The decision is in on the sexual assault trial of 5 former members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey crew — all 5 have been acquitted.
Every participant was accused of sexually assaulting a girl in a resort room. Immediately, Justice Maria Carroccia said that the Crown didn’t show its case past an inexpensive doubt.
The trial has captured the world’s consideration and sparked polarized public debates about consent, hockey tradition and the function of sport in socializing younger males.
Elite athletes usually function inside environments the place their expertise grants them particular standing and entry to assets — financial and in any other case — that bolster a way of entitlement. In some situations, sport organizations exacerbate this sentiment by defending their star performers as an alternative of addressing misconduct, which was mirrored on this case.
For instance, an abusive nationwide vaulting coach for New Zealand Athletics was lastly banned for 10 years, however solely after years of unchecked abuse of his feminine athletes, together with “inappropriate sexual references.” This highlights how misconduct can go on unrestrained for thus lengthy.
The tradition of exceptionalism
As researchers with experience in sport tradition and sexual and gender-based violence, we’re reflecting on what the Hockey Canada trial reveals in regards to the institutional and cultural practices inside sport.
The formal and casual guidelines of males’s sport validate misogyny and reinforce systemic patterns of sexual entitlement and insufficient accountability. We provide some views on how these troubling patterns of violence in sport might be reformed.
A masks made by college hockey gamers as a part of a analysis undertaking is seen on show on the Hockey Canada Past The Boards Summit in Calgary, Alta., in September 2023. The 2-day summit tackled elite males’s hockey and the poisonous masculinity within the sport that may additionally breed racism, sexism and homophobia.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Donna Spencer
The Hockey Canada sexual assault trial has develop into a focus for questioning how elite sporting environments defend athletes from accountability. This can be very true in hockey.
Of their e book about poisonous hockey tradition, authors Evan Moore and Jashmina Shaw argue that hockey operates inside “a bubble composed mostly of boys and men who are white, cis-het, straight and upper-class. And those who play often become coaches and teach the same values to the next generation.”
This carefully knit neighborhood thrives on conformity and creates situations which are ripe for the pervasive misogyny in opposition to ladies and systemic silence round problems with consent. The e book Skating on Skinny Ice: Skilled Hockey, Rape Tradition and Violence in opposition to Ladies, written by legal justice students and sports activities reporters, demonstrates how endemic sexism, heavy alcohol use, abusive friends and the sexual objectification of girls are buttressed by broader social elements. These elements uphold and reproduce poisonous hockey tradition, together with patriarchal beliefs.
Male-dominated sporting cultures additionally emphasize a specific kind of masculinity that focuses on dominance, bodily intimidation and profitable in any respect prices. This could blur the boundaries between acceptable aggressive behaviour and problematic aggression.
AHL Calder Cup Ultimate motion in Abbotsford, B.C., on June 21, 2025. Sexism, heavy alcohol use, abusive friends and the sexual objectification of girls might be endemic to some male-dominated sports activities cultures.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Vulnerability in sports activities
Inside the realm {of professional} sport, athletes additionally develop into commodified and objectified by way of media protection, sponsorship offers and public scrutiny. This commodification can contribute to a tradition the place athletes could internalize the concept their our bodies are public property, additional eroding their sense of autonomy and understanding of consent, particularly in relation to others past the game context.
Questioning or circumventing institutionally sanctioned behaviours shouldn’t be simple, and it’s well-documented that many elite athletes battle with psychological well being points together with despair, nervousness and substance misuse ensuing from the strain to align with the dominant tradition.
A Denver Broncos linebacker reacts to the crew’s loss in opposition to the New York Jets in an NFL soccer recreation in October 2023 in Denver.
(AP Photograph/Jack Dempsey)
However what usually will get forgotten is how the hyper-masculine tradition of sports activities creates vital boundaries to in search of assist. Younger male athletes are socialized to adjust to peer cultures that equate vulnerability with weak spot. But they face intense pressures round household expectations, sponsorship offers and crew success that calls for they keep appearances of power and management.
This cycle of suppressed vulnerability and untreated misery permits poisonous sporting masculinity to flourish, forcing organizations like Hockey Canada to confront their function in perpetuating these dangerous dynamics.
The necessity for structural, cultural reform
Sports activities organizations have vital monetary and reputational funding in athletes. This could create an inherent battle when misconducts come up, problematically prompting sports activities organizations to make use of their energy and assets to prioritize injury management over justice.
We noticed this within the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial, the place every hockey participant had his personal authorized counsel, a stark illustration of institutional energy and the extent to which sports activities organizations will go to defend their members from accountability. The deeply entrenched networks inside sport prioritize self-preservation over addressing misconduct
One of many accused within the Hockey Canada trial, Carter Hart, leaves the courthouse in London, Ont. in Might 2025, together with his attorneys. Hart was acquitted.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Geoff Robins
Successfully responding to those points requires addressing the systemic elements that perpetuate sexual and gender-based violence in sport. The sport ecosystem in Canada wants radical change, together with who trains and mentors younger males in hockey and the way organizations examine complaints.
It requires going past particular person accountability, taking part in consent workshops or issuing coverage paperwork. These actions alone are inadequate to shift the cultural needle.
In 2022, Hockey Canada launched a complete motion plan to handle systemic points in hockey that options discussions of accountability, governance, schooling and coaching and impartial sport security constructions.
Group organizations just like the Ontario Coalition of Rape Disaster Centres additionally issued a sequence of suggestions in 2022 that stay germane:
Work with athletes and sports activities organizations to handle sexual violence in sports activities tradition;
Help the event and development of male allies applications inside community-based sexual assault help centres; and
Help those that have been harmed.
Along with these glorious solutions, Hockey Canada and different allied hockey organizations should be keen to restructure the present hierarchical construction of energy that governs not simply hockey, but additionally the gamers and all the opposite businesses concerned, together with coaches, sponsors, trainers, authorized groups, media and PR representatives.
These organizational modifications are attainable, as evidenced by the efforts of Bayne Pettinger, an agent who has led efforts to create house for queer hockey gamers in Hockey Canada and the Nationwide Hockey League.
Scott Smith, who stepped down from his function as Hockey Canada’s President and CEO, left, and Hockey Canada Chief Monetary Officer Brian Cairo seem at a standing committee in July 2022 trying into how Hockey Canada dealt with allegations of sexual assault and a subsequent lawsuit.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Sport’s ethical reckoning
Nonetheless, the cultural norms of energy in sport lengthen past the enjoying discipline to form attitudes towards consent and sexual conduct.
Till sport organizations handle the foundational cultural components that allow misconduct — poisonous masculinity, institutional safety and erosion of consent tradition — significant change will stay elusive.
Inside hockey environments, particularly, the objectification of girls and the institutional silence surrounding sexual violence have develop into normalized facets of the game’s tradition, creating situations the place misconduct can flourish unchecked.
The occasions examined on this most up-to-date trial aren’t remoted incidents however signs of deeper systemic failures inside elite sport.
Solely by way of complete cultural transformation can we make sure that sport environments are areas of real security, respect and accountability for all individuals.
