Candice Warner reveals she 'contemplated suicide' (2025)

Candice Warner says she came very close to taking her own life after her pub toilet tryst with football star Sonny Bill Williamswent public.

The former Ironwoman, 40, was in headlines for weeks after she was photographed in a bathroom hook-up with then NRL star Sonny, 39, during a night out at Sydney's beachside Clovelly Hotel back in 2007.

Candice was hit with a barrage of 'slut-shaming' comments and public ridicule which left her wanting to end it all, she told the Mental As Anyone podcaston Monday.

'I definitely contemplated suicide many times.I remember driving to (notorious Sydney suicide spot) The Gap and pulling over and just thinking there's no way out. I felt like there was no escape,' she said.

'I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. I was publicly humiliated. I think being the female in that situation in such a public place and it all being played out in the media, I was, I suppose, slut shamed.'

But just at that moment when she was about to end it all, Candice rang her brother to say what was about to happen, and that ultimately saved her life.

'I called my brother. He sort of talked me, not talked me out of it, but he just definitely said, "I'm coming to get you", "don't do anything stupid",' she said.

Candice, who shares daughtersIvy, 10, Indi, eight, and Isla, five, with cricket star husband David, has been open in recent years about the public humiliation she suffered from the Sonny-Bill tryst when she was just 22-years-old.

She opened up about the fallout during an appearance on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! last year.

'I make one silly mistake as a young girl and that was it. I remember just the hurt and pain that I caused my family because of comments that were made about me in the media,' she said at the time.

'That was probably the hardest period of my life in just how relentless it was. It was just constant.'

In a direct piece to camera, Candice spoke about the extent of the public shaming.

'When I was a lot younger, there was a lot of, I guess, scrutiny on me and name calling and online bullying towards me over a mistake that I made,' she said.

'Then I moved to Perth. My family needed a break from people approaching them and saying, "What's your daughter up to? I've read this, I've heard that".

'I wasn't perfect but I definitely wasn't the person that I was made out to be.'

Candice said she took the lessons she learned about withstanding public abuse and criticism and used them to help David and their kids when he was found culpable in a ball-tampering scandal.

'I try to look at everything in a positive light and I feel like in 2018 when my husband went through what he went through with cricket, I knew I had the tools for us as a family to get through it,' she said.

'I knew I was able to guide him because I had been through it.'

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at her book launch in 2023, Candice said she hasn't heard a thing from Sonny since the incident as they've both 'moved on with their lives'.

'No, I haven't heard from him and I didn't expect to, he's moved on with his life and I've moved on with mine,' she said.

Williams, who switched from rugby league to rugby and became a star with the New Zealand All Blacks as well as doing some professional boxing, converted to Islam within two years of the bathroom tryst.

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