The State of Junior Hockey in 2003: The Cover Up Continues

On April 14 2003, the Court of Queen's Bench in Swift Current, Saskatchewan will hear a civil case put forth by an athlete who once played for the Swift Current Broncos.

While Sheldon Kennedy openly disclosed the sexual abuse he endured at the hands of his coach Graham James, the second complainant chose, as most sex abuse victims do, to have his identity remain unknown. Three hundred sexual assault charges were laid by police after Kennedy gave evidence, and another 50 charges were added when the second complainant told his story.

James pleaded guilty, which conveniently meant there would be no more investigations and no criminal trial where incriminating evidence could be submitted that may have showed that James operated in a culture that allowed boys and young men to be abused in the name of saving face in hockey.

The scandal in Swift Current is framed as a "one bad apple story." James infiltrated the hallowed halls of this sport, did his terrible deeds, and has now been banished-at least from the Canadian practice of the sport. Hockey could be hockey again. And then the second complainant and his parents decided to sue.

In January, 1999, the complainant now the Plaintiff in his suit, and his parents lodged two separate lawsuits against the WHL (located in Calgary), the CHL (Toronto), the Canadian Hockey Association (Ottawa and Calgary offices), the Swift Current Broncos, the Moose Jaw Warriors, the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, the Saskatchewan Amateur Hockey Association, the Winnipeg South Blues Hockey Club, the Manitoba Junior A Hockey League, the Manitoba Amateur Hockey Association, and the numbered company 423547 connected to both Ed Chynoweth, who was the Commissioner of the WHL during the Graham James era, and the WHL. Together the suits total over one million dollars.

Individuals named in the suit include Chynoweth, Lyle Helland, Barry Trapp, Doug Mosher, John Rittenger, Herbert Butz, and Gary Bollinger-all long time Western Hockey League builders. All claim to have absolutely no knowledge of James's actions. They claim in a response filed with the Court of Queen's Bench in Regina, "the ultimate responsibility for the care and supervision of the Plaintiff remained and was reposed with the Plaintiff's parents."

This case calls into question the very foundation of major junior hockey in Canada.

Ed Chynoweth, a mainstay of the WHL for decades, oversaw the league as Commissioner, and sat on the CHL executive council. Since 1972 Chynoweth has held a variety of positions from coach and general manager to director, commissioner and president of both the WHL and the CHL. Chynoweth is the type of guy who will fly to Toronto to attend Wayne Gretzky's induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame, as he did in the fall of 1999, only to turn around the next night and attend a Kootenay Ice game, which is a team he now controls. He is presently the governor of that WHL franchise in Cranbrook, B.C. In December 2002, The Globe and Mail, in their summary of 2002 movers and shakers in Canadian sport, listed him in their top ten.

But The Globe and Mail also reported in the winter of 1997 that "a former club executive" of a WHL franchise had complained to Chynoweth about Brian Shaw, owner and general manager of the Winterhawks, years ago. Just as in Swift Current, where players would beg to be traded, desperate boys and young men tried to get out of their contracts.

The executive said he asked Chynoweth why they weren't discussing the issue. He says Chynoweth replied, "Why do you keep raising this?" to which the executive replied, "Because it's an issue."

The former official believes, because of the lax attitude towards Shaw, James learned he could get away with the same. "The point is, if you're Graham James and you were looking at this league and saw that this (Shaw's abuse of players) is not a problem, no wonder he felt he could prey on them."

Shaw died in 1993 and the WHL paid tribute to him by naming their "Humanitarian of the Year Award" after him. In 1997 they quietly removed his name, and Chynoweth denied the above exchange took place. He resigned from his position as president and CEO of the league shortly after.

The rape culture of the locker room

In my book, "Crossing the Line: Violence and Sexual Assault in Canada's National Sport", I quote Chynoweth from the 1993 Memorial Cup souvenir book. When referring to the drafting of European players to the junior leagues Chynoweth said, "The International Ice Hockey Federation has expressed a concern to the CAHA. The whole concept is not to rape the European federations." (Crossing the Line: Violence and Sexual Assault in Canada's National Sport, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1998, p. 88).

While I am sure Chynoweth did not use the word rape in its literal sense, it is interesting to note that of all the words he could use to describe the European draft process, he chose to use this one.

In 1995, after a high-school girl accused five members of the WHL team, the Saskatoon Blades, of gang rape, Chynoweth insinuated in the media that she was well known to the team as a girl who provided easy sex before she went to the police. Chynoweth is quoted in the StarPhoenix on February 11, 1995 as saying "Certainly if the reports I'm getting [are true], this wasn't her first time in the kip."

Locker room talk, whether uttered by players or officials, is filled with sexually and violently loaded words and innuendos.

Greg Malszecki, a sport historian at York University, argues that there is a deep connection between "the erotic and the combative" in sport. He refers to the sexualized violent language of sport, which he calls "man talk", and lists words such as "penetration" "attacked" "obliterated" "impotent" and dozens of others that are common to the male sporting world.

The upcoming Swift Current case will question practices such as turning a blind eye when allegations of abuse are brought forward and the way in which the culture that is so well described by the above words forms "the rape culture of the locker room."

Most importantly it will examine how a culture of consent is constructed by the very people who are responsible for the well-being and good health of young people. The tradition of "duty of care" in Canadian common law that asks adults in positions of power to exercise care for others who have less power, especially when those others are children, will be pivotal to this case. The Plaintiffs believe the pillars of the WHL listed above, "knew or should have known," about the years of abuse James's second victim suffered.

Hockey and the duty of care

Many close to hockey argue that the roots of abuse within Junior Canadian hockey have existed at least since the 1970s when players abruptly left Brian Shaw's teams when he was owner and general manager of the Winterhawks. Before this he was shunted about to different minor league clubs.

There were plenty of indications that James followed the same path. He was abruptly fired and moved from team to team before he landed in Swift Current. Players also abruptly left teams he coached and many have displayed signs of anti-social personality disorder, a behaviour that can be put forward in court in cases such as this one when victims of abuse sue their abusers.

This disorder includes self-destructive behaviour such as drug and alcohol abuse, driving while under the influence, and violent behaviour that is destructive to others. Many players from Swift Current - Sheldon Kennedy is only one example - had serious alcohol problems while they played on the Broncos. These self-destructive and violent signals from young people are SOS signs for help and it is at these crucial moments that responsible adults must exercise their duty of care.

The Supreme Court of Canada clarified the concept of duty of care in a strongly worded decision. In June 1999, the court stated unequivocally that the rights of abused children must be of utmost importance and take precedence over the financial well-being of corporations and organizations that employed the abusive adult while acting "in locus parentis" when children are under their care.

The Supreme Court was clear on how such cases should be determined in their decisions concerning The Children's Foundation and the Vernon Boys and Girls Club. In both cases the sexual abuser was convicted and in both cases, the Plaintiffs sued the organizations for putting them at risk while they were in the organizations' care.

The Justices sided with the Plaintiffs and asked for a test in such cases that focuses on, "whether the employer's enterprise and empowerment of the employee materially increased the risk of sexual assault and hence the harm. The test must not be applied mechanically, but with a sensitive view to the policy considerations that justify the imposition of vicarious liability-fair and efficient compensation for wrong and deterrence.... Because of the peculiar exercises of power and trust that pervade cases such as child abuse, special attention should be paid to the existence of a power or dependency relationship, which on its own often creates a considerable risk of wrongdoing." (Supreme Court of Canada rulings 1999, File No: 26041 and 26013).

The decision, in other words, recognizes the way in which a relationship between young people and adults that is based on power and dependency automatically puts young people at risk.

The court also believed that making organizations responsible for the abusive behaviour of their employees, "may also deter other incidents of sexual abuse by motivating charitable organizations entrusted with the care of children to take not only such precautions as the law of negligence requires, but all possible precautions to ensure that their children are not sexually abused." (ibid.)

Junior hockey - a multi million dollar business

The Respondents have argued in the media that Shaw and James were outsiders who had infiltrated their ranks. They defend the intrinsic goodness of hockey, and believe that it is one of the most important elements of Canadian culture where great care is given to the upbringing of boys and young men.

In fact, in legal arguments given in the 1970's when girls started to make boy's teams, the Ontario Minor Hockey Association stated their organization was "the result of many years of hard work by men sincerely interested in the welfare of the boys of Ontario and in the game of hockey." The views of the OMHA were shared by all other provincial organizations-hockey was good and it was good for boys. (Cummings v The Ontario Minor Hockey Association, Ontario Human Rights Commission, 1976, also Ontario Minor Hockey Association, rules and regulations 1976).

There may be a belief in leagues dedicated to boys that the game is a positive experience, but major junior hockey is a multi-million dollar business that openly refers to boys and young men as its most valuable commodity. Each franchise has an annual budget of over $1,000,000.00, new ones sell for even more, and week-long Memorial Cup championships are touted as bringing at least that amount to the cities that host them.

Boys as young as fourteen can be bought and owned (as Sheldon Kennedy and the Plaintiff were) until they are old enough to play in the junior league. Because of the draft system, where teams pay for the rights to a player, the owners make crucial decisions about a boy's future. Even in the United States where the National Colleges Athletic Association (NCAA) is accused of creating a meat grinder approach to athletes through athletic scholarships, the athlete has a say in what team he or she will play for.

In the CHL the owners decide. Players must report to the team that has bought them, no matter how far away from home, no matter how isolated they feel in a new community, no matter how nave and green they are about life in major junior hockey. These boys may appear confident and strong - many weigh in close to 200 pounds, tower above their parents, and have learned the script of male bravado early on. But in the eyes of the law, they are still children, and socially and emotionally they often remain child-like.

Physical maturity does not indicate other forms of maturity. In fact, the privileged and often violent world of rep hockey the boys play in before they reach the junior leagues can deny them a balanced maturity. As long they play well and hit hard, they are well rewarded. A hockey stick clutched in the hand is a silver spoon in the mouth. But this privilege is only relative to their peer group, not to adults.

A homosexual culture

Michael Robidoux lived the junior hockey life, but his work in anthropology in university got him thinking. If he allowed himself to be honest he realized the players in the system have no power relative to the men who run it. Eventually he abandoned that world for one of scholarly investigation.

Robidoux argues that today masculine power lies, not in one's body, but in one's intellect (indicated by wealth in a capitalist culture), and the means to dominate the bodies of others occurs through the power wealth bestows. The hockey player who physically dominates on the ice has no real power. The man who owns him has the power, and can live vicariously through the player's ability to dominate other bodies. 

Robidoux says "the athlete undeniably experiences levels of control and power made possible by subjecting himself to disciplines of excellence and (he) is subsequently celebrated within this framework. In fact these male figures are often made heroes, placed upon pedestals for everyone to see. It is the celebration of this masculine identity that makes it such an attractive identity to adopt, and thus, ensures compliance."

The hockey player learns to sell his body to men. Thus Shaw and James are not anomalies, but rather logical products of a system that uses young male bodies. Robidoux argues that hockey is highly homosocial - that only one sex prevails and that sex is idealized.

He does not argue that the culture is homosexual. However, depending on how we define the term homosexual, it could be used to describe certain aspects of hockey culture. Sexual acts - both homosexual and heterosexual - include much more than penetration and include sexual play as well. This includes flirting, body touching, eye contact, spoken words, and actual sexual play.

There is plenty of nude preening, promenading, bodily contact, and play in the all-male locker rooms of junior hockey. There are towel fights, feigned sex acts, and a great deal of bragging about sexual conquests over women that frequently denigrate women. Amongst players who are relatively equal to each other, this is nothing more than adolescent sexual experimentation - a phase just about all boys go through, though there is something about an all-male team that frequently exaggerates this play.

Sex with women to prove manliness

But the locker room culture often gets carried into bars and parties where the preening, denigrating, and bragging continues. In my research I found that girls and women are frequently disdained objects on which a player performs a sexual act in order to prove his manliness to the rest of the team while they watch. This is sexual assault, not experimentation.

Sport sociology professor Alexis Peters of the University of Lethbridge studied 102 Ontario Hockey Association players and compared them to a control group of 74 non-players. The players showed a statistically significant higher level of hypermasculinity, belief in danger as excitement, violence as manly, sex-role stereotypes, callous attitude towards sex, adversarial sexual beliefs, rape myth acceptance and acceptance of interpersonal violence.

She writes, "there appeared to be an association between elite athletic participation and sexual violence which warranted further investigation," and asks, "whether the social and cultural organization of sporting practices around the celebration of hegemonic masculinity might place elite male athletes at higher risk for perpetuating acts of sexual violence...(and) might place the elite male at risk for engaging in sexual violence by encouraging a violent peer subculture."

I spoke to ten young women in Swift Current who say they experienced everything from sexual harassment to gang rape with the Broncos. They described sexual behaviours that were completely devoid of any understanding of, or caring for female sexual pleasure, but did emphasize a sexual bonding and a sexual display between the players.

In this context, paradoxically, a sexual assault against a female is also a homosexual act in that the ordeal is performed to titillate the other members of the team who are present, and show the physical dominance of the player performing the rape.

Sadomasochistic initiation rites

Similarly, rookie initiations are often sexualized with the rookie acting as the "designated female." Broken down with vast amounts of alcohol, these boys find themselves stripped naked and forced to perform any number of sadomasochistic acts. From performing oral sex to being penetrated with objects varying from marshmallows to cigars, they must obey orders or risk being ostracized and attacked for the rest of the year.

One former WHL player who wrote his master's thesis on initiations at Queen's University described what happened to him: "They made us strip naked on the bus," he told me, "and then we had to stand in front of each senior player with our hands behind our heads. They beat our genital area with whatever object they wanted - coat hangers, whatever - it didn't matter. I was a quiet guy who didn't cause trouble and they didn't hurt me. But the guys with attitude...they beat them until they were bleeding. The coach was sitting in the front of the bus laughing. He coaches in the NHL now. I never told my parents even though I lived with them."

The players know that ultimately they must meet the approval of coaches, owners, managers, and scouts and endure abuse so they won't be seen as weak or not compliant. Consciously everyone agrees player selection should be determined by playing ability. But the subculture of the locker room and team bus wouldn't loom so large if hypermasculine performance in these venues wasn't vital to acceptance on the team. The subconscious need to belong to the group, and to establish a strategic position in the pecking order within that group still are ways in which "who will leave and who will stay" are determined.

On the subject of pecking order Robidoux writes, "...agricultural metaphors are accurate descriptions of the players' commodity status. The players are literally cultivated 'on the farm,' and only those with suitable qualities are picked to be used in the NHL market. Moreover, the cultivation period is limited and those who do not develop sufficiently will eventually be replaced with new stock."

Older players recognize the talent of younger ones and can't afford to be squeezed out of the market by these new upstarts. Hence the brutal hazings and feminization of them as players jockey for a chance to impress the decision-makers. (This behavior is similar to that recently reported from the CFB Winnipeg Armed Forces base. The base was investigated after it paraded a man dressed up as a tranvestite/woman [take your pick], and was jailed in a pink cage on the "Crazy Train." (The Globe and Mail, "No Harm Was Meant With Float, Soldier' Leader Says", March 7, 2003).

This was a parody directed at soldiers who sought psychological help to cope with post-traumatic stress syndrome after they returned from duty. The message was clear that men who admitted to mental stress were weak and crazy, and thus like women, and therefore objects to be mocked.

In junior hockey I found a similar obsession with turning "weak" boys and men into girls and women. As Sheldon Kennedy said of James's attitude towards him, "he treated me like I was his wife." Given the misogynistic nature of their abuse, one wonders how these players will ever be able to form healthy sexual attitudes towards women, and what their definition of "a wife" is.

Victims fear exposure

At the same time as this James ensured silence through homophobic fear. Admitting to sexual abuse was admitting to femaleness, to weakness, and to craziness. Because he was the one who could open the door to the NHL for them, James's players had to play by his rules within the homophobic culture of junior hockey. With the exception of one player in Winnipeg, who played for James's as a child and was sexually abused, fear of being branded a homosexual/woman has kept the rest of James's victims quiet.

Police believe there are anywhere from 20 to 100 victims from the James era. Many have been accepted into some kind of league, whether it be the NHL, varsity, or the many semi-pro leagues that proliferate in North America or Europe.

In order to maintain the male pose, they must keep their Swift Current secrets to themselves or they too will be included in the homosexual/woman category. Being one of James's favorite boys means being one of his favorite girls. Today, however, it is not their old coach who keeps them silent, but their peers, and the men who judge them. The following is an example of how players have tried to cover up the problematic James era.

Former Bronco player, Jason Becker, denied he attended an all-night meeting where the team decided to ask management to fire James because of his behaviour in February 1994. "I don't recall a team meeting at all. I wasn't involved at all," Becker told me of a meeting that caused him to miss practice. But once he is told his best friend on the team remembers sitting with him and exchanging worried glances throughout the meeting, he does recall the meeting. "We just wanted to get the hell out, finish off the season and leave Swift Current," his friend told me.

Becker remembers meeting with president John Rittenger and scout Doug Mosher. "I'm assuming it was near the end (of the meeting)," he says, "they may have been in before and after. Darren (McLean) and Kevin (Powell) talked to Mosher before and may have after," he adds of the two players who called the meeting in the first place.

The meeting took place at the house of the billeting parents of two players on the team. They kept a list of those attending and Becker was on it. One player was posted to make sure another player who billeted with James at the time didn't intervene and spy for him. By this time, the team was divided into "Graham's boys" and the rest. The billeting parents also remember the players telling Rittenger and Mosher they could no longer play for James.

The billeting mother (who wishes to remain unnamed) remembers early in the next season (1994-95), after James and Rittenger had moved on to form the Hitmen, going in to the bedroom of one of the players to make the bed and seeing a note on his dresser. "Deny all meetings took place - Jason Becker" the note said. She mentioned it at the time to her husband. By then Becker had been made captain. She remembers all of this as if it were yesterday. "I didn't send no letter out," Becker told me. "That's total bullshit."

When James finally did leave Swift Current after the 1994 season, he brought two of his players, whose identities will not be revealed, from Swift Current to Calgary. One of those players lived with him, a fact confirmed by former Swift Current Broncos president John Rittenger, and one of the Hitmen players from the 1995-96 season. The player denies moving in with James after he built his new house in Calgary, but his denial appears to be the norm amongst former athletes who played under James.

"We were told not to say anything," says a player who started out on the Hitmen team in 1995-96, and was later traded to Swift Current. "I was playing for the Broncos when the news about Graham hit, and management told us not to talk to anyone about it. But the guys on the team who had been there in '94 and before told us they knew what Graham was like all along. They said everyone knew."

Victims attempt to normalise the situation

It wasn't just young players who were willing to help James start out again. James and Broncos' president John Rittenger left Swift Current to form the Hitmen, a new CHL franchise with NHL players Theoren Fleury, Joe Sakic, Geoff Sanderson, Sheldon Kennedy, pro wrestler Brett Hart, and NHL scout Anders Hedberg also buying into the team.

Rittenger referred to the support James received from such stellar NHL players during an interview with The Regina Leader Post in 1994. When the Broncos announced that James would be going to Calgary, Rittenger said, "What astounds me is the number of calls Graham gets from alumni. Every day, he hears from somebody like Geoff Sanderson, Joe Sakic, Sheldon Kennedy. The only disappointing thing is that most of them call collect."

Once James moved to Calgary he had support from another former player who had moved on to the NHL. During the 1995-96 season, Theoren Fleury sat out from NHL play as he waited for the right offer from the Calgary Flames. "Theo trained with us five days a week," says a former Hitmen player. "He was always around."

Fleury didn't just attend James's practices. A former employee of the bank that handled the sale of the Hitmen in Calgary said, while all of the above were involved with the deal, it was Fleury who did most of the footwork. "For a while he was at the bank all the time," says the former employee. "To me it looked like it was his deal."

Evidence presented at the sentencing hearing by Lorne Scott, James's lawyer shows that Kennedy also played a role in reassuring James that he would be there for him should he need him. In the postscript of his Christmas card to James before he went to the police, Kennedy wrote, "If your job is on the line, Woody [James's nickname], tell me, and I'll pay cash for the team."

This normalizing of an extremely abnormal situation is one way victims try to deny that they have been abused. They will go to extraordinary degrees and expense to create an environment to tell the outside world that everything is just fine. It is particularly common when the abuser is someone close to a victim and is in a position of trust.

Kennedy, with the help of other NHL players, spent plenty of energy, time, and money trying to create a situation that tried to normalize James, but in fact supplied him with a fresh crop of boys. He says he finally went to the police when he saw James start to isolate and favour another player. He simply couldn't watch history repeat itself.

Kennedy's denial and eventual need to tell the truth is somewhat predictable. But if the Plaintiffs in the civil case are successful in proving that there was a conspiracy of silence at work during the James era, when did it start and has it ever ended? There are athletes who played during the same time as the Plaintiff did who say they remember, not just the abuse he suffered, but that James's behaviour was general knowledge. If the Broncos management is found to also have known about the abuse the Plaintiff suffered how long have management - and James's former players - been covering up?

Added to this questions are even more far reaching questions. What if the girls who allege that they were sexually abused at the hands of the Broncos sue those players for sexual abuse?

Civil cases alleging sexual abuse need not just follow successful convictions in criminal cases. More and more victims are deciding not to press criminal charges because of the trauma involved throughout the legal process, and the slim chance of convictions. So if girls from Swift Current start suing players, will the players answer back in defense and say that their actions were caused by anti-social personality disorder caused by the abuse they suffered? Will they name the Broncos, the WHL, the CHL, the CHA, and possibly individuals as third party defenders in the cases? The tentacles of this story are indeed long and reach well into the future.

We shouldn't be surprised if this case does not come to fruition and instead is settled out of court with a publication ban invoked on all evidence. If we follow this story to its source, the phrase "Hockey Night in Canada" will indeed take on a very different meaning.