{"id":77009,"date":"2026-08-21T03:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T03:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/77009\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T03:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T03:18:08","slug":"women-in-swans-scandal-suffering-severe-stress-and-anxiety-lawyer-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/77009\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in Swans scandal suffering &#8216;severe stress and anxiety&#8217;, lawyer says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">A lawyer representing two of the women involved in an alleged sexual assault scandal engulfing the Sydney Swans says his clients are suffering &#8220;severe stress and anxiety&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Several adult entertainers are understood to have joined players at Melbourne&#8217;s Pullman Hotel after being hired in the hours after the Swans&#8217; win against Essendon on Sunday night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Five players \u2014 Isaac Heeney, Nick Blakey, Chad Warner, Riley Bice and James Jordon \u2014 have been stood down by the Swans for breaching the club&#8217;s standards on drinking and staying out late following last Sunday&#8217;s win over Essendon in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Separately, police are investigating a report of sexual assault, which the ABC understands centres on a player allegedly touching one of the women without her consent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Police have not made any arrests or laid charges.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Lawyer John Karantzis is representing two of the women, who he said would be claiming damages for &#8220;pain and suffering&#8221; following the incident.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;They&#8217;re suffering severe stress and anxiety as a result of the events occurring on Monday morning,&#8221; Mr Karantzis said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My clients are suffering severe trauma from what happened.&#8221;<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A Sydney Swans sign at the SCG.\" class=\"Image_image__5tFYM ContentImage_image__DQ_cq\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1787282288_302_729b7971a86d9372c5ef8d522208ef40.jpeg\" loading=\"lazy\" data-component=\"Image\" data-lazy=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP FigureCaption_text__zDxQ5 Typography_sizeMobile12__w_FPC Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">Five Sydney Swans players were sanctioned by the club for breaching club standards. (Getty Images: Darrian Traynor)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Mr Karantzis said the women were told the men were carpenters and allege there were more people in the room than the five players identified by the Swans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">The Swans issued a statement rejecting suggestions other people involved with the club were in the room.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;The Sydney Swans can confirm that all investigations carried out by the Club have consistently indicated that the only representatives of the Club in the room central to the police investigation were the five players who have been stood down,&#8221; the statement said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;We have every reason to consider that reports to the contrary are simply false.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Mr Karantzis said the women made a complaint to police on Monday morning and were interviewed by police.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">He said the women were being supported.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;Fortunately, they&#8217;ve got loving family and we&#8217;ve provided them with professional support which is needed,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Late on Wednesday night, the players who have been stood down issued an apology to everyone involved in the scandal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">This morning <a class=\"Link_link__kR0xA Link_link__5eL5m ScreenReaderOnly_srLinkHint__OysWz Link_showVisited__C1Fea Link_showFocus__ALyv2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2026-08-21\/afl-dean-cox-callum-mills-address-sydney-swans-scandal\/107062056\" data-component=\"Link\" data-uri=\"coremedia:\/\/article\/107062056\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Swans Captain Callum Mills said he was &#8220;deeply shocked and disappointed&#8221;<\/a> and said he had not witnessed anything like this behaviour before.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;We really are disappointed at the action of these five players,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lawyer representing two of the women involved in an alleged sexual assault scandal engulfing the Sydney Swans&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[77,2304,9211,1712,5063,247,5009,7211],"class_list":["post-77009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-afl","tag-assault","tag-lawyer","tag-sexual-assault","tag-swans","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-swans","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}