Australian rugby league has been rocked by a group sex scandal which has resulted in Matthew Johns, the former international and Wigan Warriors stand-off, being sacked as a TV commentator and assistant coach.

This week it was revealed Johns, 37, and other players had participated in a group sex session while on tour with the Cronulla Sharks in New Zealand in 2002.

The woman at the centre of the allegations, named only as Clare, claimed that Johns was one of six Cronulla players or staff who had sex with her in a hotel room in Christchurch. At one point during the two-hour ordeal at least 11 people were in the room, with some of the men pleasuring themselves and others subjecting Clare, who was 19 at the time, to depraved acts.

The players involved insisted the sex was consensual, and the incident was investigated by police at the time but no charges were laid.

Clare spoke publicly for the first time this week as part of an investigation into sex in rugby league by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners program. She told the program that her life had been destroyed by the incident and she had become suicidal, at one point buying a rope to hang herself.

“There was always ... there was always hands on me and there was always ... if one person had stopped, someone was touching me and doing something else,'' she said of the incident. “Every time I looked up, there would be more and more people in the room and ... just lots of guys in the room watching ... maybe two or three that were on the bed that were doing stuff to me. If I had a gun I’d shoot them right now. I hate them, they’re disgusting.”

Johns, who is married with two children, admitted his participation in the group sex incident, but insisted it was consensual. He told the programme that after it was over, he went up to Clare in the car park and apologised about the other men coming into the room.

He said he always knew that the incident would catch up with him, and last Friday apologised to his family on The Footy Show, a weekly variety-style rugby league program he co-hosts which is broadcast on Australia’s Nine network.

“It caused all parties enormous pain and embarrassment,” Johns said on air. “For me personally, it has put my family through enormous anguish and embarrassment and it has once again. For that I can't say sorry enough.”

Today Johns was summoned back from a family holiday in Western Australia to face his employers. He was stood down from his position as league commentator for the Nine network and suspended indefinitely from the Melbourne Storm where he is an assistant coach.

David Gallop, the National Rugby League chief executive, described the issues outlined in the Four Corners program as “appalling and unacceptable''.

“The distress of the victims spoke for itself, and to the extent that the game can apologise for the actions of individuals, then I offer that apology unreservedly,'” Gallop said.

David Gyngell, Nine Network’s chief executive and a close friend of Johns, said the decision for the former league star to leave the television station was by mutual agreement "and in the best interests of the Nine network, the game and its supporters, Matthew Johns and his family".

"The fact is whatever the argument about the details of the New Zealand incident involving Cronulla players in 2002, the conduct and its aftermath were simply unacceptable, full stop," Gyngell said in a statement following a two-hour meeting with Johns and his manager John Fordham in Sydney.

The Melbourne Storm, for which Johns is a part-time time skills coach, released a statement which said: "Following discussions between Melbourne Storm and Matthew Johns's management earlier today, it was mutually agreed that Matthew would stand down from his part-time role with the club, indefinitely."

Johns played alongside his brother Andrew – considered one of rugby league's greatest-ever players - with the Newcastle Knights for eight years before moving to England in 2000 to play for Wigan.

He returned to Australia in 2001 to play his final season with Cronulla and retired through injury from the game in December 2002. He has since carved a successful career in Australia as a league commentator and, until this week, was an enormously popular TV personality.