A young Dunedin, New Zealand hotel worker claims she was lured to a bedroom where three England rugby players where they subjected her to a barrage of sexual comments.
In yet another embarrassing cringeworthy event to hit the England World Cup team, gap-year student Annabel Newton said James Haskell, Dylan Hartley and Chris Ashton left her humiliated.
Newton, 23, alleges she was called into the room at the team hotel, The Southern Cross, to get her walkie-talkie, which had been pinched as aprt of a practical joke. There she found the three players.
She says while one filmed her on a video camera, Haskell shouted he wanted an “Aussie kiss”. When she asked what that was, he said it was a “blow job Down Under”.
“I was a joke to them,” Newton said. “Afterwards they couldn’t understand what they did wrong. Those players treated me with no respect.”
The players all emphatically denied any wrong-doing, and insist she appeared relaxed in their company. Sources close to the three say in the video – part of a tour diary – she doesn’t look concerned.
“At the time the three thought it was light-hearted banter but when they found out how Newton felt about it they agreed to apologise,” the source told the Daily Mirror.
But the young woman was not too impressed with the players, even when they tried to smooth things over,
She said: “James told me, ‘We got you these pretty flowers – they’re not as pretty as you’, and then as he leant in to give them to me, he said, ‘And they don’t smell as good as you, either.’
“I just got a sense they didn’t care. I told him, ‘I hear you guys got into a bit of trouble.’ Then one said, ‘The heat’s off us because of the Mike Tindall thing.’
Her lawyer, Jenny Beck, then set up a meeting with England manager Martin Johnson and other members of the England management, during which it was agreed she would receive a card from the players apologising.
She said: “I was happy with the outcome though. A proper apology would have been enough. It would have been proper ‘closure’ for me.”
But Annabel did not get a card and discussions continued with the RFU.
She said: “Now I’m upset and embarrassed and have to leave my job. There’s no way I can carry on at the hotel. I’ll get on with my life and complete my degree and become a teacher. They won’t stop that.
“England seem to have extra money, – they behaved as though they were on a jolly.”
