Update

11 Sept: The NHL has just decided the 5 boys have been punished enough! though they were found not guilty, and refused to testify. They can start again playing for NHL teams as of 1 Dec. 2025. The NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said, “Obviously, we take the matter very seriously, and that’s why it’s still under review,” Daly said Tuesday in Las Vegas.

Was it a waste of time to protest when the World Juniors Hockey Championships came to Halifax in late December 2022 into January 2023?  In the bitter cold and snow, four of us leafleted and picketed in front of the Scotiabank Centre to protest the sexual assaults committed by junior hockey players for decades – including the assault by two Junior hockey players in a Halifax hotel room in 2003. Both men went on to careers in the National Hockey League (NHL).  

As you’ll recall, 

• Hockey Canada paid out $8.9 million in settlements to 21 sexual assault victims from 1989 to 2021.
• Most of the money came from a portion of the $23.80 “insurance fee” levied by Hockey Canada on parents of hundreds of thousands of young Canadians enrolled in hockey.
• The money went into Hockey Canada’s National Equity Fund, a secret fund used to pay off (and silence) some of the victims of sexual assault. 
• Of the $8.9 million, Hockey Canada paid $6.8 million hockey legend Sheldon Kennedy for the sexual assaults by coach Graham James against him, and other players.
• That means that $2.1 million of the funds (only 30%) were paid to all the women victims!
• In June 2018, the hockey junior players were attending a hockey gala and golf event in London, Ont. Five Team Canada players were accused of sexual assault on EM, a 20-year-old woman.   She filed a lawsuit for $3.5 million and settled for an undisclosed sum, earlier in 2022 – before the Juniors played in Halifax in late December 2022. 
• Then the police laid criminal charges of sexual assault against five of the Junior hockey players based on EM’s account of what had happened in a hotel room after the 2018 hockey gala in London.
• Last week all five players were acquitted by an Ontario judge.   

But at the time, when the Juniors were in Halifax, around new year’s 2023, white man after white man went out of his way to praise these players as “top” athletes.  Columnist John DeMont in the Chronicle Herald, swooned, 

“The beauty of what elite athletes do, the miracle of strength, speed, timing and co-ordination that allows the best of them to achieve virtuosity amidst equally gifted opponents … And what about Sport is not real life: even the most hard-bitten fans know that.  Then again, we are not always looking for reality.” Chronicle Herald, 5 Jan. 2023.

Or as Derek Montague in the Saturday Huddle wrote at the time, 

“When Dylan Guenther scored during 3-on-3 overtime to give Canada another World Junior gold, Scotiabank Centre in Halifax erupted in celebration. Another thing that erupted was the city’s downtown economy.”

“…we witnessed something special; all of that youth and talent, along with the transcendent moments they gave us.”

John DeMont, in the Chronicle Herald

No one in the media said a word about the decades-long toxic and likely criminal behaviour of the Juniors.  Excuse me. Isn’t there something missing here amid this fulsome, almost hysterical outpouring of adulation for hockey and its players? Weren’t there gang rapes involving Team Canada at the 2003 and 2018 Juniors? And weren’t 21 women paid millions of dollars for their silence about other incidents? And didn’t all of that hand-wringing vanish once the 2023 World Junior hockey championships began, at a time when according to columnist John DeMont, “we witnessed something special; all of that youth and talent, along with the transcendent moments they gave us.”

Well –the ruins of a legal case of sexual assault against five hockey players are piled before us. 

The five men hockey players were all exonerated last week by Justice Maria Carroccia in a London, Ont courtroom.  The five “boys” must have high-fived with one another, and vowed their innocence.  All but one player (Carter Hart) refused to testify, to avoid subjecting  themselves to cross-examination.  The four (except for Hart) said not a word at their trials except uttering the words “not guilty” at the outset of proceedings. All were cleared of sexual assault last Thursday.

Four out of five players gave no evidence at the trial: all were acquitted

This trial featured not only a woman judge but four of the five accused players had women lawyers who argued their cases. The cross examination of the now 27-year-old EM was ruthless, revolting and continued for nine days. EM’s pain has resonated with many Canadian women who have been assaulted by men and had to deal with the cops or anyone in authority about it.  When the judge said she found EM’s evidence neither  “credible or reliable,” and said that the Crown failed to prove she didn’t consent to the sexual activity—almost every woman in Canada winced. We’ve heard it all before. Nine years ago we heard it when (ex-) CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi was acquitted on four counts of sexual assault and one count of overcoming resistance by choking. 

In the Ghomeshi trial, three women had gone to the police. Concerning the first complainant’s evidence and her keeping some information from the police early on, the judge noted she had a “demonstrably false memory,”  and “her value as a reliable witness is diminished accordingly.” In the case of the second complainant, Lucy DeCoutere, who waived the right to a ban on her name, Judge William B Horkins said there was “the deliberate withholding of … information [from the police] reflects very poorly on Ms. DeCoutere’s trustworthiness as a witness.” As to the third complainant, the judge admonished her not to tell “half truths”  and advised that “Navigating this sort of proceeding is really quite simple: tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Should we have bothered to protest at the Juniors?

So, in light of the London acquittal, should we four have bothered to protest in Halifax two and a half years ago?

“This all entrenches the reality that they [the women complainants] were controlled by men who were accustomed to taking what they felt they had the right to have and take it without fear of consequences…”

Patricia Baker, columnist for The Sault Star, Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. (18 Oct. 2022)

Let’s have a look at what Patricia Baker, a former nurse and columnist for the Sault Star, — wrote in late 2022, 

“Not being taken seriously, being grilled and put in the spotlight, accused of fabricating the rape, or being portrayed as an unreliable witness, keep victims silent.

“This all entrenches the reality that they were controlled by men who were accustomed to taking what they felt they had the right to have and take it without fear of consequences and without consent. Power driven by entitlement and superiority come to mind.” 

And this was written in 2022, when the sexual assaults by hockey players were starting to surface. Hours after the acquittals of the five hockey players last week, Toronto Star columnist Elizabeth Renzetti wrote,

“Let’s stop focusing on educating women, who are already experts in trying to keep themselves safe from violence. Let’s concern ourselves with educating men about how not to harm in the first place. I’m reminded of the words of a domestic-violence scholar who told me, ‘we need to start thinking about what are the changes we seek in men.’ ”

Do boys’ team sports really build character?

We’re often told about the marvels of getting children involved in team sports, how they build character and leadership – and responsibility.  So these elite players, fuelled by alcohol in that hotel room in June 2018, have a naked young woman lying on the floor before them.   I wonder if any of them (besides Michael McLeod who had met her over drinks at Jack’s bar earlier) even knew EM’s name? Which player showed an ounce of leadership, or responsibility—or even common decency? Several players said (in interviews with police) that they had girlfriends, so they didn’t “feel good” about – as they saw it—taking advantage of the free sex on offer.  But not one of them said no, we can’t do this; not one handed her her clothes and urged her to get dressed; no one walked her out the door.  And not one of the other men — non-participants in the sex activities — yelled at the others to stop taking part in a repulsive exercise. And what kind of young men role models gang up on a woman, bring golf clubs into a room (though the clubs weren’t used that night), have her lie on a sheet on the floor. They treated her like a piece of meat, shredding her dignity and humanity?  

As Canadian author Laura Robinson notes, “It’s all about this team bonding bullshit through the degradation of the female body.”   It’s all about entitlement, as her 1998 book Crossing the Line: Violence and Sexual Assault in Canada’s National Sport explains.

Elizabeth Renzetti’s last statement really tells it like it is:

“We need to teach them to refuse to participate in degrading, abusive behaviour, even if it means standing up to their friends. Most of all, we need to teach them that women are human beings, not objects for their gratification.”

That’s the true crime done here. One no law court wants to address. Let’s hope the court of public opinion does so.

Here and here are my two posts about the Hockey Juniors, Dec-Jan 2023. Here’s my post about Boysplaining and bullying from autumn 2022.

Photo at the top: Rogues’ Gallery– An Ontario judge found former world junior hockey players Dillon Dubé, Cal Foote, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart and Michael McLeod, left to right, not guilty of sexual assault. (credit: Carlos Osorio/Reuters)