After Tyrone May's charges, insiders lift the lid on how NRL sex tapes are spreading in WhatsApp groups

By Chloe Hart

Videos of NRL players having sex are being shared on an almost daily basis, according to two men who have spoken to the ABC.

• Sex videos involving NRL players Tyrone May and Dylan Napa circulated during the off-season
• May was charged by police and Napa was sanctioned by the NRL
• Two men who have played rugby league for years say they are in groups where similar videos are regularly shared

The men are members of chat groups who are sharing the videos on the social media platform WhatsApp.

Sam*, a 33-year-old from Newcastle, said the videos were shared on WhatsApp in-between conversations about games and drinking plans.

"It's amazing how far these videos reach and how they spread so quickly," the former rugby league player said.

"I am not close to the NRL, I never know the people in the videos and I get new ones every day.

"Normally it's a mate saying, 'Have you seen the new NRL videos?'."

Sam said he was speaking out in disgust over how some NRL players behave, in the wake of the arrest of Penrith Panthers five-eighth Tyrone May on Tuesday.

"I feel for the girls in these videos. It comes back to the girl," he said.

"It's f***ed up, messed up, what they are doing in these videos, the way they are treating these women."

The ABC has been sent several sex tapes by men on WhatsApp groups.

One video tagged "boot the slut" shows two men with their feet stomping on a woman's head as another man has sex with her.

Another shows a woman having sex with two men.

The videos are in the spotlight after May was charged with four counts of filming two women without their consent and distributing the videos.

May has been suspended under the NRL's new no-fault stand-down policy until his upcoming court case has finished.

NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg has warned of a tsunami of sex tapes emerging as the NRL reels from a disastrous off-season dominated by scandals involving sex and violence towards women.

"How do they think this is normal? It's disgusting — these girls' families have to see the videos too."These guys' mothers see these videos," Sam said.

"Some of the girls might be chasing a hook-up with NRL players, but no-one is chasing to be treated like that and for a video of them to go viral."

Sam said the men think they can get away with it, but they may well be committing a crime.

Under the NSW and Queensland Crimes Acts it is illegal for anyone to distribute an intimate image of someone without their consent.

The maximum jail term is three years in both states.

'It's a guy thing'

Ben* from Western Sydney is another member of a WhatsApp group in which sex videos involving NRL players have been shared.

The 25-year-old has played rugby league all his life and said sharing sex videos was a masculine boast.

"It's a guy thing, not just in the NRL," Ben said.

"In a team environment guys want the admiration of their teammates. There's always a hierarchy in clubs.

"Sharing this stuff is a way of being welcomed into the group and guys are just trying to belong."

And in this way, the videos can become viral.

"Someone will share a video within the chat, then someone will share it with another person in another group and it can snowball from there," Ben said.

"With these players, people have a reason to share it on — even to the media — and it goes viral."

The ABC contacted the NRL for comment about the proliferation of the videos, but a spokesman said the organisation would not comment and was "focusing on football" ahead of Thursday's season launch.

NRL insiders are concerned that a big part of the problem in the game is deep-seated negative attitudes towards women.

They highlight the lack of women who work in NRL headquarters and clubs as symptomatic of the problem.

Toxic masculinity driving desire to share 'conquests'

Catharine Lumby is a professor of media at Macquarie University and gender adviser to the NRL.

She said it was an underlying gender inequality, rather than alcohol, that was at the heart of the problem in the NRL.

"In Australian sport and even elite university colleges, historically there's been culture of male bonding over some toxic rituals, sharing stories and images of sex with women which are seen as conquests," Professor Lumby said.

She said players must be aware the action is unethical, illegal and incredibly damaging to the women involved.

"With sharing, it's very hard to understand how it could ever be consensual, because once it's online you can't control who else sees it," she said.

Despite the sheer number of recent legal cases involving violence against women and the proliferation of sex tapes, Professor Lumby rejected the notion that education programs were not working.

"My analogy is drink driving — for decades we've had education campaigns about the dangers, and strict penalties, but people still do it," she said.

"You can't measure the success or failure of research-based education programs on five or six incidents.

"How you measure it is over the long term and, up until this off-season, we had seen a big decline in adverse incidents, but the horror stretch is cause for reflection and everyone in this space needs to work hard."