And nobody has a right to deny someone a job in hockey.
By arbitrary I mean they and they alone are deciding the fate of these individuals without evidence they did anything wrong.
This is not accurate, and a very dangerous thing to suggest.
Every mha appoints and hires coaches each summer for the upcoming season, whether paid rep coaches or volunteer (usually parent) coaches for rec teams (and some rep teams).
A properly run mha will have a coaching committee that assembles lists of candidates, interviews new "hires", reviews past "hires" that are returning, provides summary information that is then presented to the mha Board for approval. There is a bunch of other stuff from contracts and paperwork etc.
Here is
BC Athletics Risk Management Policy. The link in the pdf to the volunteer screening model is out of date, see the link mentioned below.
Among other things, the Policy states:
Criminal record checks are done by local police and people undergoing criminal record
checks must provide written permission.
Criminal record checks are an important safeguard – but it’s not the only one as
information from criminal records checks only provides information about convictions
and not about charges laid or being suspected of criminal acts.
Other screening measures include developing good policies and procedures for
recruiting, selecting and supervising volunteers. Some volunteers, like coaches, have more access to children than others (e.g. route marshals, board members) and as such, more stringent screening and supervision procedures should be applied. For more information about screening, see SportSafe’s volunteer screening model [PDF, 263KB] on this website.
While criminal record checks and screening are not foolproof, they are a good deterrent to those who fear a background check. The ten steps listed below follow the Volunteer Canada suggestions for organizations such as ours which include both a paid staff component and a volunteer component.
Further input has been received from our association’s lawyers. The steps to a BC Athletics Risk Management Policy [screening policy] will include:
Determine the risk involved with each position.
Write a clear position description.
Establish a formal recruitment process.
Use an application form.
Conduct interviews.
Follow up on references.
Request a Criminal Records Check or complete a Voluntary Declaration Form.
Conduct orientation and training sessions.
Supervise and evaluate each candidate.
Follow up with the participants.
Each of the ten steps listed above can be adapted to suit the provincial organization, member clubs and individual coaches, volunteers and officials.
In
the model, it states:
Gut Feelings
What happens if there is no concrete, tangible reason to screen someone out but your intuition or a gut feeling tells you that something is wrong? Those responsible for screening who have this kind of intuition must identify a logical, defensible, concrete or documented reason for their concern. Excluding an individual from a volunteer or employment opportunity for reasons that are not relevant may result in legal action by the applicant. One way to help ensure that your decisions are fair and reasonable is to document your concerns. If, for example, you feel the applicant is evasive, record the questions he or she did not answer. Bringing other people into the issue – other members of your organization, or references – may help in either hardening the feeling or dispelling it. This is one of the most difficult issues in screening and may present situations where the person responsible for screening’s moral and ethical responsibilities lead them in one direction while their legal obligations point in another direction. Your fundamental concern, however, is the protection of your members.
Be very, very aware of how you handle matters:
Defamation and Invasion of Privacy
Your organization must be aware of potential legal liability if personal information about someone is made public. Even if something that is said is true, telling it to others, like another staff member, may still constitute an invasion of privacy which could result in a lawsuit. Spoken defamation is called slander and written defamation is called libel. Both refer to information that is made public which is judged to injure a person’s reputation.
Applying this more rigourously
could have protected the kids at BWC.
Back to this specific thread matter and the 2018 World Juniors team, if I was on an mha coaching committee and one of the 19 members of that 2018 world juniors team was applying for a paid or volunteer coaching position at my mha, I would document that they were part of this team, that they were aware of serious gang rape allegations, and that they did not come forward to see that it was addressed. For the other three, Mete would probably be fine (which would also be documented), not sure about the other two, would have to confirm their circumstances are same as Mete. Having documented that, and that they would be coaching youth, I would recommend to the Board that they not be made an official of any of our youth teams. If I was a Board member, I would not approve making them an official of any of our youth teams, regardless of what the coaching committee recommendation was, and document the decision including risks etc. It may be n the distant future that some of those 19 members are able to demonstrate they have learned/changed and deserve a chance. Right now they are mostly just digging a deeper hole for themselves. Anyway, different people/mha's have different risk assessments and priorities. But
all of them should consider and document this.
Covering up serious allegations of gang rape is behaviour that no one wants in a coach working with youth. It is nasty stuff, coming forward is fraught with risks of slander, libel, and invasion of privacy. If someone becomes aware of such allegations, they should go to the police, be truthful, and
then go to a lawyer. Then follow up with the appropriate agency to ensure that this matter is addressed. In that order.
That is what good and decent citizens do.
What they
don't do is first call their lawyer, listen to their lawyer tell them to go to the police, then contact their risk manager, then contact their lawyer again to launch an attack dog mission, then contact their insurance.
And
then contact the police.
Then pay out hush money from mandatory fees secretly skimmed off of little kids that play hockey.
And hide it in the books.
That is
not what good and decent people do.
And they would be the last people you would want driving the change of hockey culture and its toxic code of silence.
etention or imprisonment
roceedings in criminal and penal matters
