Sexual assaults. Assault. Torture.
These are all criminal acts.
These are also all acts committed at the expense of recruits during initiations into junior hockey. These revelations, taken from the testimonies of ex-players who brought a class action in Ontario and published Monday by Radio-Canada colleague Martin Leclerc1give the taste of vomiting.
The entire political class was disgusted by these revelations of sexual assaults, hockey sticks inserted into the anus, whipping of naked recruits, confinement in the back of the bus, heating pain cream on genitals.
The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (LHJMQ) will come to explain itself to the parliamentary committee in Quebec. It is necessary, but it is very, very far from sufficient.
If parliamentarians and governments really want to take concrete action on this file, they have only one thing to do: launch a public inquiry into the toxic climate and mistreatment in junior hockey.
In these pages last December, Ottawa was asked to launch a public inquiry into toxic sport2. We haven’t changed our minds.
But the facts revealed this week are so disturbing that they warrant a commission on their own, specifically for junior hockey.
Governments have a moral responsibility to ensure:
1) that this culture of abuse is well and truly a thing of the past;
2) that young hockey players can practice their sport in a safe environment;
3) that we can establish precisely what happened at different times;
4) Responsible adults, teams and leagues can be held accountable and penalties applied accordingly.
If Ottawa turns a deaf ear, Quebec can proceed alone.
Shouldn’t the leagues, including the QMJHL, be given the opportunity to investigate? Precisely: they had it, this opportunity. And they didn’t take it, preferring to convince themselves that there was no problem.
In June 2020, two ex-players, Daniel Carcillo and Garrett Taylor, filed a class action against the junior hockey leagues and their teams. They allege that they have been victims of repeated abuse (particularly, but not only during initiations), say that this abuse is systemic, and that the leagues/teams have done nothing to stop it. These actions allegedly took place in 2002 and 2008-2009 respectively. Other players were added as the dispute progressed: 19 former players testified to having suffered abuse between 1979 and 2014.
What do the leagues do? They hire a trio of experts (ex-player Sheldon Kennedy, ex-politician Camille Thériault, and ex-coach Danièle Sauvageau) to assess the situation and make recommendations. Their report, submitted in November 2020, is devastating: there is a “systemic culture of mistreatment”, these abuses have “significant impacts” in the long term for the victims, and there is a “culture of silence” preventing the players to file a complaint.
The trio of experts survey 259 players playing junior hockey in 2020. Not in 1982. In 2020. The findings are alarming:
– 10% of players said they were victims of bullying (bullying) or harassment in this environment;
– 26% of players have seen cases of bullying or harassment;
– 45% of players have heard of such cases;
– only 3% of players reported these cases to junior hockey authorities.
Reaction of a person with a social conscience: we have a big problem, we need to make major changes to protect our athletes.
Reaction from the middle of junior hockey: we hide the report for 14 months, we order another one from a law firm, and we change almost nothing.
The commissioner of the QMJHL, Gilles Courteau, believes that he “didn’t feel like he had to do anything special” after the Kennedy-Thériault-Sauvageau report. Canadian Hockey League president Dan MacKenzie “doesn’t feel it’s systemic,” he testified in court. Reminder: 10% of gamers in 2020 say they have been bullied or harassed. It shows how much some junior hockey leaders prefer to stick their heads in the sand…
Unless you are sickly naive, the junior leagues can no longer be trusted to curb this problem of toxic culture. They are being sued in civil proceedings by ex-players, have too much to lose in terms of reputation and did not take the measure of the problem when they were alerted in the fall of 2020.
We would like to believe that this toxic culture has been driven out of the locker room. But the very worrying data from the 2020 poll cast serious doubt.
Meanwhile, the civil suit continues in Ontario. The victims must be compensated for what they suffered.
Regardless of the outcome of this civil suit (or possible criminal investigations if there are complaints to the police), a public inquiry must be launched. Victims will be able to testify in confidence in a confidential manner, without fear of being ostracized by the world of hockey.
It is the very least that the victims can do.