‘Dirt files’, sex chats and years of bullying: Inside the downfall of banned netball coach Tracy Wallace we couldn’t reveal until now – as her coaching partner Darren Abela admits child sex crimes

A netball coach has been banned for life after a tribunal found she bullied, humiliated and abused multiple girls over many years.

Tracy Wallace – who was the long-term coaching partner of admitted sex offender Darren Adam Abela, though she is not accused of any criminal wrongdoing herself – was handed a lifetime ban from all child-related netball activities in Victoria by the state’s official governing body Netball Victoria in April last year.

This ban included attending any games involving children as a spectator. 

Wallace was also banned for 20 years from any activity with adult netball teams.

However, she appealed the decision to the National Sports Tribunal, which lowered the lifetime ban to 10 years and also allowed her to resume watching games involving children.

The Daily Mail – which has been aware of the allegations against Wallace since Abela’s arrest but could not publish them until now – understands that NST hearing involved multiple child witnesses, with insiders saying the process was ‘extremely traumatic’ for the girls involved.

However, Netball Victoria appealed the NST decision in March this year, and this week its persistence paid off with Wallace getting banned for life.

The tribunal found numerous allegations proven against Wallace, including that she had used ‘aggressive language and tone of voice in the presence of a child’. 

This included swearing, abusing and belittling various child players between May 2017 and January 2025, per the published decision.

The Tribunal found Wallace used derogatory and abusive language, including calling players ‘s***’ and ‘f***ing useless’, as well as an incident at Altona in 2018 where Wallace was yelling at umpires and one of her players told her to ‘stop and shut up’.

Wallace took the player aside and ‘started screaming abuse at her’, including ‘get the f*** out of the stadium’, according to the determination.

The distraught child’s mother attempted to complain but Abela told her to ‘let it go’, the Tribunal found. 

In 2021, per the judgement, Wallace told a child that she was ‘so s***’ and asked how she did not know how to hold the ‘f***ing ball’. She also referred to the child as ugly and a ‘slapper’.

Wallace further verbally abused a child over invitations to a farewell party before a game, the National Sports Tribunal found. She was angry because the player invited some teammates but not others.

The Tribunal found Wallace berated the player, calling her ‘disloyal’ and labelling the girls she invited ‘lying b***es’ who were ‘disgusting’.

Wallace also ordered a player to leave the team in 2023 with just three games to go because ‘they want to win’, according to the sport’s disciplinary body. 

According to the public determination, Wallace also engaged in inappropriate contact with a child, making phone calls and sending texts or messages at a volume and/or at times that exceeded professional boundaries.

The Tribunal found that Wallace, in 2017, maintained a fake social media account of a child named ‘Alex Fang’ to obtain information about players and parents.

The determination also referred to evidence that Wallace kept what witnesses described as a ‘dirt file’ on parents and players, and that between 2021 and 2023, she contacted a player for ‘schoolyard gossip’ and ‘matters related to relationships with boys’.

Wallace, a former Premier League Netball player who has been involved in the sport for more than 50 years, was also found by the Tribunal to have encouraged and engaged in conversations of a sexual nature with a child.

Wallace additionally discussed the private details of a child with other players, including if the girl was ‘having sex in her school bathroom’, the panel found.

The judgement states that she told a player she was ‘too fat’ and needed to ‘lose weight’, and forced a child to continue to play when they were injured.

The Tribunal also found that Wallace filmed two children who were ‘behaving poorly during a training session’ so that she could show Abela, who was head coach at the time. One of the girls ‘mooned’ Wallace, so she ‘flew into a rage at what she perceived to be a sign of disrespect’.

Wallace verbally abused the girls in front of the other players, according to the determination, calling them ‘disgusting trash’ and ‘bush pigs’, then dropped them from the club.

The Tribunal accepted that Wallace ‘zoomed in’ on the child exposing their buttocks and ‘failed to delete the video as soon as she became aware that it depicted a partially naked child’.

Separately, the appeal panel accepted that she had encouraged and assisted a child to take the morning after pill without the knowledge of her parents.

Wallace also threatened to negatively impact a child’s netball pathway if they did not meet her expectations in terms of ‘playing and non-playing reasons’, the Tribunal found. 

According to the determination, Wallace punished four children during a 2025 pre-season camp by using ‘inappropriate language’; she further forced them to swim underwater in front of their peers, causing them to be humiliated.

The Tribunal heard that the girls protested against going in the pool, but Wallace got ‘upset and angry’ at them for ‘being disrespectful to her’. She demanded that the girls hand over their phones and then swim underwater to get their hair wet. 

In another incident outlined in the judgement, Wallace forced a child to change into a sports bra in view of others, which embarrassed her in ‘front of her peers’.

Parents later gave ‘compelling evidence’ which exposed the ‘significantly detrimental psychological effect the training camp had on the children’, the NST panel heard. 

The public determination stated that Wallace’s behaviour was intended to ’embarrass, humiliate and punish the four girls’ and reinforce her authority over the children at the camp.

The Tribunal upheld allegations that Wallace had victimised or fabricated stories about a child after they left her team, intending to harm them.

The Tribunal also considered allegations that Wallace possessed and shared a video of a child performing a sexual act, which would constitute ‘child abuse material’, but found the allegation was not proven.

The Tribunal accepted that Wallace’s conduct involved vulnerable children and multiple people, occurred over many years, and involved a breach of trust as a coach.

Wallace also showed ‘little, if any, remorse or contrition’, it found.

Wallace, who played State League Netball from age 16 to 22, retired from playing at 42. 

In 2012, she took up the coaching role at the Westside Saints, which was part of the St Albans Caroline Springs Netball Association (SACSNA). 

The Tribunal was highly critical of the culture within SACSNA and Westside during the period in which it found Wallace engaged in misconduct. It found that between May 2017 and January 2025, a ‘results-driven’ and ‘win-at-all-costs’ culture permeated.

The Tribunal also linked the culture to Abela, who was head coach at the Westside Saints until 2021 before he was replaced by Wallace.

Abela, 50, this month pleaded guilty to multiple sex offences including penetrating a child under 16. His offences are unrelated to the Tribunal’s findings against Wallace, and Wallace has not been charged with any criminal offence.

The panel found that the association’s culture was the ‘requirement that children and their parents must be loyal and show respect to SACSNA, Westside and the coaches’.

Wallace demanded ‘unqualified respect and obedience’, according to the appeal panel’s determination, while parents were expected to accept the coaching methods if they wanted their children to progress as elite players .

The determination found that complaints about the treatment of children by coaches were not encouraged or acted upon and that it was ‘futile to make complaints’.

One example highlighted by the Tribunal was an incident where a complaint made against Wallace by a parent in May 2021 was also lodged with Netball Victoria but referred back to SACSNA for investigation. 

The Tribunal found that it appeared as though ‘no investigation occurred as to the behaviour of [Wallace] or her treatment of the children’.

The public judgement found that SACSNA and Westside’s success ‘came at a cost’, with the culture creating a ‘toxic division in the netball community’.

It was highlighted that on one side, there were the coaches, parents and children who became disillusioned with the culture and left the club – and, in some cases, the sport.

On the other side, there were the coaches, administrators, parents and children who ‘prioritised the quest for success’ and ‘accepted [that] the price for that success was total and unqualified loyalty and support for the coaches, including [Wallace]’.

Netball Victoria, in its appeal, submitted that the proven conduct was ‘undeniably extremely serious and occurred in contumelious disregard for the policies and child-safeguarding obligations that apply to coaches of junior athletes’.

‘[Wallace] had not demonstrated any insight or contrition and there was no reason to infer that she would not return to her old ways if she was permitted to coach children again,’ Netball Victoria submitted.

‘Thirdly, the damage she did to children under her care was substantial with some of the witnesses giving evidence they were required to seek psychological assistance in an attempt to undo the damage that she had inflicted upon them.

‘Fourthly, that the penalty did not adequately take into account the breadth or depth of the infringements and the fact that they affected some very vulnerable children.’