If she was drunk and co-erced which seeing Hockey Canada investigated and settled instead of fighting the allegations in court is probably true, she was never in a place to give consent in a moral or legal sense. The players had a responsibility to not engage her sexually while she was intoxicated and failed. If they had waited until she was sober and did not co-erce or intimidate her at all there would be proper consent and thus no wrongdoing.
We don’t know about that. You are speculating here about consent, coercion and intimidation. The video described earlier in this thread paints a different picture. Regret and remorse rather than a lack of consent. I get the sense that all involved, including the woman, made mistakes and have regrets about the incident. Maybe this is a case of assault and rape but it certainly seems much more grey than. Initial police investigation didn’t think it was rape. I guess when we have more information we’ll be able to get a better sense of what actually happened.
HC may have paid not because they felt there was guilt on the part of players, but rather because they didn’t want to deal with PR fallout resulting (even if they believed players were innocent of any crime), and because it’s easier to pay a settlement than pay legal fees over a long protracted case.
It should be noted that this(more so in the US) practice of settling even when being sure of innocence is extremely common, especially for successful businesses and people. Settlements paid should not be consider an indirect admission of guilt, but rather could be viewed as an adversity to engaging with predatory litigious folks, many of whom are opportunistic and unethical. The rampant speculation, virtue signaling, and racing to the gallows in this thread is over the top. Comparing this event and these people to Brock Turner, who literally carried an unconscious woman into the alley and brutally raped and assaulted her, is absurd and sensationalist.
