Canadian Government Freezing Hockey Canada Funding- (2018 Canada World Jr Team Alleged Sexual Assault)

[DaveMatthew]

There isn't a constitutional right to privacy as you suggest though. HC does not need to disclose of their knowledge of the incident, but at the same time, HC is under no liability to settle a lawsuit for their junior players either.

Hockey Canada did not settle a lawsuit on behalf of its junior players. Hockey Canada settled a lawsuit that was filed against them. The victim did not file a civil complaint against the players. She filed a complaint against Hockey Canada.

They had two options:
1. Pursue a settlement
2. Fight the complaint in court

If she had filed suit against each player, we'd know who they are and who did what in that room.

 

[Quinton Byfield]

Hockey Canada has yearly funds dedicated specifically to pay off victims of sexual assaults from their member.

They budget it, they plan for it in advance, on a yearly basis, like an office would budget replacement ink cartridges for the printer. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The stuff we know about so far.

Hockey Canada has a lot to account for and should absolutely not be hosting events right now.

Hockey Canada is also a non-profit organization. How it allocates its funds is important as it receives public funding, which is why we are discussing whether any public funding was used in a sexual assault lawsuit in parallel to a potential sexual assault case.

The fact that they have an allocated budget specifically for settling sexual assault lawsuits is something we need to dig into. Normalizing systemic behaviour like this should not be the function of Hockey Canada.

 

[Silky Johnson]

Hockey Canada has yearly funds dedicated specifically to pay off victims of sexual assaults from their member.

They budget it, they plan for it in advance, on a yearly basis, like an office would budget replacement ink cartridges for the printer. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The stuff we know about so far.

Hockey Canada has a lot to account for and should absolutely not be hosting events right now.

That is a pretty wild accusation. Do you have citations of proven abuse cases? Can you demonstrate that this is happening with significantly greater frequency than other similar organisations? Can you demonstrate behaviour by Hockey Canada that contributed to these cases of abuse? If not you are just slandering them and should have your posts deleted.

What should Hockey Canada done in this situation? They involved the Police... They involved a third party investigation...that's hardly covering it up.

 

[Pink Mist]

I mean what are people expecting/hoping to happen at this point? There will be no criminality for any of the players, that I am confident of. Just too many conflicting and even exonerating? statements by the alleger. There's no way you can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

"It was all consensual. You are so paranoid, holy. I enjoyed it, it was fine. It was all consensual. I am so sober, that’s why I can’t do this right now.”
“I’m ok with this,” the woman says.

With there being no criminality, i doubt teams will release or blacklist the players, esp talented ones like Batherson (assuming he's involved).

So what's really the endgame? Cutting the funding of Hockey Canada? I know they released that letter where they say they are changing a bunch of protocols and what not.

idk, if I was in a room after being raped by 8 dudes I would say just about anything to be able to safely leave, such as the bold in your post. I don't think that video proves consent

 

[Tad Mikowsky]

I mean what are people expecting/hoping to happen at this point? There will be no criminality for any of the players, that I am confident of. Just too many conflicting and even exonerating? statements by the alleger. There's no way you can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

"It was all consensual. You are so paranoid, holy. I enjoyed it, it was fine. It was all consensual. I am so sober, that’s why I can’t do this right now.”
“I’m ok with this,” the woman says.

With there being no criminality, i doubt teams will release or blacklist the players, esp talented ones like Batherson (assuming he's involved).

So what's really the endgame? Cutting the funding of Hockey Canada? I know they released that letter where they say they are changing a bunch of protocols and what not.

You seem to just down play what’s happened here.

You honestly don’t see anything wrong here?

 

[BuffaloGooner]

Stumbling into this thread for the first time seeing people DEFENDING Hockey Canada and the players is a yikes

I’ll stick to my own teams board from now on.

 

[Folignos Helmet]

Fair enough, I just don’t like the idea of listing names at the moment. Though looking at Twitter it’s already probably too late.

The Star article was careful not to list the people who hadn’t released a statement but almost seemed to write the article in a way of crossing names off a list. Guess they want to avoid a law suit over potential false accusations.

 

[Filthy Dangles]

idk, if I was in a room after being raped by 8 dudes I would say just about anything to be able to safely leave, such as the bold in your post. I don't think that video proves consent

I never said it proved consent, I said it will make proving criminality beyond a reasonable doubt extremely tough to the point where one can confidently say it's not gonna happen, and to where the DA probably doesn't think of bringing charges. esp. when police declined charges the first go around, and with 4 years passing.

 

[rielledup]

Could have happened this way - we don't know.

We do know there are alleged videos the night of the incident where the player(s) involved specifically had the victim talk about consenting - so its not absurd to think less than 24 hours later that mindset continued through texts.

I wouldn't be shocked at all to hear that someone connected to the police or an organization related to the player got a tip of a complaint and reached out to the player though - its not far fetched to me, but we just don't know.

1. The incident ended at 4 am on the 19th and the player asked about the police at 11 am on the 20th, that's 32 hours.

2. It makes zero sense to believe that after the player got such a strong assurance from the girl that everything was ok in the video, going as far as to say the player was being paranoid, that he would all of a sudden ask if she had gone to the police. If he the player had any doubts about how the girl felt he would ask if she was still ok with happened, he wouldn't go straight to asking her if she had gone to the police. This is common sense.

 

[Pink Mist]

That is a pretty wild accusation. Do you have citations of proven abuse cases? Can you demonstrate that this is happening with significantly greater frequency than other similar organisations? Can you demonstrate behaviour by Hockey Canada that contributed to these cases of abuse? If not you are just slandering them and should have your posts deleted.

What should Hockey Canada done in this situation? They involved the Police... They involved a third party investigation...that's hardly covering it up.

How Hockey Canada used registration fees to build a fund to cover sexual-assault claims

 

[DaveMatthew]

That is a pretty wild accusation. Do you have citations of proven abuse cases? Can you demonstrate that this is happening with significantly greater frequency than other similar organisations? Can you demonstrate behaviour by Hockey Canada that contributed to these cases of abuse? If not you are just slandering them and should have your posts deleted.

What should Hockey Canada done in this situation? They involved the Police... They involved a third party investigation...that's hardly covering it up.

It's taken a weird turn, this angle of HC paying "hush money". Since that's not at all what happened.

The alleged victim filed a civil suit against Hockey Canada seeking financial damages. Hockey Canada and the alleged victim's lawyers reached a mutually agreeable settlement. Their other option was to go to court and fight the complaint by trying to discredit the accuser. Would the public have preferred that?

I think there's a conversation that Hockey Canada should have done more than just settling the lawsuit, but settling the lawsuit was the right decision. Even if they had named and suspended the players involved, they still would have had to either settle or fight.

 

[Dr Pepper]

I am always careful to use words like "potencially" & "Alleged" until things have fully played out. It's good practice. It doesn't make for good Virtue Signalling but I will leave that to you.

I will remind you that Hockey Canda did involve the Police in this at the time.

You also didn't really comment on any point I made...

Well right now, Hockey Canada is dealing with the fallout from this 2018 incident finally being revealed (against their wishes, no doubt), followed by additional info like them keeping aside taxpayer funds to use as "hush money" for anyone their players rape.

I don't think there's anything "potential" about the claim that something stinks at Hockey Canada.

It's there, and it smells rotten.

As for the Russian players, my point was that it seemed backwards that an entire team would be blacklisted for the actions of their government, for something that has absolutely nothing to do with hockey......while another country would be allowed to continue playing despite their own hockey federation being rife with corruption as Hockey Canada seems to be.

In both cases, the players this year have done nothing wrong, yet only one side seems to be getting punished for the actions of others.

 

[PostBradMalone]

Do you have a quote for this, I'm going off the article and public statement from the May 26th article about the April 20th settlement here.

Tada

[Hockey Canada] was well aware of the players that were represented by counsel during both the Henein Hutchison LLP and criminal investigation.

That's right from two of their lawyers.

The 8 guys probably know who they are and got the same lawyer together?

Well duh, but how did that come to pass if HC never knew who they were? How did HC know who to even report to the London Police? "Uh, hello, 911? I heard eight players on our junior team raped a woman, but I have no idea who they are". Obviously they knew.

 

[DaveMatthew]

How Hockey Canada used registration fees to build a fund to cover sexual-assault claims

In fairness, that article's title is misleading. Reading on, it says:

The money is used at Hockey Canada’s discretion and can be deployed to write cheques to cover out-of-court settlements for a variety of claims, including allegations of sexual assault, that are deemed uninsurable or are settled without the participation of its insurer.

This is not a fund specifically earmarked for sexual assault claims. Although we know for sure that some of that money is used to settle those types of claims, we don't know what percentage of settlement funds have been used specifically for sexual assault claims.

I'm sure this information will come out in the upcoming hearings.

 

[CanHeDoIt99]

1. The incident ended at 4 am on the 19th and the player asked about the police at 11 am on the 20th, that's 32 hours.

2. It makes zero sense to believe that after the player got such a strong assurance from the girl that everything was ok in the video, going as far as to say the player was being paranoid, that he would all of a sudden ask if she had gone to the police. If he the player had any doubts about how the girl felt he would ask if she was still ok with happened, he wouldn't go straight to asking her if she had gone to the police. This is common sense.

32 vs 24 hours, not materially different for the purpose of the point i was trying to make.

Strong assurance in the video(?) then you talk about the paranoia also mentioned in the video. if the paranoia drove the video in the first place, the paranoia could presumably drive the texts.

We just don't know.

 

[belair]

I agree
This whole thing is creepy as hell
filming somebody on a cell phone that you have their consent to me makes it appear more likely that they are guilty.

To be honest so does the Justin Beiber sex waiver thing. Wasn't that a Dave Chappelle sketch a long time ago?

Lesson to be learned here is to simply not engage in anonymous sex if there's any kind of alcohol or drug use involved if you're a public figure. Because there's no way of not 'creepily' proving consent.

 

[Masked]

Tada



That's right from two of their lawyers.



Well duh, but how did that come to pass if HC never knew who they were? How did HC know who to even report to the London Police? "Uh, hello, 911? I heard eight players on our junior team raped a woman, but I have no idea who they are". Obviously they knew.

You really need to improve your reading comprehension. From the article you linked to:

Lou Strezos, a lawyer for the former Canadian Hockey League players accused of sexual assault, clarifies that it was investigators for Heinen Hutchison were made aware in 2018 of players who were represented by counsel. In a July 13, 2022, letter to Hockey Canada, Strezos and co-counsel Kaleigh Davidson wrote that Hockey Canada was aware in 2018 of the players' identities. Strezos says that is incorrect. He said he does not know whether Hockey Canada officials have ever been aware who the players involved were.

Assen na yo!

 

[DaveMatthew]

Genuinely curious to see how this plays out. Leipsic got blacklisted from the league for comments he made. He was a plug, sure, but this is way worse than what he did. If these allegations are proven in court, I think it would be hard for even the biggest guilty star to not get blacklisted.

If these allegations are proven in court, these players will likely spend time in jail. Blacklisting from the NHL will be the least of their concerns.

The question is, if these allegations are not proven in court, but the public learns the names of the accused, what will the repercussions be?

The only case in the NHL that I can remember, involving a sexual assault allegation, was against Patrick Kane. And at that point, the league's position was to wait on whether charges would be filed. They weren't, and everyone moved on. He's been one of the most celebrated and promoted players since then.

The climate is certainly different today, though.

 

[CanHeDoIt99]

Sorry to be a bother, what did the Wasserman 6 say? I missed that.

Regarding questions about six players on the 2018 roster put to sports agency Wasserman Hockey, Global News received a statement from Scott Fenton, a criminal defence lawyer based in Toronto.

“We act for one of the players referenced in your email inquiry and have consulted with counsel for the other players you reference. All of Global News’ questions will be asked and answered during the pending NHL investigation. That said, none of the players you reference engaged in any wrongdoing, all of the players cooperated fully with the independent London Police Service investigation in 2018, and all players were then cleared of any wrongdoing,” Fenton wrote.


Its worded in legalize - so much so not to deny any of the six could have been involved - just that they did not engage in wrongdoing. If the players position/defense is that it was consensual, they could have been there.

 

[PostBradMalone]

You really need to improve your reading comprehension. From the article you linked to:

Lou Strezos, a lawyer for the former Canadian Hockey League players accused of sexual assault, clarifies that it was investigators for Heinen Hutchison were made aware in 2018 of players who were represented by counsel. In a July 13, 2022, letter to Hockey Canada, Strezos and co-counsel Kaleigh Davidson wrote that Hockey Canada was aware in 2018 of the players' identities. Strezos says that is incorrect. He said he does not know whether Hockey Canada officials have ever been aware who the players involved were.

Assen na yo!

This was a "clarification" (i.e. ass-covering) added after the fact, and a weak one at that- "he does not know" if they are/were "aware" is not the same as definitively stating they did or did not know. Note again these lawyers were confident enough to state in a written letter to Hockey Canada that it was the case- it wasn't like this was a quote to a reporter that was taken out of context or even a tweet. If it was a mistake, it's a serious one by their counsel.

 

[Voight]

Sure. But there is also nothing that requires Hockey Canada to release the names, nor do they "owe" that to the public.

They can release the names and face possible legal repercussions from the player's lawyers.
They can withhold the names and face further PR backlash from politicians and the public.

We'll see what route they take.

PR backlash is probably better for them. It'll be on peoples minds for a while but won't hurt them long term IMO.

Hockey Canada has yearly funds dedicated specifically to pay off victims of sexual assaults from their member.

They budget it, they plan for it in advance, on a yearly basis, like an office would budget replacement ink cartridges for the printer. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The stuff we know about so far.

Hockey Canada has a lot to account for and should absolutely not be hosting events right now.

No need to punish others because some guys from one of the many HC teams did something they shouldn't have. Why should a kid looking for exposure in the U18s be punished and potentially have his career prospects hurt as a result.

 

[Quinton Byfield]

Hockey Canada did not settle a lawsuit on behalf of its junior players. Hockey Canada settled a lawsuit that was filed against them. The victim did not sue the players. She sued Hockey Canada. There's a difference.

They had two options:
1. Pursue a settlement
2. Fight the complaint in court

You jumped on a poorly worded sentence on my part. I know the details of the lawsuit. My argument is, vicarious liability does not apply here, because junior players are not under the employ of Hockey Canada (nor are they under the employ of their junior clubs). So Hockey Canada settled the lawsuit against them because they wanted to protect their own reputation? Their programs reputation?

You also ignored the rest of the argument. HC could disclose the details of their lawsuit to the public right now. It is not libel or defamation to do so, because HC is not characterizing the names as rapists. But they are choosing not to. And as more information comes out, it seems HC knew a lot more than what was initially published.

 

[Filthy Dangles]

You seem to just down play what’s happened here.

You honestly don’t see anything wrong here?

i never said that. i asked what people want to realistically happen at this point. again, proving this case criminally beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't seem possible to me based on the info we have.

do i think some of these players might have crossed the line, yes it's pretty likely. but i also I doubt they are some evil or violent sexual abusers in nature and i don't believe they should lose their professional hockey careers because of this incident.

 

[Tad Mikowsky]

i never said that. i asked what people want to realistically happen from all this new info and attention to the case. again, proving this case criminally beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't seem possible to me based on the info we have.

do i think some of these players might have crossed the line, yes it's pretty likely. but i also I doubt they are some evil or violent sexual abusers in nature and i don't believe they should lose their hockey careers because of this incident.

Just asking because earlier you called it “over outrage” and giving that laugh reaction to a lot of people taking the victim instead of the players

 

[Jeune Poulet]

That is a pretty wild accusation. Do you have citations of proven abuse cases? Can you demonstrate that this is happening with significantly greater frequency than other similar organisations? Can you demonstrate behaviour by Hockey Canada that contributed to these cases of abuse? If not you are just slandering them and should have your posts deleted.

What should Hockey Canada done in this situation? They involved the Police... They involved a third party investigation...that's hardly covering it up.

Thanks for this comment, Silky! Gives me the opportunity to link more info on HC's systemic coverups of sexual crimes by its players:

Hockey Canada keeps a special multimillion-dollar fund, which is fed by the registration fees of players across the country, that it uses to pay out settlements in cases of alleged sexual assault without its insurance company, and with minimal outside scrutiny.

This reserve fund has exceeded $15-million in recent years, a Globe and Mail investigation has found.

Source, in case you want to falsely accuse me of libel for the nth time: How Hockey Canada used registration fees to build a fund to cover sexual-assault claims

Every time you, bert, Wetcoast or DaveMatthews post awkward defenses in favor of the abusers and Hockey Canada, it's another opportunity to say more about how completely f***ed up the situation is. Keep it up, guys!