Sexual violence is deeply embedded in Canadian sports, experts say. What is the solution? – National | Globalnews.ca

With sexual assault allegations against multiple junior hockey players at a 2018 Hockey Canada event in the spotlight, attention has been drawn to the handling of the incident by the national hockey body.

In May, TSN reported that Hockey Canada had settled an alleged sexual assault lawsuit involving eight members of the 2018 junior world championship team.

A woman alleged members assaulted her while intoxicated at a hotel in London, Ontario, following a Hockey Canada Foundation celebration event.

On June 2, a motion was passed in the Canadian House of Commons asking it to “call Hockey Canada before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to clarify its involvement in a case of alleged sexual assaults committed in 2018.”

Hockey Canada President and COO Scott Smith testified June 20 that the organization has received one or two sexual assault complaints per year for the past five or six years.

Smith and outgoing CEO Tom Renney said the players were not required to cooperate in the investigation; instead, players were “encouraged” to cooperate.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Hockey Canada’s handling of the allegation “unacceptable,” adding that “all options are being considered to determine the next step” of the federal government’s investigation into Hockey Canada.

But experts say the allegations are not an isolated incident: There is a long history of sexual violence and other forms of violence in Canadian men’s hockey. Systemic change with a survivor-centered approach, requiring the needs and wants of the survivor to be prioritized, is needed to address the toxic code of silence in hockey culture, some violence prevention experts told Global News. of genre.

The failure to protect players from sexual abuse and hazing has been an ongoing problem in men’s hockey in Canada, according to Kristi Allain, an associate professor of sociology at the University of St. Thomas and the Research Chair in Physical Culture and Canadian Social Life.

Allain gave the example of the Sheldon Kennedy case, where the former player revealed in 1996 that he was sexually abused by his coach Graham James during his time in the Western Hockey League between 1984 and 1990.

James was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 1997 and banned from coaching by the Canadian Hockey Association for life. After his sentence expired, James faced more sexual assault charges in 2015 while serving his five-year sentence for abusing former NHL player Theo Fleury.

Kennedy’s case was not an isolated incident. In June 2020, former professional ice hockey player Daniel Carcillo and former Lethbridge Hurricanes player Garrett Taylor filed a class action lawsuit against the Canadian Hockey League (CHL). Carcillo and Taylor alleged that they have experienced systemic hazing, bullying and sexual assault during their time in junior hockey major.

Days after Carcillo and Taylor filed the lawsuit, CHL appointed an independent panel in July 2020 to review CHL’s policies and practices related to “hazing, abuse, harassment, and intimidation.” The panel published a report in January 2022, which found that there is an “unspoken code of silence”, allowing off-ice misconduct to become a cultural norm.

Other sports have seen similar problems, including gymnastics. In March 2022, more than 70 gymnasts asked Sport Canada to conduct an independent investigation into an allegedly toxic culture full of abusive practices in Canadian gymnastics..

Following the allegations, a group of former Canadian gymnasts launched a class action lawsuit in May against Gymnastics Canada and provincial governing bodies in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan.

Allain said these issues are interconnected with rape culture and general segregation or violence against women.

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“They are tied to the violent culture of men’s hockey in Canada,” Allain said. “And the code of silence that exists within that culture allows the violence to perpetuate itself.”

Allain said that when the sexual assault allegations were “being dismissed,” he told her that the career of the alleged abusers is more important than the survivor.

“Hockey is so deeply connected to our sense of national identity… These were athletes who were widely celebrated, they wore the (Canadian) flag on their body,” Allain said. “When we celebrate these types of men, it tells a story about what types of Canadians matter in the Canadian imagination.

“We look at that team that we’re celebrating, often young, healthy, apparently straight white men, and we hold them up as pillars of the nation,” he said. “When they turn around and (allegedly) rape women, we put it aside.”

According to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, hearings will be convened on July 27-28 to further look into Hockey Canada’s response to the sexual assault allegation.

Andrea Gunraj, vice president of public engagement at the Canadian Women’s Foundation, said solutions to end rape culture “have to be systemic.”

Gunraj said “real vision” is needed in leadership to end abuse, where “survivor-centered approaches” must be put in place to investigate allegations of sexual assault “quickly and transparently.”

A survivor-centered approach looks at what the survivor wants and how they feel, Gunraj said, adding that “it’s different for different people.”

“Some people want to go through a process to hold the abuser accountable, other people may want services, support and counseling… but it has to be focused on the survivor and not the well-being of the institution or the perpetrator,” Gunraj said.

She added that rape culture has to do with how common these abuses are and “how often we don’t understand sexual assault” by blaming and shaming survivors and even making excuses for perpetrators.

But to effectively deal with the root of the problem, Gunraj said the right policy and practice framework is the key to prevention.

“Policies and practices affect how we view the problem: what we take seriously and what we don’t take seriously,” Gunraj said. “I think it’s important to have that as a reference.”

In 1997, Hockey Canada developed Speak Out! program in an effort to “educate and prevent bullying, harassment and abuse in hockey across Canada,” according to the organization of website.

in a statement Released June 20, Hockey Canada CEO Tom Renney told the committee that the organization “is on a journey to change the culture of our sport and make it safer and more inclusive.”

“We recognize that issues of mistreatment, including bullying, harassment, racism, homophobia and sexual abuse, exist in hockey, just as they do in other sports and in our society,” the statement said, adding that Hockey Canada has been “working on this.” long before the London incident.

Hockey Canada did not respond to Global News’ request for comment on its commitment to ending sexual abuse in time for publication.

However, Allain noted that anti-sexual violence training could be ignored if leaders “don’t take it seriously.”

“A lot of teams now have anti-sexual violence training, but I’ve heard from players that coaches and team staff often undermine that all of a sudden … they don’t take it seriously,” Allain said. “And when they don’t take it seriously, athletes don’t take it seriously.”

Gunraj said this type of training can take a peer-to-peer or peer-to-peer approach.

She said that institutions should have peer leaders who are trained by people who are in the gender justice sector, so that they can pass on the knowledge to their younger peers.

Allain said the hockey industry needs to open up to experts from various fields to “disrupt the common sense that these forms of violence are okay.”

“If men’s hockey wants real change, it needs to open up to real change and that means welcoming voices that haven’t been welcomed in the past,” he said.

When it comes to prevention, Kim Dubé, a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa School of Social Work, said there is a “boys club culture in sports that is being fostered.”

“Obviously I don’t think all athletes are in that culture; however, the boys club culture is being tolerated and overlooked,” said Dubé. “No one is going to want to stand up in the locker room because if you stand up, your whole team will probably tell you to shut up.”

Dubé said society shouldn’t make “misogyny, sexism, homophobia, racism and colonialism a norm” where people “just put up with it because they’re good athletes.”

“We have to make athletes feel comfortable standing up to their teammates and saying, ‘No, that’s not cool.'”

“Sports should be fun,” Dubé said. “It’s supposed to be fun, it feels relaxing, it helps you stay healthy. It shouldn’t be a place where you have to fear being mugged.”