Sex offenders should not play in the NHL

Can hockey players who have committed gang rape play in the National League as if nothing had happened?

That’s the question the National Hockey League (NHL) will have to answer over the summer.

In this case, the story of the alleged victim is horrifying.

In the summer of 2018, after a Hockey Canada gala, eight junior hockey players (including some from the national junior team) allegedly sexually assaulted a young woman. They meet her in a bar, buy her drinks. She is in an advanced state of intoxication, speaks with difficulty, loses her balance. One of the players takes him to his hotel room. He would then have brought in seven other players. According to the alleged victim’s version in court documents, the eight players had sex with her without her consent. She cries, tries to leave, says she is “manipulated, intimidated” to stay in the room.

Last April, the alleged victim sued Hockey Canada, the Canadian Hockey League and the eight players (who are not named) for $3.5 million. A month later, Hockey Canada settled out of court. We don’t want to say whether there is a confidentiality agreement.

Hockey Canada does not want to say anything more about this case. Move along, nothing to see.

If the excellent journalist Rick Westhead, of TSN, had not revealed the affair last week, nobody would have heard about it.

It’s hard to say without having all the facts. But in this case, a question arises: Did Hockey Canada buy the silence of the alleged victim with a confidentiality agreement? We do not know.

If these gang rape allegations are serious enough for Hockey Canada to settle out of court within a month, they are serious enough for there to be a true independent investigation. Who would determine, on a balance of probabilities, whether sexual assaults took place in that hotel room. If so, Hockey Canada and the NHL can then sanction the culprits.

Hockey Canada defends itself by saying that it carried out an independent investigation in 2018 in which the alleged victim would have “chosen” not to participate. The alleged victim, she has another version of the events: Hockey Canada would have done nothing. (Hockey Canada has not released the results of its 2018 survey.)

Since Hockey Canada no longer seems very interested in getting to the bottom of things – which is a very big problem in itself – someone more responsible will have to do it for him.

It should be the federal government, which oversees sports associations like Hockey Canada.

It should also be the NHL, where 20 of the 22 players of Team Canada Junior 2018 play today. It is the NHL that can impose the most severe sanctions in sporting terms. Important detail: the vast majority of Team Canada Junior 2018 players were of legal age at the time of the alleged events.

For all sorts of reasons, not all sexual assaults result in a criminal trial. In this case, the alleged victim did not file a complaint with the police. It is his strictest right.

But that shouldn’t allow organizations like Hockey Canada and the NHL to turn a blind eye when there are such serious allegations against its athletes. Sexual offenders must be punished by their sports organizations – after a serious and independent investigation – even if a victim does not file a criminal complaint.

Major League Baseball pitcher Trevor Bauer has just been suspended without pay for two years due to allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence, even though the prosecutor has not brought criminal charges. The NHL should take inspiration from this decision of Major League Baseball. And send a clear message that sex offenders will not be tolerated on the ice.