Canada is still a hockey country, albeit other sports have been catching up of late (soccer and the two b-balls among them), but we still identify with the sound of blades on ice and the slapshot’s crack. So it was that many Canadians found themselves following the case of five young hockey players charged with sexual assault with more than a bit of horror and trepidation.

In the final verdict, the judge ruled that the Crown prosecutor had not proven that the victim did not provide consent and delivered a verdict of “not guilty.”

The charge is serious in Canada; if the victim is older than 16 years old, the accused can face up to 10 years in prison, while if the victim is younger than 16 years old, the accused faces a minimum sentence of one year with up to 14 years in prison. The bar for determining guilt is therefore set high. Up until 1978, rape, the most serious of sexual assault crimes, was still listed as a hanging offence—a capital crime.

While the evidence of criminal sexual assault in the case of the five young men (four of them active National Hockey League players) fell short of the mark, the details that emerged from the trial are nonetheless disturbing—with behaviour falling far short of what should normally be considered morally acceptable, if not provably criminal.

Of self-reported sexual assaults, friends, acquaintances and neighbours represent 52 percent of the assaults. These young men were not familiar to the alleged victim. Instead, a young woman was picked up in a bar and taken back to a hotel room for, what she admitted, was consensual sex with one of the men. Following a sex act, other members of the group were invited to take part.

To be clear, the young men accused of sexual assault were found not guilty of a crime. In delivering her nine-page verdict, the judge, a woman, decided that the victim was “not credible” in her testimony. Even most advocates who support women when reporting sexual assault understand the judge’s reasoning, under the Canadian justice system. 

That notwithstanding, the behaviour of these young men, as outlined in court proceedings, falls well short of what any mother, father or guardian would, or should, expect of their children.

It is not a small issue.

According to Statistics Canada, few instances of sexual assault are reported to police and only a fraction of those police-reported sexual assaults actually result in charges and convictions. One study indicated that only six percent of sexual assaults were reported to the police in 2019. It is a brave person who stands up and reports the crime. Statistics Canada reports that between 2015 and 2019, 36 percent of sexual assaults that were reported to police in Canada resulted in charges, of which 61 percent proceeded to court. Once in court, 48 percent of cases linked to these incidents resulted in an accused person being found guilty and 50 percent of these resulted in a sentence of custody—not jail time and a far cry from hanging.

The pervasiveness of pornography online likely plays a key part in the thinking of young men that their behaviour is socially acceptable—with choking becoming a serious danger thanks to sexual portrayals on the net according to numerous studies being published on the burgeoning crisis.

“The talk” is a challenging rite of passage for parents and, all too often, it is left to children’s compatriots and the internet to educate youth on how to treat their partners. Young men, especially (let’s be clear, some men are also sexually assaulted, but the numbers are far smaller than those of females being assaulted by every account), need to be taught better.

Machismo, toxic male behaviour, has always been rampant in society—ubiquitous “locker room” behaviour being case to point—but it has escalated thanks to internet porn and social media normalization.

Sexual assault is a crime that stays with the victim for a lifetime, it should never be, in any way, considered normal. But its root cause lies in the behaviour of our young men and it is we, the parents of our children who are falling short.

The young men who were accused of sexual assault may now be able to continue their lives and possibly even their careers. The NHL has chosen not to welcome those players back into “The Show” pending a review but the young woman who has been subjected to the trial by fire, that a sexual assault trial certainly is, will carry that pain for the rest of her life. Should the NHL decide not to allow the players to return, that would, at least, send a message to other young men, athletes or not. This would be the NHL’s prudent decision.

It is past time that we “teach our children well” for “our children’s hell does slowly go by” to paraphrase the Crosby, Stills and Young song.