The question comes as police launched two investigations this month into allegations of sexual assault involving junior hockey players in Quebec and Ontario. At the centre of both cases are women who claim they did not consent to sexual encounters with multiple assailants.
But what, if anything, are athletes learning about consent?
Most Canadian students are taught about sexually transmitted diseases and reproduction by the time they’re teenagers. Their education is supplemented with high school classes on depression, drug use, anorexia and other challenges that teens face as they approach adulthood. When it comes to the concept of rape and sexual consent, however, Canadian students are largely left to fend for themselves. Without comprehensive education about consent, can teenagers be expected to fully understand what sexual assault looks like? And while the nation’s public education system is slow to adopt a conversation about sexual assault, elite teenage hockey players lag even further behind. They live in a world where winning comes first and the classroom often comes second, where their actions off the ice have few consequences unless they negatively affect the team.
Given this month’s sexual assault allegations, is it time for hockey teams to start teaching their players about sexual consent? The Canadian Hockey League — which governs 60 major junior teams and more than 1,200 young athletes — did not answer that question when contacted by the Montreal Gazette.
***
About three weeks ago, a woman filed a police report claiming she’d been sexually assaulted by four members of the Gatineau Olympiques hockey club in January 2014. The woman told detectives the assault happened at a Quebec City hotel room and that several of her alleged assailants still play for the Olympiques — according to a report by Le Soleil. The woman came forward after police confirmed they were investigating six Olympiques players for their involvement in an “indecent act” inside the bathroom of a Gatineau-area Boston Pizza. On Tuesday, police announced they will not file charges against the players involved in the hotel room incident.
Earlier this month, about 10 players from the Cobourg Cougars hockey club attended a party in rural Ontario where several women were allegedly raped. Photos from the party circulated on social media alongside the caption “Whoever hooked up with the most broads last night gets the cup #consentisoverated,” according to a QMI media report. Ontario Provincial Police are investigating what happened at the party.
Both hockey teams issued statements saying they’re taking the allegations “very seriously” and are co-operating with police. None of the claims have been proven in court and no charges have been filed.
***
When James was 16 years old, he was drafted into the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League — which oversees the Gatineau Olympiques and 17 other teams. While James played major junior hockey, he was essentially a ward of the league. His team provided him lodging with a foster family and partnered with a local high school to oversee his education.
James spoke to the Montreal Gazette on the condition that his real name not be published.
“School was something where you do the bare minimum, pass enough classes not to get in trouble because the focus is really hockey,” James said. “Any sex education would have happened in the classroom and we weren’t in the classroom half the time, we were on the road a lot for like 35 games a year. There wasn’t anything about (sexual consent) at school but even if there was, school was our second priority. We were hockey players, our full-time job was trying to make it the National Hockey League. Our team got development money for every player who was drafted to the NHL and our coaches were also trying to get jobs in pro hockey. “It was about winning, not school.”
While James would not comment on the specifics of the Olympiques or Cougars investigations, he did say that in his time playing for the QMJHL he witnessed a pervasive and unhealthy attitude toward women among his peers. “Everyone wanted to be the biggest badass on the team,” said James, whose QMJHL career ended four years ago. “It was a hyper-masculine, hyper-competitive environment and that attitude was also true to the way we approached women. This certainly isn’t something isolated to hockey or sports but we looked at women like they were trophies. They were ‘sluts’ and ‘puck bunnies’ not women. Looking back, I’m ashamed of that but I honestly never saw (sexual violence). I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that I never saw it.”
One of the critical problems surrounding rape is that many of the people who witness it may not understand what constitutes sexual assault, says Jaclyn Friedman — an author, publisher and anti-rape activist. Friedman cites the example of the Steubenville High School rape trial, in which a judge convicted two teenage boys of repeatedly sexually assaulting one of their peers while bystanders failed to intervene.
The victim drank heavily that night and blacked out before her assailants forced themselves on her. Because she had passed out, she did not actively resist the attack. “During the Steubenville trial, they put a kid on the stand who was a bystander,” Friedman told the Montreal Gazette. “He was a friend of the perpetrators, he was present when they were assaulting her but he did not participate in the assault. And (the prosecution) asked him, “Why didn’t you do something?” He said, “I didn’t know that’s what rape was like.” “We have this cultural idea that real rape, legitimate rape, is a stranger jumping out of the bushes grabbing a sweet innocent girl on her way to choir practice. And we also have a cultural conception of sex, that it’s something that men do to women. So what did he see? He saw his buddies doing sexual things to a girl who was lying there not objecting because she was passed out.”
***
While many organizations refuse to discuss consent and sexual assault out in the open, the University of Ottawa has taken a proactive approach. Last year, the university was rocked by two cases of alleged sexual violence. Facing a crisis of confidence that threatened to tear the campus apart, university president Allan Rock took action, initiating a lengthy and thorough investigation into the extent of sexual violence at the college.
In February 2014, two men on the Ottawa University Gee Gee’s hockey team allegedly raped a 21-year-old woman in Thunder Bay. Police say the assault happened inside a hotel room during a team road trip. Guillaume Donovan and David Faucher were later charged with sexual assault and the university fired Gee Gee’s head coach Real Paiement after finding he hadn’t informed university administration about the incident.
Later that month, after learning of a Facebook conversation in which a male student threatened to rape one of his classmates, Rock appointed a task force to explore the causes of and possible solutions to sexual assault on campus. The Gee-Gee’s 2014-2015 hockey season was also cancelled. “It was clear we had a grave problem on our hands and the university felt we absolutely had to do something,” said Caroline Andrew, the longtime University of Ottawa professor appointed to lead the task force. “We were promised that the university would not interfere with our work. If I could have found one good reason not to do it, I wouldn’t have done it but I couldn’t think of one.”
The task force interviewed about 1,000 students during its nine-month investigation. Some of the things Andrew heard during that time rattled her. “It astounded me, the amount of students who felt threatened, who felt less than human,” Andrew told The Montreal Gazette. “To think that the students you work with, the people in your classroom are going through such awful things, it’s a lot to wrap your mind around. They couldn’t be themselves, they couldn’t come close to performing to their full potential.”
Next year, Ontario will become the first province to introduce the concept of consent in its sexual education curriculum. Under the “yes means yes” mantra, the program teaches kids to look for enthusiastic consent before engaging in sex with a partner.
Sexual assault is not a CHL problem, or a QMJHL problem or even a hockey problem. It’s a societal problem. Studies suggest there are about 500,000 sexual assaults a year in Canada. Only a small fraction of them are ever reported to police.
http://montrealgazette.com/sports/hockey/do-sports-teams-have-an-obligation-to-better-inform-their-players-about-sexual-consent
