Preventing Group Sexual Assault in Canadian Junior Hockey

• In Event: School, sports and crime prevention

Abstract

In 2015, players from a junior hockey team in Ontario, Canada attended a house party that was featured on social media with a photo of a large trophy under the hashtag #consentisoverrated. While publicly available details of what occurred at the party are minimal, reports suggest that multiple drug-facilitated group sexual assaults occurred. All available evidence suggests that this event was by no means unique in Canadian junior hockey. More recently, in 2022, Hockey Canada faced a public reckoning following a report of a lawsuit they had settled with an unnamed woman who had reported she was sexually assaulted by members of the Canadian junior men’s national team. In a subsequent parliamentary hearing, Hockey Canada officials disclosed that the organization maintains a multi-million dollar fund to handle sexual assault settlement payments out of court. With the increased attention on group sexual assault in junior hockey, new questions are emerging about how sport organizations and the criminal legal system are responding to the problem and what can be done to address it. Taking up that challenge, this paper examines group sexual assaults, which involve multiple perpetrators in a single sexually violent act, in the context of junior men’s hockey in Canada. We draw on an analysis of media files and legal cases involving group sexual assault allegations against 54 Canadian junior men’s hockey players, as well as 15 in-depth interviews with sexual assault victim advocates across Canada. Through this data, the paper examines how sport organizations and the Canadian criminal legal system have responded to cases of group sexual assault, why group sexual assaults are common in junior men’s hockey in Canada, and how sexual assault could be more effectively addressed and prevented in junior hockey.

Authors

• Curtis Fogel, Brock University

• Andrea Quinlan, University of Waterloo

• Emily Beuhlow, Brock University