Cate Sayers has escalated her defamation case against her husband, former Carlton Football Club president Luke Sayers, over a lewd photo posted on his X account in January 2025. The post, which showed a picture of his penis and tagged a senior executive of a major Carlton sponsor, was deleted after 15 minutes, with Sayers claiming his account had been hacked.
In court documents filed last week, Cate Sayers alleges that the AFL cleared her husband of wrongdoing within two weeks, without conducting a proper investigation. She claims the AFL did not interview her, forensically examine his phone or X account, or verify the medical reason he gave for the photo's existence. The AFL, she argues, failed to follow its own Respect and Responsibility Investigations Protocol and worked closely with Carlton to exonerate Luke Sayers publicly.
The case centres on a statutory declaration Luke Sayers signed, which Cate Sayers says wrongly blamed her for the post and included false and defamatory claims about her sexual history, mental health, and relationships. The declaration allegedly contained imputations that she accessed his account and posted the image, and that she suffers from mental illnesses such as bipolar and multi personality disorder, making her denials unreliable.
Cate Sayers' lawyers argue the statutory declaration contained 11 false claims, including that she was raped as a schoolchild by a teacher and his wife. They also note that a letter from Luke Sayers' lawyers in March reportedly admitted the photo was not taken for medical purposes, contradicting his earlier claim. Luke Sayers' lawyers have yet to respond to the latest claims, but have previously argued the declaration was true and legally privileged.
The case, set to be heard in the Victorian Supreme Court, could expose how the AFL investigates its own, with critics describing the process as self-serving and opaque. Cate Sayers seeks damages for defamation and invasion of privacy, while the scandal has already led to the collapse of her marriage and Luke Sayers stepping down from his role at Carlton.
