“Deeply disturbed” by the alleged gang rape that occurred four years ago on the sidelines of an event sponsored by Hockey Canada, Victor Mete wanted to dissociate himself from the case.
Posted at 12:04 p.m.
In June 2018, hours after the Hockey Canada Foundation’s annual gala in London, Ont., eight hockey players allegedly sexually assaulted a young woman in a hotel room. The victim has filed a civil lawsuit against the suspects, against the Canadian Hockey League (or CHL, which includes the three major junior leagues in the country) and Hockey Canada. It was ultimately the latter organization that reached an amicable agreement with the complainant.
Some of the suspects were members of the national team that had won gold at the World Junior Championship a few months earlier, and had been honored that evening at the gala.
Victor Mete, a 24-year-old defender who played four seasons with the Montreal Canadiens, was a member of this champion team. However, he had not attended the Hockey Canada gala since he was on vacation with his family in Jamaica. This detail was already known – his agent Darren Ferris had revealed it a few days after the allegations were exposed – but Mete saw fit to reiterate his innocence in a statement published Thursday morning on social networks.
“Like the eight [suspects] were not named, the event left an unfortunate cloud over all the players who were on the Canadian team,” he wrote.
“It is important for me to specify that I was not present at this gala,” he added, claiming to have learned of the details of this event only recently through the media.
“I am deeply troubled by the details of this event and, should my assistance be required by those investigating this case, I stand ready to cooperate fully in any way,” he concluded.
Since the prosecution identifies the eight suspects as CHL players, goaltender Colton Point as well as defensemen Cale Makar and Dante Fabbro, who were then aligned with American university teams, are also excluded from the list of potential aggressors. Freelance journalist Ken Campbell also established, after contacting agents for Jonah Gadjovich and Cal Foote, that they were not among the suspects.
Immediately after the assault, Hockey Canada officials retained the services of a law firm to conduct an independent investigation into the matter. The same leaders, however, admitted last week, before the Heritage Committee in Ottawa, that the players of the 2018 champion team had not been obliged to testify, so that a dozen of them, all at most, gave their version of the facts to the investigators.
Despite an investigation deemed “incomplete”, Hockey Canada considered the case closed and did not seek further to find the culprits, relying on the will of the victim not to publish their names publicly. It is therefore impossible to determine, for example, whether suspects have again worn the maple leaf uniform.
Deploring the handling of this matter, the Government of Canada has suspended, until further notice, the public funding it provided to Hockey Canada. Major sponsors, such as Scotiabank and Tim Hortons, among others, have also withdrawn their financial support for the World Juniors.