“He [Elliott] does not speak on behalf of the AFL. His comments are totally unacceptable, his position is totally unacceptable,” Demetriou said on Thursday.
“I find his comments abhorrent. They are from an age that I don’t understand. They are from an age that is a bygone era. We’ve done everything we can and will continue to do everything we can to rid the industry of those sorts of Neanderthal attitudes.”
Demetriou said the League’s Respect and Responsibility program was a leader in educating the community about attitudes towards women and the unacceptability of sexual abuse and violence against women.
“There is no place for it in football, let alone the community, and our position has not changed. We have influenced many, many people in our industry whose attitudes have changed significantly,” Demetriou said.
“And John Elliott, I don’t know who he speaks for; he speaks for John Elliott, that’s fine. He has no voice, no influence in any regard to what we do here at the AFL. He doesn’t speak for the Carlton Football Club of today and everyone should be absolutely appalled with his comments.”
Demetriou said the League had assisted a woman who had made headlines in recent days.
“In 2004 the AFL and myself came out very strongly and urged all women who had any issue to come forward and we would refer them to appropriate authorities; that’s how seriously we view these issues,” Demetriou said.
“In fact back in 2004, this particular issue referred to for the past couple of days … the father of this young girl contacted the AFL and we referred the matter to the police ombudsman. That’s how seriously we take these issues.
“This morning [football operations manager] Adrian Anderson spoke to [police commissioner] Simon Overland to again stress to him that we will urge everyone in football to cooperate with the police. Simon Overland congratulated the AFL and made sure and again repeated that we are going about this the right way.”
