Sport complaint process needs to improve, advocacy group says after supporting Hamilton family through it
CBC
A Hamilton couple says it wasn’t until they connected with an athletes advocacy group that they felt supported after they made a complaint about the behaviour of players on their son's hockey team in 2024.
“Finally, someone is hearing us,” the dad recounted feeling. “It took some of that emotional strain away.”
CBC Hamilton is not identifying the parents to protect their son's privacy.
They alleged bullying and sexual misconduct by multiple players on an under-14 AA Stoney Creek Warriors hockey team. A confidential third-party investigation resulted in several players and coaches receiving suspensions of one to seven games. It found some players had acted in a way that amounted to psychological, physical and sexual maltreatment, bullying and harassment of other players.
Feeling the punishments were too light, the family appealled. An arbitrator with the Sports Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada reviewed the case and imposed periods of probation on six players and two assistant coaches, and suspended the head coach for six months.
The minor hockey association the team is part of previously told CBC Hamilton that other than the complainant and their family, “any individuals involved in this matter are no longer participants, coaches or volunteers.”
During the process, while the family was struggling to find legal representation, someone suggested they contact Athletes Empowered, a Canadian non-profit that supports athletes who have experienced abuse.
Athletes Empowered does not offer legal advice but was able to provide invaluable guidance in the two months it took them to find a lawyer, the mom said. The group also helped by validating their feelings, she added.
Athletes Empowered began as Gymnasts for Change Canada before broadening its focus to all sports, director Amelia Cline told CBC Hamilton in an interview this week.
She’s a lawyer and former elite gymnast who started sharing her own story of emotional and physical abuse in sport in 2020.
“Unfortunately,” she said, the Hamilton family’s experience was “relatively typical” for a maltreatment complaint, both when it came to what the victims experienced, and the response to their complaint.
“There’s backlash that happens to you,” the dad said, adding “a lot of the fears” that come with making a complaint, such as concerns about impacts on a child’s place on the team, “become extremely real.”
Often, Cline said, people who report bad behaviour are met with retaliation and hostility from their peers and organization.
“At best, it’s sort of seen as ‘This is not a big deal. Why are you reporting this?’” Cline said. “At worst, it becomes, ‘You're threatening our organization, you're threatening our results, and therefore we're going to retaliate against you.'"
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