POLICE are investigating claims that the documents behind an explosive report into drug use by AFL players were stolen from an Ivanhoe rehabilitation centre.
AFL Players Association chief Brendon Gale slammed the report, which aired on Channel Seven on Friday, as a gross breach of privacy. Gale suggested he believed the records had been stolen.
AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou said he was upset by the report. "I find it distressing and disturbing that any person's private medical records could be purchased and published," he said.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman confirmed police were investigating whether the files had been stolen.
The AFLPA attended a court hearing yesterday at which an injunction preventing the naming of the players and their club was extended until Thursday. The players' association is now considering whether it will join the legal action, which is being undertaken by the doctor who treated the players.
The doctor at the centre of the scandal was last night refusing to discuss any of the players involved with their club. It is believed the players have not admitted testing positive to illicit drugs to the club. The club is believed to be frustrated about a drugs policy that prevents it from finding out more about the situation its players are in.
On Friday night, Channel Seven named the club and read excerpts from the medical records on air but did not name the players involved. An injunction was taken out by the doctor soon afterwards.
The report claimed that a woman found the confidential medical records in the gutter outside the hospital. She told reporter Dylan Howard that she had not returned the documents because the gate was locked and sold them to Channel Seven — for $3000 — because she thought it was in the public interest and might help the players involved.
Gale said that explanation was "very dubious". "I know the clinicians involved and they are held in the highest regard. For someone to suggest that these were just lying around the road defies belief. Here we have an intervention and players receiving the support of experts supposedly in a confidential environment and someone has breached that," he said.
"The fact that someone would do this and then claim it is in the public interest is rubbish and it's reprehensible. These are private confidential medical records between a doctor and his patients."
Gale is also angry at Seven's decision to report it. "There are profound ethical questions involved but probably also profound legal ones. You'd hope they'd given consideration to that but it seems they probably haven't. This goes to the very essence of the doctor-patient relationship and that relationship is protected by law … We feel very strongly about protecting the players and the clinicians involved."
Demetriou said he was becoming "disillusioned" with recent football reportage. "I'm becoming more and more disillusioned with many aspects of reporting of this nature," he told 3AW yesterday. "Everyone has to take a step back now because we, like many others, are becoming disillusioned with further things that are transpiring. And now this about what our media outlets will do to acquire and publish a story.
"This story was actually offered to many media outlets who chose not to run it, which I commend them on, chose not to purchase, which I also commend them on."
with CARLEY JELLETT
