QMJHL | You have to know what happened in the locker room

After Stephen Quirk, a second former QMJHL player, Carl Latulippe, says he suffered violence, intimidation and kidnapping from the veterans of his team.

Mr. Latulippe alleges that veterans of the Saguenéens de Chicoutimi in 1994 would have asked him and other recruits to undress and masturbate in the team bus while watching porn movies. Some of them would then have been locked naked in the toilets of the bus. Mr. Latulippe also speaks of a climate of intimidation and violence, according to an investigation by our colleagues Ariane Lacoursière and Simon-Olivier Lorange.¹

Stephen Quirk, who played in Moncton between 1995 and 1998, alleges that veterans notably penetrated his anus with their fingers and heating cream.^2.3

In both cases, the alleged acts are not only disgusting: they are potentially criminal acts.⁴

In addition to these two cases in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (LHJMQ), 16 other former junior players elsewhere in the country allege, in the context of a class action in Ontario, that they were victims of intimidation, and/or sexual misconduct between 1979 and 2014.

As a society, we have the choice:

1) close your eyes, do the minimum required, and don’t ask too many questions, unless a formal complaint obliges the QMJHL to investigate itself;

2) get to the bottom of things and trigger a real independent investigation to find out what happened in the locker room over the years, and what is happening there today.

We argue for the second option.

Can the QMJHL investigate itself? No. Such an investigation would hardly be credible at the present time. For three reasons.

First, since Mr. Quirk’s allegations were filed in 2021, the QMJHL and its teams have done nothing to get to the bottom of things. Along with the other leagues in Canada, they handcuffed their first committee of experts (Sheldon Kennedy, Danièle Sauvageau, Camille Thériault) by prohibiting them from asking players questions about sexual assault. “We would have liked to go much further”, testified M^me Sauvageau in parliamentary committee. Even though the committee found there was a “systemic culture of mistreatment,” the leagues shelved the report and hid it from the public for 14 months.

Second, the QMJHL and its teams are being sued in civil proceedings in Ontario – among others by Mr. Quirk – on these issues. Any evidence accumulated by the QMJHL may be used against it in court. (The QMJHL is currently investigating the allegations in Chicoutimi, but not in Moncton due to the legal action.)

Third, victims would probably not trust such a process. This is what French-speaking players told the Kennedy-Sauvageau-Thériault committee.

Currently, the alleged victims do not really have a safe and independent forum to make a complaint. The Independent Complaints Officer has no sanction power over the QMJHL.

Who could investigate? This is where the deafening silence of the Trudeau and Legault governments makes us deeply uncomfortable.

The State must set up a commission of inquiry which will be able to get to the bottom of things, by hearing the players confidentially.

Carl Latulippe and the three Ontario class action plaintiffs, Stephen Quirk, Daniel Carcillo and Garrett Taylor, have shown immense courage in speaking out publicly. Their allegations are too serious to sit idly by.

Of course, the file is very delicate, which feeds the culture of silence. The same person could be both a victim (as a recruit) and an executioner (as a veteran). But we must expose and destroy this toxic locker room culture that has ruined the lives of Stephen Quirk and Carl Latulippe. Prevent it from happening again, in a hockey locker room or elsewhere. The teams will also have to compensate the victims.

We understand that junior hockey is popular, that the teams are institutions in their region.

This is no reason to look elsewhere.

4. The two alleged victims did not file criminal charges. The alleged acts describe what most likely constitutes sexual assault in Moncton, forcible confinement, intimidation and assault in Chicoutimi.