Members of Canada's 2003 World Junior team accused of group sexual assault

Jul 22 2022, 7:47 pm

Editor’s Note: This article discusses sexual assault allegations.

There’s another allegation of sexual assault involving Hockey Canada.

This time it involves members of Canada’s 2003 World Junior team, of which all but one of the players went on to play in the NHL.

Hockey Canada released a statement today, after being contacted by TSN’s Rick Westhead, about “disturbing details” of an alleged group sexual assault in 2003.

“Yesterday evening, Hockey Canada learned of an alleged group sexual assault from 2003 involving members of the 2002-03 National Junior Team after being contacted by Rick Westhead of TSN/CTV National News with disturbing details of the alleged incident. Mr. Westhead informed Hockey Canada he has spoken to multiple witnesses who provided him with explicit descriptions of an assault, following an interview with Conservative MP John Nater who is in possession of the same or similar information.”

Westhead’s tremendous investigative reporting has uncovered multiple scandals in Canadian sport in recent years. In May of this year, Westhead shined a light on an alleged sexual assault involving Canada’s 2018 World Junior team, which has resulted in exposing Hockey Canada’s shameful handling of such incidents.

Hockey Canada later apologized for not doing enough to “address the actions of some members of the 2018 National Junior Team, or to end the culture of toxic behaviour” in hockey.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was again critical of Hockey Canada when asked about the organization on Thursday.

“Hockey Canada needs to do an awful lot as an organization to gain back the trust of Canadians,” said Trudeau. “Their behaviour over these past years, and indeed over these past months, has been not worthy of an organization embodies so many hopes and dreams for young Canadians, boys and girls, for sport, for healthy living. So many parents entrust their kids in this organization and organizations that flow from that.”

“We need to see Hockey Canada demonstrating a level of transparency, accountability, understanding of the situation they’re faced with. There needs to be a real reckoning with the kind of behaviour that we saw from that organization, and the willful blindness to something that other organizations have been faced with, struggled with, but made good decisions around, as opposed to what Hockey Canada has been doing.”

“I think there’s a lot more that Hockey Canada’s going to have to do before Canadian parents like me start trusting them.”

Hockey Canada said today that it is “committed to bringing an end to the culture of silence in hockey,” and is calling for anyone with knowledge of the 2003 incident to come forward and talk to police.

“We are being transparent in how we learned of this alleged assault and the steps we are taking to address it,” said Hockey Canada.

“The details in Mr. Westhead’s email were deeply disturbing and Hockey Canada immediately contacted Halifax Regional Police, as Halifax was the co-host city of the 2003 IIHF World Junior Championship, and also notified Sport Canada of the information shared with us.”

“We have urged Mr. Westhead to immediately speak with police and to encourage his sources to do the same. We also implore MP Nater to contact the authorities with any information he or his office has received on this alleged group sexual assault.”

In their statement, Hockey Canada added that they heard a rumour two weeks ago about “something bad” that happened at the 2003 World Juniors, but weren’t given details.

“We immediately reported this information to Sport Canada. In order to learn more, Hockey Canada hired a third-party investigator to try to find more information. They were unable to learn anything before we received the details mentioned above in an email from Mr. Westhead.”

Hockey Canada is encouraging police to open an investigation about the alleged 2003 incident, and says it will “cooperate with and support the authorities in every way” it can.

“Hockey Canada wants to hear from anyone – past or present – who feels they are the victim of mistreatment, sexual violence, harassment or abuse by someone affiliated with our organization. You can reach out via the Canadian Sport Helpline, a free, anonymous, confidential and independent service in both official languages: 1-888-837 7678 or [email protected]. We also encourage anyone who may need support to reach out to one of the many victim resource services across Canada. A general listing of resources in this area is available on the website of the Canadian Resource Centre for the Victims of Crime at crcvc.ca.”

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