A Hamilton couple says it wasn’t until they connected with an athlete advocacy group that they felt supported after making a complaint about the behavior of players on their son’s 2024 hockey team.
“Finally someone listens to us,” the father said he felt. “It took away some of that emotional tension.”
CBC Hamilton is not identifying parents to protect their child’s privacy.
They accused harassment and sexual misconduct by several players. on a Stoney Creek Warriors under-14 AA hockey team. A confidential third-party investigation resulted in several players and coaches receiving suspensions of one to seven games. found some The players had acted in a manner that amounted to psychological, physical and sexual abuse, intimidation and harassment of other players.
Considering the punishments were too light, the family appealed. an arbiA supervisor from Canada’s Sports Dispute Resolution Center reviewed the case and imposed probationary periods on six players and two assistant coaches, and suspended the head coach for six months.
The minor hockey association the team is a part of previously told CBC Hamilton that aside from the complainant and his family, “anyone involved in this matter is no longer a participant, coach or volunteer.”
An organization helps athletes who have suffered abuse
During the process, as the family struggled to find legal representation, someone suggested they contact Athletes Empowered, a Canadian nonprofit that supports athletes who have suffered abuse.
Athletes Empowered does not offer legal advice, but was able to provide them with invaluable guidance in the two months it took them to find a lawyer, the mother said. The group also helped by validating their feelings, he added.
Athletes Empowered began as Gymnasts for Change Canada before expanding its focus to all sports, director Amelia Cline told CBC Hamilton in an interview this week.
She is a lawyer and former elite gymnast who began sharing her own story of physical and emotional abuse in sport in 2020.
“Unfortunately,” he said, the Hamilton family’s experience was “relatively typical” of an allegation of abuse, both in terms of what the victims experienced and the response to their complaint.
“A backlash happens to you,” the parent said, adding that “a lot of the fears” that come with filing a complaint, such as concerns about the impact on a child’s place on the team, “become extremely real.”
Often, Cline said, people who report bad behavior are met with retaliation and hostility from their peers and the organization.
“At best, it looks like ‘This is no big deal. Why are you reporting this?'” Cline said. “At worst, it becomes, ‘You’re threatening our organization, you’re threatening our bottom line, and therefore we’re going to retaliate against you.'”
The institution of sport itself is not designed to address these types of complaints.-Amelia Cline
“It can start to make you feel a little crazy when you feel like you’re presenting something that should be so obvious,” Cline said. “To say it’s salt in the wound is almost too light. It’s kind of a secondary injury when something really traumatic has already happened.”
Hamilton’s mother said she believes sports complaint systems like the one Hockey Canada has in place could benefit from referring parents to groups like Athletes Empowered.
Hockey Canada is the national governing body for the sport. In an email, spokesperson Jeremy Knight told CBC Hamilton that the organizations’ policy on handling abuse complaints is “regularly reviewed to ensure it remains victim-centered” and that Sport Complaints, the group that manages Hockey Canada’s complaints, is using “trauma-informed processes.”
Cultural and structural changes needed, says advocate
The culture of the sport is part of the problem, Cline said, as is the structure of the complaint processes.
“The institution of sport itself is not designed to deal with these types of complaints. It has been created to foster a culture in which results and medals are the priority and that naturally deprioritizes the athlete as a human being,” Cline said.
“I think people really accept [the idea that] “You’re going to have to put up with certain things… in order to be a champion.”
The amount of time it takes to investigate a claim can also be an issue, he said, noting there was a year between the judge’s and arbitrator’s decisions in the Hamilton hockey case. On review, the referee said that due to the time elapsed, it would be unfair to impose new suspensions.
“If we say we can’t discipline people because it’s been too long, but it’s been too long because that’s the system we have, we have a very, very broken system,” Cline said.
Sport Complaints’ annual report says it sped up complaints processing last year and implemented “new protocols to reduce processing time for accepted complaints,” Knight said.
Cline also pointed out issues with the confidentiality involved in processes like the one Hockey Canada follows.
While it’s understandable that organizations want to hide minors’ names, Cline said, secrecy can prevent people from making informed decisions. For example, he said, a person who has abused or mistreated someone may continue in another organization without the participants realizing it.
Athletes Empowered launched new training
Cline said he would like to see more recognition that violence and abuse in sport is unacceptable, and more urgency in addressing it.
In the fall, Athletes Empowered launched a program called Keep Me Safe, which Cline said is designed to teach adults how to identify abuse or mistreatment in sports, address it and report it.
“We need to do something about it and when someone comes forward, we need to take it very seriously,” Cline said.
“It sounds very basic, but I don’t think we’re there yet.”
