Hockey Canada, CHL settle lawsuit over alleged sexual assault involving WJ players

[FlamesAddiction]

One thing not really being talked about that I hope comes out during the trial is who the older man was with the team at the bar buying drinks for the girl and was allegedly urging her to go and have sex with the boys. It was discussed a little bit leading up to the trial but seems to have been forgotten.

Whoever that person is deserves to be outed as a scum bag.

[BigThief]

Originally Posted by Locke

I wasn't sure I could have been more sarcastic, but I'll be sure to use Green Text next time for the newbs.

Another hilarious bit

[Scroopy Noopers]

All good Yeah_Baby, let’s just get back to this disgusting news.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Lewis_D

FWIW I'm also not sure why that poster quoted you initially, you definitely did not come across as being insensitive or making light of the situation in this thread.

Although Fotze is not wrong, there's definitely posts in here making light of the situation or using it as an attempt to dunk on Edmonton which is pretty gross.

What does any of this have to do with Edmonton?

There are times to dunk on Edmonton, but I dont see how this is one of them.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by IamNotKenKing

It's a touchy subject, but I understood your intent, for what it's worth.

Guys....its fotze.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Legal arguments without the jury present dominated the proceedings on Thursday. Those arguments are subject to a court-ordered publication ban….

The trial, which is expected to last eight weeks, continues on Friday.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/legal-arguments-continue-at-hockey-canada-sexual-assault-trial

[MBates]

Originally Posted by Makarov

There is no such thing as "implied consent". There is no such thing as "advance consent". The issue is whether the complainant was consenting to the sexual activity when it was happening.

If she was an active, willing participant to the sexual activity and had capacity to consent, she was consenting.

If she was not an active, willing participant (somewhere on the spectrum of passive acceptance and active resistance) and testifies that she did not consent, then the issue is whether the defendants honestly but mistakenly believed that she was consenting and whether they took reasonable steps to ascertain that consent in the circumstances.

(NOTE: I don't practice criminal law so fully expect [and invite] MBates or others to correct or refine my very brief summary.)

For the purposes of this discussion, your very brief summary is largely correct but in my mind it demonstrates why this has become a nearly unnavigable area of law for members of society who wish to avoid running afoul of criminal law.

For example this paragraph needs the following technical correction:

If she was an active, willing participant to the sexual activity and had capacity to consent, and in her mind at the time of each and every sexual act she was consenting to those specific acts, then she was consenting.

I say this correction needs to be made because that is how the law says a case must be analyzed at trial and it takes on particular importance if sexual acts are being engaged in between more than two people in an encounter. In an otherwise entirely consensual encounter, any one single moment of sexual touching where there was not subjective consent (in the mind of the complainant) at the time of the specific act can be a sexual assault.

So for those who think that during a sexual encounter one can progress to another step based on how well the current step appears to be going and then stop immediately if the other person expresses verbally or by conduct they do not want to engage in that step...sorry, that is sexual assault. The law has clearly stated that it is a crime to 'test the waters' without first obtaining consent.

Also, technically, a person being 'active' in participation is not an actual prerequisite to consent it is just the most common non-verbal indicator people rely on.

Difficulties in defining bright lines in this area of human behaviour are, in practice, revealing a routine disconnect between what the law is and how members of society generally act. How the law is applied to factual circumstances is, in my opinion, becoming increasingly unpredictable and therefore unsatisfactory for the realm of criminal law.

In my estimation, there is a high frequency of sexual interactions every day in Canada that would not be thought of by an average person as unlawful, and yet are prohibited sexual assault. As such, whether a person faces a sexual assault prosecution has become increasingly dictated by one factor: whether a sexual partner decides to make a police report alleging non-consensual sexual contact.

Do not get me wrong, I am not commenting here on the issue of false accusations at all. I am saying that we have developed the law of sexual assault in Canada to the point that what is defined as and criminalized as sexual assault includes conduct that most in society would not think there is a crime.

This problem was identified by Justice Fish of the Supreme Court of Canada (a highly respected judge throughout his career) back in 2011 when he flagged in a dissent that the lines drawn by the majority created an unworkable state of the law of sexual assault:

Adopting the Crown’s position would also require us to find that cohabiting partners across Canada, including spouses, commit a sexual assault when either one of them, even with express prior consent, kisses or caresses the other while the latter is asleep. The absurdity of this consequence makes plain that it is the product of an unintended and unacceptable extension of the Criminal Code provisions upon which the Crown would cause this appeal to rest.

https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc.../7942/index.do

That said, when one is looking at conduct that is far away from the 'norm' such as group sexual activity where one person is essentially a stranger to the rest of the group, who are friends / members of a team, most people can readily identify this as an area of very high risk where any individual participating could find themselves being accused of participating in something that became non-consensual (even if it did not start as such).

The law's requirement of what is needed to qualify as reasonable steps to be able to say that you had an honest but mistaken belief in communicated consent in this type of a sexual encounter are going to be high and it is not particularly difficult to understand why that would be the case.

Not to be too blunt about it, the conduct of any one of the other participants in a group sexual encounter could be what turns your own involvement from being consensual into a sexual assault. The Crown will argue that for any of the accused to proceed relying on any kind of assumption or ambiguous interpretation of what was happening was willfully blind or reckless and indifferent to whether the complainant was consenting (and therefore they are guilty of sexual assault even if they claim they thought it was consensual at the time).

[Lanny'sDaMan]

Deleted, as Westhead deleted his tweet

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by MBates

Difficulties in defining bright lines in this area of human behaviour are, in practice, revealing a routine disconnect between what the law is and how members of society generally act. How the law is applied to factual circumstances is, in my opinion, becoming increasingly unpredictable and therefore unsatisfactory for the realm of criminal law.

In my estimation, there is a high frequency of sexual interactions every day in Canada that would not be thought of by an average person as unlawful, and yet are prohibited sexual assault. As such, whether a person faces a sexual assault prosecution has become increasingly dictated by one factor: whether a sexual partner decides to make a police report alleging non-consensual sexual contact.

That’s an excellent summary of the issue. We want the matter of sexual consent to be a clear, bright line. But given real-world human behaviour, that’s impossible because we can never know what’s happening in someone else’s head.

Which isn’t to defend the accused here. It’s just that this trial is a high-profile example of why this is such a murky and fraught area of the law.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Lanny'sDaMan

NM I am too tired for this.

Long story short Rick Westhead is reporting a mistrial

I might be misunderstanding what a mistrial means, but does that mean they go right back into jury selection and starting over tomorrow? I am just confused because he says the trial continues tomorrow even with a mistrial.

[sureLoss]

Westhead deleted the mistrial tweet.

[Lanny'sDaMan]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I might be misunderstanding what a mistrial means, but does that mean they go right back into jury selection and starting over tomorrow? I am just confused because he says the trial continues tomorrow even with a mistrial.

My understanding is hazy at best, as I work in robotics not law. But I think you have it correct. A new jury selection will start and they are basically starting the whole shebang over again.

[chedder]

Originally Posted by Lanny'sDaMan

NM I am too tired for this.

Long story short Rick Westhead is reporting a mistrial

Unless I'm not in the correct place on X, there is no post from Rick saying this.

[Lanny'sDaMan]

Originally Posted by chedder

Unless I'm not in the correct place on X, there is no post from Rick saying this.

Yeah he deleted the tweet a bit after I screencapped it.

[The Cobra]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I might be misunderstanding what a mistrial means, but does that mean they go right back into jury selection and starting over tomorrow? I am just confused because he says the trial continues tomorrow even with a mistrial.

It simply means they start over. Whether they need to pick a new jury will depend on whether the reason for the mistrial was something the jury witnessed or not, presumably.

[rage2]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

One thing not really being talked about that I hope comes out during the trial is who the older man was with the team at the bar buying drinks for the girl and was allegedly urging her to go and have sex with the boys. It was discussed a little bit leading up to the trial but seems to have been forgotten.

Whoever that person is deserves to be outed as a scum bag.

He was a Nike Marketing Manager. Already been outed. Matt Maccarone.

[Goriders]

Seems weird to have a mistrial this quickly. Didn’t they just finish choosing the jury?

[The Cobra]

Originally Posted by Goriders

Seems weird to have a mistrial this quickly. Didn’t they just finish choosing the jury?

Very weird. But something obviously came up at trial that was so predudicial that the trial could not go on.

Example would be if the jury heard some evidence that should have been excluded that they simply could not ignore. I am sure there are other reasons of course.

I am guessing here, it would be nice if one of the legal experts chimed in.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by The Cobra

Very weird. But something obviously came up at trial that was so predudicial that the trial could not go on.

Example would be if the jury heard some evidence that should have been excluded that they simply could not ignore. I am sure there are other reasons of course.

I am guessing here, it would be nice if one of the legal experts chimed in.

Since the tweet was retracted, I'm still waiting to see what actually happened. If it actually was a mistrial, at least it happened so early that a restart won't affect much.

[MissTeeks]

Official now.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1915772288214892576

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/londo...-ont-1.7518317