How women's advocates are using the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial to talk to players about consent

Kate Dubinski · CBC News

· Posted: May 26, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: May 26

A period aft the commencement of the high-profile intersexual battle proceedings of 5 erstwhile inferior hockey players successful London, Ont., advocates against gender-based unit are utilizing the proceedings to thatch young men astir consent and their responsibilities arsenic relation models for others. 

"I deliberation for young men and for hockey players, they're watching what these 5 defendants person gone done and they won't privation to beryllium successful that position," said Allison Preyde, the manager of prevention and acquisition astatine Anova, the gender-based unit centre successful London. 

"They don't privation to beryllium dragged done that to enactment their careers connected the line so we're having conversations astir however to marque situations safer and what situations aren't worthy the risk."

Former hockey teammates Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dubé and Cal Foote are each charged with intersexual assault. McLeod is additionally charged with being a enactment to the offence. 

In June 2018, they were successful London for a gala to observe their teams' satellite inferior golden medal triumph earlier that year. After a nighttime of drinking astatine a section bar, McLeod went location with a woman, known successful tribunal proceedings arsenic E.M., for consensual sex. He aboriginal invited his teammates to his country to person intersexual relations with the woman, thing she says she didn't consent to. 

Their proceedings started April 22 and included the nine-day grounds and cross-examination by 5 defence teams of E.M., who said she astatine times went on with what the men wanted due to the fact that she was frightened and had ne'er been successful a akin situation. In the witnesser box, she described her caput separating from her assemblage arsenic a coping mechanism. 

Evidence presented astatine proceedings included substance messages sent by McLeod inviting his teammates to his edifice country for radical sex, and the players texting each different successful the days and weeks pursuing the incidental erstwhile constabulary and Hockey Canada began investigating, assuring each different that they did thing wrong. 

Consent, the Crown has said, is astatine the bosom of the case. 

"We speech a batch astir powerfulness imbalances, and however that powerfulness tin beryllium utilized for bully due to the fact that our presumption is that athletes are not atrocious oregon that sports are bad," said Hanna McGee, the Youth Outreach Coordinator astatine the Saffron Centre, a intersexual battle centre successful Sherwood Park, Alberta. 

McGee developed a programme called Consent successful Sport, which delivers acquisition to athletes arsenic young arsenic 13, including those successful the British Columbia Hockey League. 

"Often, athletes don't adjacent recognize the value of their societal status, their influence, adjacent successful tiny communities wherever they're highly regarded and treated similar celebrities. With a batch of that powerfulness comes a batch of responsibility," McGee said.  

Being connected a sports squad tin mean making friends for life, but tin besides marque it hard to talk up and halt antagonistic behaviour, McGee said.

"It's perfectly important successful the satellite of sports to beryllium capable to thin connected our teammates and thin connected our coaches. But it tin crook into a harmful groupthink, wherever we tin deflect responsibility, we tin enactment without autonomy, we tin blasted others for our actions. How you enactment and transportation yourself is going to travel you forever," she said.  

"The proceedings provides an accidental for america to truly deliberation astir the value of interaction implicit intent and reasoning astir consent being genuinely freely fixed and genuinely ongoing." 

In 2016, the Ontario Hockey League launched a programme called Onside, which consists of a two-hour mandatory grooming programme that teaches players and squad unit astir their work to show respect for women. Local intersexual battle and gender-based unit centres are expected to present the people to OHL teams. 

But Preyde, who has delivered the Onside seminar to members of the London Knights inferior hockey squad successful the past, said consent grooming has to commencement overmuch earlier. 

"Particularly for radical who are successful the civilization of sports and successful locker rooms, having those conversations arsenic aboriginal arsenic imaginable is key," she said.

"We request to get them reasoning about, 'What does consent mean? What is healthy? What is not healthy? What does it mean to beryllium a bully friend? 'The deficiency of that speech aboriginal connected truly sets up inferior hockey players for a truly interaction time, not conscionable arsenic radical who are perchance assaulting, but for radical who are astatine hazard of assault, too."