Debriefing the Hockey Canada Verdict with Jennifer Dunn

0:05  
Sarah. I'm Sarah Burke, and this is the women in media podcast on the show today a friend of women in media network. She has appeared on several network podcasts. She's the Executive Director of the London abused Women's Center on

0:19  
a decision day that began with cries for justice for an alleged victim. It ended in vindication, five members of Canada's gold medal 2018 world junior hockey team released by the courts.

0:31  
I'd like to welcome Jennifer Dunn. How are you feeling coming out of the weekend when just on Thursday, July 24 Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Garcia acquitted five former players from Canada's 2018 world junior hockey team, Michael McLeod, we're going to say all their names, Carter Hart, Alex forminton, Dylan Dube and Cal foot of sexual assault charges related to a hotel room incident that happened in the city where you work, London, Ontario.

0:58  
Oh, Sarah, I feel like the last four days have been I've referred to them as some kind of alternate reality, because it's like, What world do we live in where this just happened? Not the acquittal, not, you know, all five of them being found not guilty. We kind of figured that that's what was going to happen, but the five hour reading of the decision, where there were multiple rape myths, where there was a complete lack of trauma and violence, informed support or care or recognition of that maybe being a possibility, I've been finding it very difficult, which is so odd, because I live and breathe the work that I do, right? So what I do for work is also what I believe personally. But I'm like, I don't want women to be discouraged about coming forward or telling someone about what has happened to them for fear of being not believed, or basically what happened to em, right? And so I'm like, What? What can I say that is not what I've been feeling to be a broken record for the past kind of five days of like, women need to know they're not alone. Women need to know that they will be believed. When what I really want to say is, I'm pretty sure I sat in that courtroom for five hours just to hear the judge say that em was asking for it, and that is the most discouraging thing I have ever heard in my entire life. I felt sick. I felt, yeah, like we're living in this alternate reality where, where I thought there was progress being made, and we're like, a bunch of steps back now. And it was so, so discouraging, so discouraging, what I used to call our justice system, which I will now call our legal system, because there's no justice in the system. So it's discouraging, but there is also still hope, right? There's going to be action taken from this. There will be so many things that we're going to do the way the community showed up in London, Ontario, in front of that courthouse every single day, em was testifying. Every single day she was on the stand, I think on maybe the rainy, cold day, there was 40 people, and that was the least amount of people we had out there. And on Thursday, there were over 100 like that showing up, and em knows, em knows that we were there, yeah, and to hear her lawyer say she wanted to make sure that we knew that she saw us, I would do it all over again.

3:57  
So as the executive director of the London abused Women's Centre or any organization that sort of operates like this, maybe tell people about the day to day work that you do, and then where you step in to really support when there is something this big going on. That's a yes in the community, but be on the national stage too.

4:16  
So day to day, our organization provides service to women and girls that have been subjected to violence, intimate partner violence, trafficking, harassment, sexual assault, and we provide long term, ongoing counseling and support, and really and truly operate in a way where we meet women where they're at so whatever that means for them, and what that really means is if a woman comes to our office and they need help with housing. We'll help them with housing if they need safety plan, because they are living in their home with their abuser and they just need to safety plan around that. That's what we'll do. We really put women in the driver's seat for them to be able. To figure out what they want to do, and we help them navigate those

5:03  
systems. And yeah, how long have you been in your role? Now,

5:07  
I have been Executive Director for four years, but I've been working at the London abuse Women's Center for 14 years, so going back to

5:14  
2022 the case is being reopened, in part because of the advocacy of the London abuse Women's Center during that time and the Violence Against Women advocate case review. Can you tell us a little bit about that case review? I don't know a lot about that.

5:31  
Yeah. So the work that we do is we literally review sexual assault cases that are deemed to be what used to be called unfounded, not enough evidence to proceed, or just that the investigation of the case stopped in some way. And so the sexual assault case review committee has trained reviewers that go in once a month to the police station and literally sit there and review the sexual assault cases that this has happened with. And so our team, which consists of others in the community as well, so there's our organization and and a handful of others as well, literally take notes on these cases and say what could have been done better, or what was done really, really well. And then that feedback is provided to the head of the unit, and it's reported back to the Police Board, and as you could probably imagine, there's a lot of cases that come through, so they're not reviewing it the next day, like there could be months and months and months, a gap of time in between when it's done and reviewed. Some of what we had to kind of navigate was that this case didn't actually hit the case review committee, because it happened to be during that time where nobody was reviewing cases, because it was a pandemic. So they would have been toward the end of 2019, at this point and that initial investigation. So we've been involved, and we're still involved in the sexual assault case review committee. A big part of it actually Innova, which is the shelter here in London, and the London abuse Women's Center. We are co chairs of this committee and actively work toward making sure that this this work continues to happen. It'll be interesting to see what the police decide to do moving forward, because they did reopen the case. The case led to charges. It went through the criminal justice system. I don't know where that's going to land moving forward, and if there will be an opportunity to review the original case. So in 2020 we found out about the Hockey Canada side of things and the civil suit the same way that everybody else did

7:37  
the National Equity Fund and using that money to, like, settle the misconduct allegations.

7:44  
Yeah, yeah. And so we are, we were obviously involved in the way of advocating, yeah, you know, navigating what that meant on the ground here, in the sense of like, increased in calls for support whenever there's something in the media about, you know, a topic like this, we typically see increased call calls for support, or the clients that we're providing service to right now will need some additional support, which is completely understandable, and that was on the tails of, you know, we had just, I remember I had written an op Ed about Logan Mayu, who played for the London knights, and he was charged with non consensual image sharing over in Europe, and was in was in trouble for that. And so we were kind of digging a little bit into hockey culture at that point. I mean, obviously knowing or having an idea of, you know, what might be going on in hockey culture. And at that point, I had learned that the NHL was the only professional sports organization that did not have a specific policy around intimate partner violence or sexual assault. The NBA, the MLB, you know, NFL. They all, they all have them. NHL does, from what I understand, still does not crazy, even this case, yeah, and so I hope that's something they would maybe consider. I mean, now would be now the best time to do it like, you know, and not that that's going to be the be all and end all, to have a policy on how to handle it, but it would then result in maybe some uniform decision making around what they're going to do when something like this happens, because inevitably, yeah, it's going it's going to happen. And really there's always like three different points focusing on things like legislation, funding and education. So we need proper legislation. It goes hand in hand, like when that Hockey Canada investigation happened, there was a the heritage committee at the House of Commons did a whole review on Hockey Canada, a study on Hockey Canada, and there was a report that came out of that. So we need to be looking at what. Looks like from a legislation, a legislative standpoint, right, not only for hockey and sport in itself, but for even when you think about the court system and how judges are trained on the nuances of intimate partner violence, sexual

10:13  
assault, that sort of I'm going to want to zero in on in a few minutes, okay?

10:19  
And then when you're looking at funding. So we need to have enough funding for organizations, not only like ours, but those that also engage men and boys. That requires money. And both legislation and and funding go hand in hand, and then the education piece is absolutely huge. And so we have been for a number of years, been yearly, providing training for the London knights team. For example, we have been providing training in school boards and just different age groups, different types of sectors in the community, which is fine, but, you know, an hour of training here and there is definitely not enough. It needs to be a much bigger approach to education, prevention, and we need, we need to do better. Yeah,

11:09  
so the woman at the center of this case, known as Em, I think you know, especially after reading your your posts that you put on Instagram, and I'll share a link to it in the show notes if you want to read Jen's sort of debrief. The piece you have flagged as the most disheartening is how the judge stated that em was not credible or reliable with her evidence, especially when we're talking about a case that involved alcohol, and we know when we're talking about trauma, we know this, whether it includes hockey players or not, that memory can be impacted. And what about, like, fear, right? How does as You're reliving this? How long seven years from start to finish? Yeah, seven years of that. But then, on top of that, having to stand trial. How many days was she standing trial?

12:04  
Three months in total, and she was on the stand for nine days. I'm

12:08  
put trying to put myself in, you know, first, in the the shoes of a 20 year old woman, I almost would have talked myself out of it. I think, of course, there's gaps in memory, and of course, trauma plays a role in it. Talk about the credibility and reliability of the victim and what she's had to go through.

12:26  
Yeah, having a trauma informed approach to how we're even looking at this. Because here's the thing, I'm just going to take a step back here, all five of these men were not guilty, but that doesn't actually mean that nothing happened, right? Like, they're not innocent. There was not enough evidence to suggest that they were guilty. And this is the really unfortunate piece in our system, is that the woman is left to testify what has with what has happened to them. So for me, the credibility and the reliability piece. There were so many different pieces that the judge chose to focus in on to suggest that she was not credible or reliable. A couple of them were around how she had motive to fabricate, around how she had a tendency to blame others, around how she would say things like, I feel in her response to the defense lawyers, as opposed to just a straight yes or no answer about how the judge said that em went great lengths to prove how drunk she was that she did not show any obvious signs of impairment on any of the videos that were called into evidence because she was able to walk and talk. And that one of the consent videos, which I don't like calling them that,

13:57  
no, there's not here, yeah,

14:02  
did not show fear, you know, me being in the role that I'm in, sitting in that courthouse listening to that, that was the hardest part, I'm sure, for her, yeah, and for us, because the court was trying to create this perfect victim. So she wasn't doing this, she wasn't doing that. She, you know, was able to walk in her shoes. She, you know, wasn't showing fear. I'm using air quotes. So surely she must have been asking for it. She must have been

14:35  
how many cases, like, outside of a hockey culture, just regular cases of abuse. How many times is the victim trying to appease the perpetrator, to escape or to, you know what I mean, or to avoid something else

14:53  
Exactly, exactly. So there was no consideration for that even being. Part of what was going on here, even though em, for herself during her testimony, said she was shocked that other men came into the room. She was crying. At some points, she attempted to leave, but they would put their arm around her and ask her to come back in. Em was on a sheet on the floor in a hotel room, which was not very large, with like 10 guys in there. To me, yes, there's no evidence to suggest any you know, any of them were going to be physically violent, violent based on what we know, but they don't completely unknown to each other. So how was she supposed to know that if she said no or she tried to leave, that nothing was going to happen? And so that's where there's a complete lack of being trauma informed. And also as part of the court case, there was no expert witness called. There was no expert witness called on trauma and what trauma does to your brain. And that happened because there was a case before this one that suggested calling an expert witness for trauma is not necessary in sexual assault cases. Now I'm saying that so casually to you, Sarah, but that's like the gist of it, like it's it's not necessary. The judges should know enough to be able to make the call on those pieces. Well, that's complete nonsense. There's a couple of reasons why I think that's nonsense. Number one, because judges are not mandated to do sexual assault training any judge in 2021 or any new judge from the point of 2021 is mandated to do this certain training as it relates to sexual assault. Okay, any judge before 2021 it's optional. Explain how an expert shouldn't be called if a training on the topic is optional, and a lot of like the judges can choose to take it or not take it. That, to me, is complete nonsense. Also in our system, the way that it works is it's whatever judge is available to do the case. So they're not calling a judge who maybe might have expertise in sexual assault or whatever the topic is, it's whatever judge is available and it fits their schedule, kind of thing, which I think is the wrong way to do it as well. I think we should have someone who is an expert in handling those types of cases. The same way that the accused in this case got to hire lawyers that were experts in handling those cases. You look up the resume of Megan Savard, who was Carter Hart's lawyer. She's no she's no stranger to handling sexual assault cases in the courtroom at a very high level, and so there's a lot of work that needs to be done on that front. You

18:07  
so you referenced rape myth earlier in this conversation, and just how almost everyone in the book kind of came out in in this trial. So talk about that, because even that is probably something that the judge could have had better training to support, right?

18:29  
Oh, absolutely. On multiple occasions when em was being cross examined by the defense lawyers, questions were posed to her like, well, if you knew the bouncer at the bar, why didn't you get help to leave at that point? And for for me, I'm like, well, it was easy. She was interested in the men that she was with, and that's it, right, yeah, why would you she was fine at that point in time, right? Yeah, there was one point where the defense had put up or put into evidence a picture of her with her friends, and that defense lawyer asked em to go through the photo and verbally say what each of her friends was wearing. Why? Yeah. Why? What purpose? What purpose did that serve? There was another question at one point about whether or not she found the men at the bar to be attractive, and if she found all men who were tall or met the same description to be attractive. So then you move into so then you know that continues on to when she was actually in the hotel room, what she was doing in that moment, a court allegedly doing in that moment, the judge said,

19:50  
was not consent, but it showed an interest. And to me that that sentence. Doesn't even make any sense,

20:02  
because in the absence of a yes, there's no consent period, it literally doesn't mean yes, ever, ever. And so I think you know, I was watching this interview somewhere else, I can't remember exactly where it was from, and there was a woman being interviewed, and she said she was talking about the whole idea of No means no, and that's how that's, like, completely outdated now, and it's actually yes means yes, because you have to say yes to agree to something, and that's the bottom line. So what? What she was wearing, what her friends were wearing, whether or not she Yeah, agreed to go back to the hotel with Michael McLeod. She was naked. She chose to leave. She chose not to leave. She was drinking or not drinking. Literally none of that matters.

20:50  
This no means. No thing I remember. You know, growing up, this is what we would hear in the education system, right, like in public school, but you're so right that it should never have been. No means no, yes, you're right, right, like and this is how we've been conditioned. It shouldn't ever be at the point where it crosses a certain line, and that's where we're holding our hand up and saying, No, it should be yes before you even proceed.

21:17  
Absolutely. A friend that I was talking to, she said, What was, I'm going to call it, I'm going to suggest that what she said was profound. She said was profound, because I was like, oh my god, the words that just came out of your mouth were amazing. Like she said, this whole court case just just completely disregards the fact that women are conditioned from birth to appease, to please to agree with men. And anything that we do that could suggest that whether it's a man is not good enough, or they're wrong, or whatever, automatically puts fear into a woman's mind

21:57  
and the value of, you know, her interest. I'm using air quotes now, compared to, you know, in that group chat, what was going on for, first of all, to even get those other guys into the room, and then secondly, what occurred after? Why were these guys prepared and prompted the video of of trying to paint consent.

22:25  
Yeah, so there's, there are so many things here. So there's so many things a consent video after the fact means nothing that is not something that you can't get consent after. That's not, that's not how that works. There was another thing that happened at Carter Hart when he was on the stand. His response to the consent video was like, Well, yeah, because, oh, the hockey guys are doing it. It's a well known thing. It's a well known thing. You make sure that you get consent, and guess what, if it's on video, then that's if that's better, like, it's so silly. So the judge had referenced the one consent video from maybe mid midpoint in the evening, I guess, or in the early morning, and had said, because she didn't know that it was being taken, that it was a really good kind of like, she's obviously, this is not the right language. I'm just talking this way. It was a good snapshot of what the mood was like in the room, and so she was smiling, so she couldn't have been fearful. That's nonsense. Why wouldn't you be doing what you had to do to get through what you had to get through? And em often described, you know, feeling like she had left her body, feeling like she was just doing what she had to do to get through it, and none of that was credible, none of that was reliable. But for example, in the group chat afterwards, which there's something, there's a piece there where that couldn't all be part of evidence, or couldn't all be part of the case, which, yeah, I'm hoping might be a piece where the crown can pull to appeal, but why did they all need to talk about it afterwards? Yeah, because they knew they did something wrong. The judge was suggesting that they just all needed to make sure that they were supporting each other, and they were, you know, on the same page, but as she painted a bit of a different picture, on the same page, in the sense of doing the right thing, not on the same page, in the sense of the getting their story straight. And so to me, I'm like, and based on the work that we do, I'm like, it's very obvious that they were getting their story straight right. Oh, yeah. And the fact that Michael McLeod sent the text asking if anybody wanted to come for a three way quick or something like that, whatever, though his his words were like, that is not okay. She said she didn't know about that. She said when men started showing up, she was shocked, and that her saying those words held less weight than anything else. And it's just it's. Still, you know, as I'm trying to process everything that that judge read over her five hour decision, reading this is why sometimes I'm like, Are We Living in some kind of alternate reality where, like, this court room is like, not in the real world, right?

25:16  
It's interesting that you said at the beginning of the conversation you guys did not expect em to win this case. No, no. And isn't that the saddest

25:27  
part? Yeah, it is. But I think we have enough evidence to suggest that that's how it's going to be. This is there's such a high bar that the Crown has to meet right to prove you know that what happened happened? We knew, just based on statistics and what we know to be true, that not all of them were going to be found guilty. I think we were so hopeful for a couple of a couple of them to be found guilty based on what we or

25:53  
at least the initiator on, yeah, on, you know, who's responsible for all those guys ending up in that room, like, at the very least,

26:02  
but what he was charged with, he could only be found guilty of, if the others were found guilty of their charges.

26:08  
So I know at the beginning of this interview, you know what you were saying you were most concerned about is, is the support to women, to victims, to survivors out there who might be feeling hopeless after after the verdict of this case. What is important for moments like this in the community?

26:30  
So this this case, it was very big, very quickly. So When news broke about Hockey Canada and the payout and all of that. Yeah, I'm not kidding you, Sarah, I that day alone. I went in 2022 had 11 media calls in one single day to our organization, our tiny organization, here in London, Ontario. Of how many people, 17 people work here, 11 media calls to give comment on what this meant and the impact, the impact on em, and how this could possibly be for her as one single person having to endure not only what happened to her in 2018 but then the police investigation, And then the Hockey Canada piece and then the police wanting to investigate again, that's a lot. We just knew we needed to show up, not to heckle or intimidate these men walking into the courtroom every day like

27:34  
they although their devices painted them. Oh, absolutely they

27:37  
were. We were intimidating, and we were, you know what's intimidating? Being a single woman in a hotel room with 10 men, that's what's intimidating. Not a group of you know, community members, advocates, women at the front of the courthouse holding signs that say, believe survivors. That is not like you. You were walking into the courthouse with a team of people. You're going to be okay. And so we decided to do that very community based. People would show up with like donuts and coffee, and there was a chalk artist that came and drew on the sidewalk like it was very much to show women that they were not alone. That was why we wanted to be there. That's it. It turned into this. We were out there so many mornings, every single day that she was on the stand. And then on the very, very last day, verdict day, it was bigger. And then we had a rally after the verdict came in as well. And that's why we decided to do it, making sure women know that they're not alone, and regardless of if they want to report to police. Do not want to report to police. They want to choose their own journey to justice, whatever it means for them. They want to access service at an organization like ours that there is someone there available when they're ready, right? And that while this decision and hearing about all of this in the media, seeing the stories as em was on the stand, while all of it is unbelievably heartbreaking and discouraging, we still have work to do, and we're still here for them, and we can make sure that they get the help that they need, whatever that looks like.

29:12  
I want to read some of your posts here. So on Thursday, July 24 I walked out of that courtroom at the end of the day after all five men had been found not guilty, and I heard, Jen, do you have a comment? And I was asked what I think of the verdict. Easy. I knew what words to say. No problem. London abuse. Women's Center needs women to know they are not alone, that we are here for them, even when the justice system isn't we will support them in whatever their journey to justice is. And then you go on to say later in this post, I'll say it loud for everyone in the back, only yes means yes. And unless you have a yes, you should be assuming it's a no. Going home with someone doesn't mean consent. You go on to say, being naked doesn't mean consent. Consenting to one sexual act doesn't mean consent for anything else. Please teach your kids this, folks. And you know you say buckle up because of how much. Work that there is to do. I laughed because I I know how passionate you are about all this stuff, and your work is important. But you also have two boys that you're raising at home who will be the hockey players of tomorrow.

30:11  
My kids are 10 years old right now, and the biggest conversation in our house is respect, and that's respect from anything to like, Okay, you didn't put your cup away. So that means somebody else has to do it then for you. So let's try to be mindful of what is going on and what you're doing and what you're capable of and what your responsibilities are. Right pay attention to the fact that this is being talked about so much, and why not use this as an opportunity to or leverage this to have a conversation with your kids about what it means to be kind and teach people about respect and about consent age appropriate, like you can have age appropriate conversations about consent from such a young age, whether it's like, you know you don't want to hug that person, that's okay. You don't have to hug that person. And I think that people are talking about that more now than ever, and it sounds so basic, even coming out of my mouth. But we also need adults from other areas of people's lives doing the same thing like because these young men who, well, they're not young anymore, who are at the center of this case, might grow up and be coaches themselves, wherever these men go. I hope that they did learn. I hope that men that are watching them, or who maybe idolize them or whatever, are also watching this, and then don't get themselves into a situation like this, and think about the impacts of the person on the other side of what's going on. And in this case, em, so let's go back to the very basics of all of this and teach our kids how to be kind, how to be respectful,

31:42  
and just because you start buying a uniform, you know this is to the hockey parents, and I know there's a lot of them in Ontario, you need to have these conversations with your kids at the moment you're enrolling them in a team sport. Wearing that uniform does not entitle you to anything different on the topic too, of like speaking up. I also wonder how differently this case could have gone if one of those players in in that room, just one of them,

32:07  
stopped everything from happening. So if she went to the bathroom, why not check on her and be like, hey, I'll let them know. You know, I'll tell them that, be that, whatever, and you take off. Yeah, take off. Let me know if you need anything. Yeah. Why? Why did nobody think of that? There are some serious concerns that we have, and we need to move forward and try to make this better for other women that are just inevitably going to have to go through the same thing.

32:38  
This cracks open a new chapter in hockey culture. And I'm proud to know you. I'm proud of the work that you're doing. The women in media network, whenever possible, donates proceeds to the London abuse Women's Center, because I know how important the work that they are doing is. And thank you for walking us through you know how, how you've been feeling coming out of the verdict on Thursday, spending a little time with us today.

33:03  
Well, thank you. And you know, I have known you for a while, Sarah and you have always been so supportive of this work and using your platform to talk about it, because it means so much. There are so many people that are going to listen to this who might not have heard otherwise, and that's why we do it. So thank you so

33:19  
much. We'll have all the links to London abused Women's Center. Women's Center and other resources suggested by Jen and her team in the show notes. Thank you. You.

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