Luke Sayers, a former president of the Carlton Football Club and ex-chief executive of PwC, is at the centre of a defamation and privacy lawsuit filed by his wife, Cate Sayers, in the Victorian Supreme Court. The case stems from a lewd photo posted on his X account in January 2025 during a family holiday in Italy, which he claimed was the result of a hack.
Court documents reveal that Cate Sayers alleges the AFL cleared her husband of any wrongdoing within two weeks, without conducting a proper investigation. She claims the AFL failed to interview her, examine his phone, or verify the medical reason he gave for the photo's existence. Her lawyers argue the investigation was neither adequate nor impartial, and that the AFL worked closely with Carlton to exonerate Luke Sayers.
The statutory declaration Luke Sayers provided to the AFL allegedly contained false claims, including that his wife accessed his account and posted the image, and that she suffers from mental illness. Cate Sayers' lawyers say the declaration included 11 false statements, such as an unsubstantiated claim about her being raped as a child. Luke Sayers' lawyers have yet to respond to these latest allegations.
The case has broader implications for how the AFL handles internal investigations, with critics describing the process as self-serving and opaque. Cate Sayers' legal team asserts that the AFL failed to follow its own Respect and Responsibility Investigations Protocol, and that the outcome was designed to publicly exonerate Luke Sayers while blaming family circumstances.
