Sexual violence exists in other sports for decades: experts

TORONTO –

Laurel Walzak says whereas current information of sexual violence in Canadian hockey was disturbing, she wasn’t stunned in any respect.

And, Walzak warned, it is just the start.

“Now just isn’t even the tip of the iceberg,” Walzak advised The Canadian Press in a telephone interview. “I am so grateful. However I am additionally afraid. It is simply so widespread.”

Walzak was considered one of 28 Canadian consultants from 21 universities who signed an open letter to Sport Minister Pascale St-Onge and Hedy Frye, chair of the Heritage Committee, earlier than the beginning of a parliamentary listening to as a part of an investigation into Hockey Canada’s dealing with of sexual assault allegations.

The letter harassed that Canada may change into a world chief in growing options. However Walzak stated that may require an overhaul of the governance of hockey and different sports activities, and males should lead the cost.

“The group, the management, the board, the governance, must be accountable for this,” stated Walzak, a Sport Media & Sport Enterprise professor on the World Experiential Sport Lab at Toronto Metropolitan College.

“And males in hockey management should drive change, as a result of it’s managed and it’s run by males in management. They’re the gatekeepers, they’re the ability, they’re the insiders. And it isn’t simply right here in Canada, it goes everywhere in the world, it goes to the IOC (Worldwide Olympic Committee), it goes to Worldwide Ice Hockey Federation, it goes to the grassroots of the native Toronto hockey membership.”

The letter comes with Hockey Canada below fireplace since information broke of members of the 2018 world junior staff accused of a bunch sexual assault after a gala occasion in London, Ont. Police did not lay expenses, however the lady on the centre of the allegations sued Hockey Canada, the Canadian Hockey League and several other gamers this spring.

Hockey Canada settled the case for an undisclosed quantity and MPs on the committee at the moment are probing the way it handled the allegations and the lawsuit. Hockey Canada executives and others appeared earlier than the Home of Commons heritage committee Wednesday.

One other allegation of sexual assault in opposition to the 2003 world junior staff emerged final week.

Hockey Canada, it was revealed, maintained a fund utilized in half to settle abuse claims, with $7.6 million paid in 9 settlements since 1989. The determine doesn’t embrace the undisclosed quantity of the settlement from the lawsuit associated to the alleged incident in 2018 .

“I wasn’t stunned in any respect (by the information of assaults),” Walzak stated. “What I used to be stunned about was the sum of money Hockey Canada has. That sounds actually naive to say, however once I was on the Canadian Ladies’s Hockey League (Walzak was the chair of the ladies’s league’s board), after we had our monetary points, we went to Hockey Canada asking for cash.

“They gave us a small mortgage, and we needed to pay it again. It was not even $100,000. It was hardly something. And it was so troublesome. . . I felt like I truly was on my knees begging for it. That is how I used to be made to really feel.”

Sexual violence in sport just isn’t uniquely Canadian, Walzak identified. She stated the difficulty is simply too huge to be solved by particular person tradition evaluations or investigations carried out by every sport. And permitting people to remain on with out being held accountable is like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

“We completely should be blatantly trustworthy in these conversations . . . All of this aggressive, bodily dominant, heterosexual, white . . . the hockey world wants to alter and if we don’t do it with blatant honesty, and really trying on the ugly truths, then nothing goes to alter,” she stated.

“We have now to be snug with the uncomfortable as a result of persons are being violated. They’re being sexually assaulted. They’re being destroyed. And that is kids, that is younger ladies, it is adults. And, there are tons of of hundreds of people that exist within the Hockey Canada system.”

The open letter said there appears to be little consciousness in Canada of the Worldwide Olympic Committee’s three scientific “Consensus Statements” in 2007, 2016 and ’19, that warned sport organizations, together with Hockey Canada, that sexual harassment and abuse occur in all sports activities and in any respect ranges “(in) the locker-room, the enjoying area, journeys away, the coach’s residence or automobile, and social occasions, particularly the place alcohol is concerned.

“Workforce initiations or end-of-season celebrations also can contain sexually abusive behaviour in opposition to people or teams,” the statements continued.

The consensus statements referred to as for actions together with unbiased regulation of sport on the native, provincial and nationwide stage, openness and transparency for reporting of incidents and funding within the growth of approaches to focus on and alter sexual violence.

“ΓÇïThe most up-to-date allegations of sexual assaults in opposition to ladies involving Canadian hockey gamers are deeply disturbing,” stated Taylor McKee, who research hockey and sport tradition at Brock College. “Nonetheless, whereas these kinds of incidents are stunning and surprising to the general public, teachers and journalists have repeatedly documented these issues in hockey and we’ve been calling for motion for many years.”

ΓÇïMcKee helped arrange the letter as a result of he felt males wanted to start out “stepping up” to assist repair the tradition in sport.

“Sexual violence in hockey has been documented in a number of research over the past twenty years, but Hockey Canada and the Canadian authorities have did not take motion to forestall these issues” McKee stated. “We’re hopeful that this may now change. We’d like robust management from the Canadian authorities and funding within the growth of evidence-based strategies to repair the cultural drivers of those issues.”

Hockey Canada has seen its federal funding reduce off and company sponsors pause monetary assist because of the alleged assault and settlement.

Over 500 Canadian gymnasts — Gymnasts for Change — have been asking St-Onge for an unbiased investigation into their sport amid what they are saying is a poisonous tradition of bodily, psychological and sexual abuse. And former gymnast Amelia Cline filed a class-action lawsuit in Could in opposition to Gymnastics Canada and 6 provincial member organizations over alleged abuse. The category has over 100 members.

Gymnasts for Change are in Ottawa for the Heritage Committee conferences.

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed July 27, 2022.