRL again. He may well be genuinely remorseful and ready to start life again as a non-violent, caring man. I have no way of knowing that. Frankly, I don’t really have a problem with anyone who has been convicted of a crime being allowed to resume work and re-join society after an appropriate period of time (and detention). I do, however, have a problem with trivialising crime, particularly violent crime, and I have a MASSIVE problem with blame-shifting.
It is blame-shifting to say, “He was caught in the moment, and what he did was the equivalent of a young man putting a noose around his neck because his girlfriend tossed him out.” Well, firstly, he wasn’t ‘caught in the moment’. It was far more than a moment, given that he developed the idea, contacted his mates, set a trap and made it happen. His girlfriend was ‘caught’, not him. Don’t make it sound like it was a sudden flash of insanity that was over in an instant. There was clearly deliberate premeditation.
Secondly, as Melinda has pointed out, he didn’t put a noose around his own neck. He put it around the necks of his girlfriend and unborn child. But my biggest problem with that sentence is the way it ends – he put “a noose around his neck BECAUSE HIS GIRLFRIEND TOSSED HIM OUT.” Okay, so… it’s her fault? If she hadn’t tossed him out after ‘getting herself pregnant’ then perhaps she wouldn’t have ‘got herself bashed’ either.
I’m sure some people think the way Lashlie phrased this article is no big deal; that we’re just picking sentences apart for the sake of an argument. I disagree. This isn’t a matter of grammatical pedantry. The way these things are reported in the media DOES matter. Phrasing things in such a way that the blame is subtly shifted to the victim of violence is dangerous. It happens once, then twice, then another fifty times, and then a culture has developed where people – even if they don’t articulate it – believe that victims caused the violence that was directed against them. And since many victims of violence are women, then people start to believe that WOMEN cause – and therefore deserve – the violence directed against them.
I wish I could say I were drawing a long bow with that argument, but I don’t believe I am. This kind of reporting is everywhere and the belief it creates has already seeped into our collective consciousness. Is it any wonder that violence against women has such a relatively low rate of reporting and conviction?
I wonder if Lashlie would have been so quick to rush to Metcalf’s defense if he hadn’t been an elite sportsman?
Of course he should be allowed the chance to move forward and put his life together. But in order to do that he has to bear – and be allowed to bear – the responsibility for his atrocious, criminal actions. Maybe if we stopped infantilising our sportsmen they would be more inclined to behave like men.
There seems to be a pattern of men who don’t get their way in forcing their girlfriend to have an abortion take matters into their own hands. In 2005 for example, a woman called Kylie Flick was assaulted by her boyfriend to get her to miscarry. He got 10 years and the NSW Government changed the definition of grievous bodily harm to include causing the death of an unborn child.
Violence against pregnant women is well documented, with one research summary saying “among women who have ever experienced violence by a previous partner, 36% reported that this occurred when they were pregnant and 17% experienced violence for the first time when they were pregnant (ABS 2006). In an Australian survey of 400 pregnant women, 27% had experienced violence during pregnancy (Walsh 2008). Some studies find that the frequency and severity of violence initiated by male partners against women is higher when those women are pregnant” (see: http://tinyurl.com/3kzajdv )
OK the problem is documented, but the big question is why do some blokes do this terrible stuff? Are they just evil or can the problem be prevented?
I’m not sure how Lashlie can even justify defending the actions of this man? I think she needs to take a long, hard look at herself…