First police investigation of junior hockey players in sex assault case 'cursory at best,' expert says
CBC
WARNING: This article contains graphic content and may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
When police in London, Ont., carried out two separate investigations into the 2018 sexual assault allegations that have rocked Hockey Canada, they examined the same series of events, but came to different conclusions.
The first investigation into allegations that members of the 2018 Canadian world junior team participated in a group sexual assault at a downtown hotel concluded in February 2019 that there weren't "reasonable grounds to believe sexual assault occurred."
Three years later, after the allegations became public, London police reopened their investigation.
According to documents filed in court, police now say they have reasonable grounds to believe five junior hockey players sexually assaulted a 20-year-old woman at the hotel.
Melanie Randall, a law professor at Western University in London and a legal expert on sexual assaults, says this about-face shows the original investigation was "cursory at best."
"Some of the things [the police are] looking into now clearly should have been looked into in 2018 and 2019," Randall told The Fifth Estate.
London police Chief Stephen Williams, who initiated the review of the first investigation, declined to comment.
"This remains an open and active investigation, therefore it is not appropriate for Chief Williams to speak to it at this time," a media representative for London police told The Fifth Estate.
The fallout of what is alleged to have happened in that hotel room five years ago still echoes across Canada.
Since the first news reports about the alleged sexual assault came out in May 2022, the board of directors and several managers of Hockey Canada have resigned. The organization's finances and policies have come under scrutiny.
Questions are now also being raised about how London police handled the allegations.
"It may have been the case that the investigating officer made some assumptions about what happened to assume that there were no reasonable or probable grounds that a criminal event took place," Randall told The Fifth Estate.
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