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Blackhawks refused to report alleged sex abuse of players to police: source

I honestly don?t know why this isn?t getting more traction as a huge story.  This potentially involves some pretty fricking huge names in hockey?.three current GMs, Joel Quenneville among others who have no excuse not to have known about this and done nothing
 
L K said:
I honestly don?t know why this isn?t getting more traction as a huge story.  This potentially involves some pretty fricking huge names in hockey?.three current GMs, Joel Quenneville among others who have no excuse not to have known about this and done nothing

The alleged sexual assault of two former Chicago Blackhawks players was ?an open secret? among staff both within and outside the team?s hockey department, a former team marketing official said in an interview with TSN.

The official said he was told by Blackhawks assistant trainer Jeff Thomas during the summer of 2010 that then-team video coach Brad Aldrich had allegedly sexually assaulted two players. The official asked for anonymity because he still works in the pro hockey industry and fears repercussions from the National Hockey League.

That sort of says it all... and this with players as the victims, i.e. a position of relative power within the hockey ecosystem. Consider all the other people in an organization/venue who might cross paths who the hockey media would care even less about.
 
https://twitter.com/KatieJStrang/status/1408402257213800449
?Every guy on the team knew about it,? one player on the 2010 team told The Athletic. ?Every single guy on the team knew.?

[...]

The former player who spoke with The Athletic, who was not one of the two players who disclosed Aldrich?s alleged assault to Vincent, said he recently Googled the official team photo from the morning of the parade, and sure enough, Aldrich is in it.

?That doesn?t bother me, that they let him take pictures with the Cup,? the 2010 Blackhawks player said. ?What bothers me is they fired him, but they didn?t take it to the cops. ? They let him get a job with a U-18 team. They let him go work with minors. They let this happen.?
 
https://twitter.com/account4hockey/status/1408543059596431368
Westhead casting some very overt side-eye to his colleagues.
 
https://twitter.com/marklazerus/status/1409525264690917381
https://twitter.com/marklazerus/status/1409525613992554499
https://twitter.com/emilyistootired/status/1409526132764983298
Yeeeeeeeeesssh
 
Yeah, that last one really paints what could have been the right move in a less positive light. Maybe don't hire the firm who defended the perpetrators in one of the worst sexual assault cases in U.S. history to investigate your own internal sexual assault allegations.

Investigation? Good! Definitely needed (even if it's coming years later than it should have). The investigators? Surely, you could have found someone with less of a stink on them.
 
https://twitter.com/katiejstrang/status/1409534498312802315
This is technically a clarification that it was the law firm that handled the bankruptcy claim filed as a result of a system-condoned sex assault scandal, not that they defended Nassar. This is still absolutely stepping on a rake, PR-wise. Just firing it straight into their own net, top cheddar.
 
I don't know that who they hired matters much. Just about anyone they hire would be a big corporate law firm who will only dig as deep as the Blackhawks ultimately want them to and I don't think any of us expect any sort of actual accountability here.

 
The thing I still don't really get about this story is why would the Blackhawks risk all this for a not particularly well connected video coach or whatever he was. Like, that to me is almost the most damning statement about the organization and hockey culture here. Either they had their own serious malfeasance to cover up or they were just willing to cover up any allegation against anyone even remotely connected with the team.
 
Nik said:
The thing I still don't really get about this story is why would the Blackhawks risk all this for a not particularly well connected video coach or whatever he was. Like, that to me is almost the most damning statement about the organization and hockey culture here. Either they had their own serious malfeasance to cover up or they were just willing to cover up any allegation against anyone even remotely connected with the team.

I mean why did David Frost last as long as he did. 

I think hockey has a problem that a lot of industries have...that sex assault isn't taken seriously.  That getting an assault out in the open "looks bad for the game" while ignoring that covering it up and having it come out later would be worse.

Look at how the story is getting handled over the last few months.  The story comes out...radio silence from the NHL media.  It starts to come out in trickles but even still, extremely little major media discussion on this. 

This has some of the biggest executive names in hockey with 3 GMs and one of the best coaches in the game in positions that are either incompetent for not knowing what went on or are outright lying about it now.  There is a zero percent chance that the head coach has his video coach fired and doesn't get a reason for why it happened.
 
L K said:
I mean why did David Frost last as long as he did. 

I get what you're saying in general but that seems like a slightly different issue where the world of minor and junior hockey is an unregulated world full of scumbags where any person with authority can end up with a great deal of influence in a young person's life.

Here we're talking about a person with a pretty minor role in a huge multi-million dollar enterprise.
 
Nik said:
L K said:
I mean why did David Frost last as long as he did. 

I get what you're saying in general but that seems like a slightly different issue where the world of minor and junior hockey is an unregulated world full of scumbags where any person with authority can end up with a great deal of influence in a young person's life.

Here we're talking about a person with a pretty minor role in a huge multi-million dollar enterprise.

A lot of sexual assault accusations is that a lot of places look at the complaint as a bigger problem than the sexual assault. Rather than view Brad Aldrich as the person who should be dealt with, the two players making the accusation were the ones creating a problem.  Victim blaming is a big problem with it.
 
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