Documentation of Rape Culture in Hockey

[Cole436]

I posted this in the Team Canada sponsorship thread, but maybe this deserves its own discussion.

Someone complied a Google Doc with all known sexual assault/abuse/harassment that NHL affiliated players have been accused of with news articles supporting the claims. It also has accusations of domestic violence and/or violence against women.

Some of it is less egregious than others (ex. some are sexist tweets, or Michael Del Zotto being a pathetic simp), but none of it is great.

This hits home for Flames fans, as I had no clue how disgusting the accusations against Doug Gilmour were. If they're true I don't think he should be associated with the Flames in any capacity.

Sheldon Souray's makes me want to vomit as well.

You can look at it here.

[Eric Vail]

Bettman will look at this as a lawyer and just want to protect the NHL. This crap has been going on since long before Graham James. I don't know who has what it takes to fix it. It is disgusting.

[dustygoon]

What is this garbage? First one says Potvin’s wife testified she was beaten as part of divorce proceedings. No charges brought. No evidence supporting this. If it’s true it’s awful and deserves justice. But you can’t conclude on this case let alone that hockey Canada is supporting rape.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by dustygoon

What is this garbage? First one says Potvin’s wife testified she was beaten as part of divorce proceedings. No charges brought. No evidence supporting this. If it’s true it’s awful and deserves justice. But you can’t conclude on this case let alone that hockey Canada is supporting rape.

Well, the wife testified. In a civil proceeding, true. But it’s evidence.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by dustygoon

What is this garbage? First one says Potvin’s wife testified she was beaten as part of divorce proceedings. No charges brought. No evidence supporting this. If it’s true it’s awful and deserves justice. But you can’t conclude on this case let alone that hockey Canada is supporting rape.

I'm not sure what you're getting after here. This doesn't really have much to do with current HC case, it's a list of documentation of abuse allegations over the decades.

We don't have the ability to know if everything is true or not, but we do know the justice system has a poor track record in sexual/domestic abuse. And Potvin's wife's testimony is itself evidence.

[Boreal]

Originally Posted by dustygoon

What is this garbage? First one says Potvin’s wife testified she was beaten as part of divorce proceedings. No charges brought. No evidence supporting this. If it’s true it’s awful and deserves justice. But you can’t conclude on this case let alone that hockey Canada is supporting rape.

The garbage is hockey culture. These are the incidents that have been documented.

Instead of shifting their mindset on how stop enabling abuse they focus on how not to get caught or hide evidence.

It’s disgusting.

[Goriders]

Why don’t you make a similar list for the general population.

[FanIn80]

I know I'm gonna get shot for this, but... innocent until proven guilty.

Unless someone's been tried and convicted in a court of law, it's all just hearsay. That spreadsheet is full of horrible stories, and will get a lot of clicks, but without "proof beyond reasonable doubt" none of it should ever be actionable.

And yes, we can get into accusations of corruption and people giving pro athletes special treatment etc, but the Gilmour entry in that sheet is a good example... it's an accusation with a link to a news article. Neither of which are considered legitimate sources of truth. It uses one lawyer getting the other one arrested as proof the whole thing was fixed... but we weren't there, we don't know what really happened, we don't know the full story behind the lawyer getting arrested. Boil everything else away, and all you're left with is a mom and dad suing a rich NHL player for a million dollars because their daughter wrote in her diary that they had sex. No charges were laid, no criminal proceedings occurred, and the lawsuit was thrown out because of a lack of evidence. Meanwhile, it's 40 years later and still anytime someone mentions Doug Gilmour, someone else follows up with a "hey, didn't he rape his babysitter?" comment.

Anyway. I'm just saying that as easy as it is to believe that pro athletes are scumbags, it's also just as easy to belive that a girl in a bar might lie to try to get paid or a 15 year old might fantasize about a rich and famous guy.

This is literally why God invented the legal system. Unfortunately though, it also appears to be why God invented newspapers and the internet.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I know I'm gonna get shot for this, but... innocent until proven guilty.

Unless someone's been tried and convicted in a court of law, it's all just hearsay. That spreadsheet is full of horrible stories, and will get a lot of clicks, but without "proof beyond reasonable doubt" none of it should ever be actionable.

And yes, we can get into accusations of corruption and people giving pro athletes special treatment etc, but the Gilmour entry in that sheet is a good example... it's an accusation with a link to a news article. Neither of which are considered legitimate sources of truth. It uses one lawyer getting the other one arrested as proof the whole thing was fixed... but we weren't there, we don't know what really happened, we don't know the full story behind the lawyer getting arrested. Boil everything else away, and all you're left with is a mom and dad suing a rich NHL player for a million dollars because their daughter wrote in her diary that they had sex. No charges were laid, no criminal proceedings occurred, and the lawsuit was thrown out because of lack of evidence. Meanwhile, 40 years later and still anytime someone mentions Doug Gilmour, someone else follows up with a "hey, didn't he rape his babysitter?" comment.

Anyway. I'm just saying that as easy as it is to believe that pro athletes are scumbags, it's also just as easy to belive that a girl in a bar might lie to try to get paid or a 15 year old might fantasize about a rich and famous guy.

This is literally why God invented the legal system. Unfortunately though, God also invented newspapers and the internet.

I don't think it's wrong to want to believe in "innocent until proven guilty" and to believe in the criminal justice system.

However, I do think we need to be critical and look at the nuances here. Sexual assault and domestic violence have been significantly difficult to prove in court and, up until the last 5 years, many powerful people have successfully swept a lot under the rug. Many real victims have had their claims dismissed and told they were either a) lying or b) didn't have sufficient evidence. You just have to look at a case like Brock Turner in 2016 to see how difficult it is to get justice, even with clear evidence.

There's also the power dynamic that multi-millionaire professional athletes have access to resources the average person doesn't. Whether it's the quality of legal defence, or in Gilmour's case, the connections to powerful people (such as a billionaire owner who apparently was a significant donor to the DA).

No one can know for sure, but I think we need to start inching closer to the idea that if 13 year old girl puts in her personal diary that she was upset her sexual relationship with a 25 year old NHL star ended and then admitted it to her parents, maybe that evidence should be taken seriously.

[midniteowl]

Originally Posted by Goriders

Why don’t you make a similar list for the general population.

Now this is silly bean, op was just trying to bring attention to the hockey culture of sexual abuse. You, here are trying to create bickering for bickering sake.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by Cole436

No one can know for sure, but I think we need to start inching closer to the idea that if 13 year old girl puts in her personal diary that she was upset her sexual relationship with a 25 year old NHL star ended and then admitted it to her parents, maybe that evidence should be taken seriously.

I'm no legal expert, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm having a hard time viewing a diary entry as non-circumstantial. Sure I'm being facetious, but if I wrote in my diary that I lent Bill Gates $7M - and then I later even "admited" I lent it to him - would he send me a cheque for the full amount?

This is the point I'm trying to make. There's evidence and then there's stuff that just sounds like it's evidence, but doesn't actually prove anything at all. Unfortunately that's the stuff that always gets repeated by people and newspapers when no one was even charged.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I'm no legal expert, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm having a hard time viewing a diary entry as non-circumstantial. Sure I'm being facetious, but if I wrote in my diary that I lent Bill Gates $7M - and then I later even "admited" I lent it to him - would he send me a cheque for the full amount?

This is the point I'm trying to make. There's evidence and then there's stuff that just sounds like it's evidence, but doesn't actually prove anything at all. Unfortunately that's the stuff that always gets repeated by people and newspapers when no one was even charged.

I'm not going to put a lot of energy into this, but you know there's a difference between an adult writing nonsense and a 13 year old child writing in her private diary the details of a sexual relationship with the parent of the child she's babysitting, and admitting it when confronted.

No one knows for sure what's real except for her and Gilmour, but I think dismissing her story isn't responsible. As a parent I think you’d have to be a really special monster to put your child through that if you didn’t believe them.

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by Boreal

The garbage is hockey culture. These are the incidents that have been documented.

Instead of shifting their mindset on how stop enabling abuse they focus on how not to get caught or hide evidence.

It’s disgusting.

I think it’s just culture in general. Just because someone is good at hockey doesn’t make them a good person. Domestic violence is present in all walks of life.

[FlamesAddiction]

None of the examples listed even touch on the internal male-on-male sexual assaults that may not be as frequent, but still way more frequent than we would like to admit.

[Goriders]

Originally Posted by midniteowl

Now this is silly bean, op was just trying to bring attention to the hockey culture of sexual abuse. You, here are trying to create bickering for bickering sake.

Not really. Just gets old having people insinuate that all hockey players are rapists.

Shouldn’t the same metrics be used for the general population?

[The Cobra]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

This is the point I'm trying to make. There's evidence and then there's stuff that just sounds like it's evidence, but doesn't actually prove anything at all.

It’s actually all evidence. It’s just a matter of assessing how accurate or reliable you think that evidence is.

I think the point you are trying to make is that in a lot of these cases we are only seeing what the complainants evidence is, and are not seeing if there is any corroboration of such evidence.

It’s doesn’t mean it does or doesn’t exist, it just is silent on that point.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Goriders

Not really. Just gets old having people insinuate that all hockey players are rapists.

Shouldn’t the same metrics be used for the general population?

Go ahead and make your list if you think you have a point.

[blender]

There can be a debate about the usefulness of this list being posted here, or of the merits of the list itself, but anyone who doesn't understand and acknowledge that there is a serious, deep-seated problem in hockey culture is either clueless or willfully ignorant.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Goriders

Not really. Just gets old having people insinuate that all hockey players are rapists.

Shouldn’t the same metrics be used for the general population?

If you were really interested in defending the point, you wouldn't be asking this you would just do the math and offer the stat. It would be easy. Take reported cases here, divide by total nhl players during reported period, and you will get a % that can be compared to the general case rate in population.

But that's a very basic level understanding of this issue even if you walk that dumbass path. Instead, you can't even muster that poor effort and are just offering the same vapid defense of hockey culture as not that bad. Pathetic.

[Eric Vail]

The fact that the St. Louis Blues traded the young blossoming superstar to the Flames in a one-sided trade at the time the allegations were made makes me believe the Blues believed the Gimour allegations to be true.

The Blues club was named for allowing Gilmour and the girl access to restricted players' rooms and 'private skating parties' in the St. Louis Arena.