Hockey's enduring sexual depravity problem

National Post, 16 October 2022

The failure began a long way from Hockey Canada’s boardroom

Regarding the scandal engulfing Hockey Canada, might I put a highly pertinent query, even if many might regard it something of an impertinence to ask?

Why are Canadians going to Bucharest for endometriosis treatment?

At what point in the development of the junior hockey players are they given the following moral and character instruction:

Group sex with strangers is contrary to the dignity of the human person. Engaging in such behaviour is degrading, even if consensual. There is no sexual ethic in any culture or tradition which regards such activity as anything other than revolting; those who practice are considered of repellent character.

Given the dynamics of team parties and alcohol, such activity is likely to become gang rape. Group sex with everyone fully consenting is just this side of group sex without full consent, certainly so when intoxication is involved.

Does any coach tell his players that gang rape would disqualify them from participation on the team? In the same way, for example, as using racial slurs on Instagram would be disqualifying?

Gross sexual debauchery has been a disgusting part of junior hockey culture in Canada for a very long time. The allegations which set off the current conflagration have not been tested in court, but the scenario is familiar. In 2018, a very drunk young woman went to the room of a (likely) drunk hockey player. They had sex, to which she may or may not consented, or possibly was not in a position to consent. Then she was passed around to other players against her will — in this case, seven of them.

Even if the woman was stone-cold sober and an enthusiastic orgy participant, is there anyone in junior hockey to tell the boys that this not how gentlemen behave?

There has been so much handwringing about what Hockey Canada’s board did and did not do, how it paid off victims and covered it all up. But first there had to be something to cover up. Who was not doing anything about that?

Let there be no pearl-clutching going on here. Everyone with a passing knowledge of junior hockey culture knows that degrading debauchery, often spilling over into gang rape is widespread. The former is a moral problem in need of urgent attention. The latter is the legal problem that prompted the current scandal. The greater scandal was that the former was not considered a problem until the latter arose.

Let it be stipulated that this is not only a junior hockey problem. Silvio Berlusconi, Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew never played junior hockey.

All summer poseurs across the dominion have professed to be shocked, shocked that there is gang rape in junior hockey. My goodness, who knew that there was gambling in Casablanca?

Who didn’t know? CBC’s The Fifth Estate just produced a program on “sex and shame in Canada’s national game”.

“Reports of gang sexual assault by junior hockey players are far from unique in Canada,” they report. “Through a review of public records, The Fifth Estate has identified at least 15 cases of alleged group sexual assault involving junior hockey players that have been investigated by police since 1989 — half of which surfaced in the past decade.”

Too recent reportage for Hockey Canada to have known about when the 2018 alleged assault took place?

Well how about Steve Simmons’ 2011 The Lost Dream: The Story of Mike Danton, David Frost, and a Broken Canadian Family. Simmons is one of Canada’s most veteran sportswriters, and his book brought to a conclusion more than a decade of reporting about the Mike Jefferson and David Frost affair, which involved all manner of creepy and criminal behaviour.

Remember David Frost? I covered his trial in November 2008.

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