Six years ago, in June 2018, the Hockey Canada Association, which included team members of that year’s Gold Winning Junior Team, had gathered at the London Hunt Club to play golf and have a day out. The players were identifiable by their dress, which bore the Hockey Canada logo. As they played their golf, officials from Hockey Canada were informed that a young woman had accused some ice hockey players of sexual assault a few hours earlier.
The players left the grounds after playing their game of golf. Hockey Canada contacted the London Police, and what followed was six years of inaction, backdoor dealings, and the sweeping of the scandal under the carpet by conniving Hockey Canada and bungling law authorities.
The Globe and Mail report says that five ice hockey players (Dillon Dubé, Cal Foote, Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, and Alex Formenton) have been asked to surrender to the police in Canada over charges of sexual assault. The alleged incident happened at a 2018 gala organized for the members of the nation’s world junior ice hockey team. A young woman, in her lawsuit, had alleged that eight junior ice hockey players had sexually assaulted her.
In 2022, Hockey Canada officials were grilled by a parliamentary committee, revealing that the Hockey Association had secretly paid C$9m (US$6.7m) for over 22 complainants of sexual misconduct. On further scrutiny, it was revealed that there was a secret fund that kept money aside for tackling legal issues of sexual misconduct. The money included contributions by parents of kids who were trained for ice hockey in different institutions across the country. Needless to say, no one was charged for their sexual misconduct in the 2018 assault allegations.
When the whole issue snowballed into a major controversy, the CEO of Hockey Canada and its entire board of directors resigned in October 2022 over its mishandling of the 2018 allegations. The London Police had quietly ended its investigation in 2019, citing a lack of evidence.
Today, most of the members of Canada’s 2018 World Junior team are part of the NHL team. When Hockey Canada opened its investigation, all the members were temporarily banned from representing Canada in international ice hockey events. However, the ban was revoked later, and the incident would have faded out of people’s memory but is returning now to haunt the players.
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