Chambermaid: I was sexually harassed
The fallout over the disgraced England team’s shameful antics at the World Cup in New Zealand produced another twist when a chambermaid insisted she was sexually harassed.
The revelations of Annabell Newtown follows a day after it was confirmed the embattled Rugby Football Union tried to buy her silence.
Newtown told Radio New Zealand on Saturday that she is still trying to get a sincere apology and some compensation from the three English players she said harassed her during the tournament three months ago.
Newtown was working as a hotel maid at the Southern Cross Hotel when James Haskell, Dylan Hartley and Chris Ashton called her to their room.
Newton told RNZ that they “stole” her walkie talkie and used it to lure her into a room and then ask her for “sexual favours” while laughing at and filming her.
She told the radio station she initially only wanted an honest apology, but never got one, and has now asked for NZ$30,000 [about £15,000] in compensation, which has been refused by the players’ lawyers.
Newton said she and her family have been harassed by a tabloid newspaper in the United Kingdom and has resigned from her job at the hotel because of the incident.
The Times newspaper in England on Friday quoted a confidential Rugby Players’ Association report into the incident in a hotel in Dunedin and alleged the woman concerned had been offered NZ$30,000 to keep quiet after James Haskell.
A player quoted anonymously in the report said the players were told: “You’ve got 24 hours to decide whether to settle with the girl for NZ$30,000 or not. Paying the money seemed to be the advice. Another option wasn’t really given.
“We refused to pay because we hadn’t done what she claimed we had done. So we went to find our own lawyers in New Zealand because we felt the RFU QC was interested in defending the RFU’s reputation rather than ours.”
The players said they had made an inappropriate joke but nothing more serious.
The maid’s story later appeared in a Sunday newspaper, sparking a storm that saw Haskell and Ashton given a warning and fined £5,000 by the RFU. Hartley was exonerated.
