What if the hockey players had brought a man into their hotel room to take turns beating him up? Would we have kept the secret like that?
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
At the end of the line, it is the lawyer Sophie Gagnon, general manager of Juripop, who asks me the question. Frankly, I don’t think so. She neither.
Maybe that’s rape culture. This tendency to minimize or even ignore sexual assaults, even the most atrocious ones. And this staggering revelation, Monday, from the president of Hockey Canada: each year, the organization conducts two or three investigations into sexual assaults committed in its ranks. As if it were normal. Ordinary. The usual routine, what!
Weeks pass and Hockey Canada is mired in a pestilential scandal. The more the leaders of the powerful sports federation try to disentangle themselves, the more they sink.
They got into it on May 26, when TSN reported the sordid details of a civil lawsuit filed against their organization. Slowly they got bogged down. They were up to their necks in mud on Wednesday when Ottawa froze their funds.
The government has been criticized for taking too long to react. But it wasn’t until this week that we were able to measure the extent of Hockey Canada’s efforts to keep the lid tight on the pot. Before the disastrous appearance of its leaders before a committee of elected officials in Ottawa, no one knew quite how to handle this affair.
Let us agree: the alleged crime is extremely serious. A gang rape. Eight players taking turns assaulting a woman. They sequester her in a hotel room in London. She tries to flee, they hold her back by force. She cries, they laugh. It is unbearable violence and barbarism.
Star players or not, these guys must answer for their crime.
But now, the victim refuses to file a complaint. Neither to the police nor to the investigators mandated by Hockey Canada to shed light on these allegations. “We cannot force someone to file a complaint, recalls Sophie Gagnon. In a case of sexual violence, there is no point in going to the police if the victim refuses to cooperate, because the proof rests almost entirely on his testimony. »
In other words, you can’t blame Hockey Canada, or even the police, if the players were able to escape a criminal trial. “There is only the victim who can do that. »
But the sports federation could still have done more. She should have done more. She preferred to buy the silence of the victim. And protect his executioners.
Twenty-six months. Hockey Canada’s internal investigation lasted 26 months. And how many players involved in the gang rape have been identified during these two years of investigation? Zero. Not one.
Tell me about effective investigators. Guess they did it on purpose…
Incredibly, players weren’t required to cooperate with the investigation. So, of course, their agents strongly advised them not to; their career was at stake. And here is Hockey Canada feigning helplessness: if no one wants to collaborate, what do you want, nothing can be done…
It’s too easy. “It would not take a lot of legal creativity to find a lever to force players to participate in an investigation,” said Sophie Gagnon.
Even without this legal leverage, adds the lawyer, the allegations were so serious that Hockey Canada could have used them to terminate the players’ contracts, in the event of refusal to cooperate.
In short, Hockey Canada could act, but did not. By gross negligence. Or, more likely, to protect his players. And his own ass by the way.
The sports federation chose to settle out of court, which had the advantage of sweeping the gang rape under the rug. Come on, we forget everything! The boys will continue their career in the major leagues, as if nothing had happened. It would be such a shame to sacrifice all these talents…
Hockey Canada hastened to pay on behalf of the eight players involved – players, it should be remembered, that the organization claims to have never been able to identify. Bad big blank check.
As a precaution, the agreement nevertheless prohibits the parties from disclosing the names of the eight John Does. Once again, this allows Hockey Canada to take refuge in silence: we would like to tell you more, but we can’t, it’s confidential. Don’t get us wrong, it’s out of respect for the victim…
That too is too easy.
If Hockey Canada truly respected victims, it would tackle the triad of toxic cultures – that of silence, that of impunity and that of rape – that rot its ranks. Importantly, it would never again feel like it was granting players permission to rape with impunity.
There, Hockey Canada would really respect the victims. Who knows, maybe he would even give them the courage to file a complaint.