Since the beginning of the week, many of us have been in shock. The judgment of the Superior Court of Ontario on the request for class action filed by three former junior hockey players, reported Monday by Martin Leclerc, of Radio-Canada, is particularly hard to read.
For the uninformed reader, the level of sexual, physical and psychological violence depicted is deeply disturbing. But for sports pundits, it’s probably that very public shock that’s most infuriating.
Already, last July, 28 Canadian academics published an open letter entitled “Sexual violence and misogyny are deeply rooted in men’s hockey”. While the Ontario judgment depicts a systemic problem in hockey, where the most degrading scenes take place in full view of coaches and managers, the July letter already spoke of a culture that “normalizes violence, aggression, alcohol, bullying, sexist and homophobic “jokes” and the degradation of women and LGBTQ2+ people”.
Why, then, the general surprise, even sports journalists? The answer also lies in the work of researchers. The collective letter enjoins us in particular to read a 2013 paper published by sociologist Kristi A. Allain. Its title (translated): “What happens in the locker room stays in the locker room”. Her research focuses on the culture of secrecy in hockey, and on the mechanisms put in place in the environment to close the doors to external gazes – particularly if they are female. In short, hockey players would be socialized into not telling anyone, ever, and the social penalty for breaking this code would be very high.
We understand two things. First, the typical masculinity of the hockey player, that is to say the guy who is not very talkative, even laconic, with always repressed emotions that we are used to seeing in interviews at the end of games, hides something darker. If this type of public personality is actively encouraged by sport, one can also think that it is because it protects the milieu from the outside world.
Afterwards, the three former players who brought the issue of violence in sport to light are, in the context, all the braver. Five years after the #MeToo movement, the taboo surrounding sexual violence in the locker room may seem surprising. But the more one reads the various papers, memoirs and theses of the collective of researchers, the more one understands. The cultural barrier to overcome in order to denounce is more like Mount Everest than a barrier.
Will this week’s political shock wave be enough to change things? Once again, another publication enlightens us. Gretchen Kerr, Bruce Kidd and Peter Donnelly of the University of Toronto co-authored “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Fight for Child Protection in Sport”. The article describes a cycle where a “media crisis” draws attention to the issue, which leads to the proposal of action plans supposed to lead to change, which are poorly executed or even sabotaged by internal resistance. In the end, very little progress is made. Meanwhile, the political gaze turns away from the question…until the next crisis erupts.
According to the researchers, we will remain in the cycle until an independent institution is set up to protect minors against abuse in sport. Otherwise, the “culture of control” that prevails in the community will continue to stifle any real accountability process.
This culture, described in the article published in 2020, we all saw it at work last year at Hockey Canada. It had taken weeks of scandal before obtaining the resignation of the leaders who had used the contributions of the parents to create a fund dedicated to settling amicably the complaints of sexual assault against the players. Several major sponsors had to withdraw their support from the organization and several regional chapters had to consider disaffiliating before its leaders seemed to take the measure of the situation ever so slightly. And even.
Federal Sports Minister Pascale St-Onge floated this week the idea of a public inquiry into the issue of violence in sport. For researchers who have been bringing the situation to light for years now, without being given a quarter of the attention they deserve, the notion that one may need to establish a diagnosis rather than go straight to treatment may be frustrating to hear.
The merit of the idea therefore depends above all on the form it will take. If an investigation forces the speech of leaders who had, until then, refused to participate in the research, the exercise can allow an important step towards transparency. If, however, it leads to recommendations that will once again allow the organizations concerned to protect their image rather than introduce a real change in culture, then we will have wasted our time.
One thing, at this point, already seems certain. The hockey milieu is far too toxic to reform on its own, even with popular disgust, even under the spotlight. Change will have to be forced from the outside.