THE HOCKEY CANADA TRIAL: WE NEED TO CARE ABOUT ALL OF THEM!
Kathleen Wynne
I don’t think anyone should feel particularly happy about the outcome of the trial of the five young men. The court has found them not guilty in the eyes of the law and that is some vindication for them. The court, by definition has found the young woman more responsible for what happened in that hotel room, none of which was illegal.
The whole situation just leaves me sad.
Sad for that young woman and what she has been through both on that night and every day since including all those hours on the stand. Sad for those young men whose lives are irreparably altered in ways they certainly did not imagine before they stepped into that room. And sad for all the boys and girls, in hockey but way beyond hockey who will catch whiffs of this story but may not have a parent or a coach who will help them make sense of it.
I heard a radio commentator say that in the aftermath of the verdict, she actually didn’t care about the careers of the five young men. I challenge that attitude. We need to care about all of them, the young men, the young woman, all of them. It is in all our best interest to support all of them as they go forward and hope we all learn from the experience.
Many people in my life are firmly angered by the decision. They feel that once again the interests of a young woman, brave enough to come forward, have not been served. Of course, there are many who feel that these young men have lost so much, that in the end they did nothing illegal and have rightly been vindicated.
But I have felt throughout this entire saga that as a society we remain incapable of asking the right question.
My friend, Scott Reid, captured part of what I think needs to be said in his commentary on Talk 1010 on July 25th. He spoke as the father of four sons about what he will say or has already said to his boys: if you find yourself in a room with five or six of your buddies and one woman, you are probably in the wrong room. The woman probably is too. And just because nothing that happened in that room was illegal doesn’t mean it was right.
I have paraphrased Scott but I, like him, am not the least bit surprised that these young men were found not guilty. In our family, that has been the consensus prediction from the outset.
But here is what I worry about: how do the process that led to that verdict and the verdict itself help? How do they help either the young men or the young woman understand any better what happened in that room? How do this punitive, humiliating process and this verdict prevent such a sorry situation from happening again?
What the verdict might prevent is such a case going to court again but at 72 I have lived long enough to know that it will not prevent bad decision-making when youth, sex and alcohol meet and mingle.
How is it that we have not understood that our judicial system, good at many things, can be a very blunt instrument? This verdict, and I do not question the judge’s determination, answered the question that was asked regarding consent in that hotel room. Fine, as far as it goes.
What if the court had asked these young people, the young men and the young woman to enter into a different process? What if the expectation of our society was that the situation was, by definition, murky? And what if in such murky situations where it appears there was willingness, partial or otherwise on all sides, we asked all of the participants to examine the situation and attempt to take some learning from it? And what if, after that, we asked those young people to talk to other young people about what they learned, where they went wrong, what was ok and what definitely wasn’t?
It breaks my heart that so much hurt lingers in the wake of this very public, humiliating case.
As a legislator, I tried very hard to put policies in place that would improve process in our schools, our justice system and communities. I worked to update sex education curriculum to give kids more and better information, including about consent. I worked to create justice hubs in communities that can offer more and better opportunities for healing and understanding. I led a government that invested in community agencies to support victims of abuse and attempted to tackle systemic discrimination.
I believe all of those are good and important initiatives but unless we are willing, as a society, to admit that sometimes we all get it wrong, we will continue to divide ourselves into the good and the bad, the right and the wrong.
Life is just way more complicated than that and we all know it.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kathleen Wynne - Kathleen Wynne was first elected to the Ontario legislature in 2003 as the MPP for Don Valley West. She was Ontario’s 25th Premier and leader of the Ontario Liberal Party from January 2013 to June 2018. Kathleen has dedicated her professional life to building a better province for the people of Ontario. She is guided by the values and principles that knit the province of Ontario together: fairness, diversity, collaboration and creativity.
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