Several players from Canada’s 2003 youth team were implicated in a gang rape scandal. It happened during the home World Championship for Canadians, where the victory went to the Russian team. The details of the story are horrifying.

It seems that the reputation of hockey in Canada is finally buried: not a month goes by without another allegation of indecent behavior or rape becoming the central topic.

Worst year for Canadian hockey

In the spring, the girl said that she had survived a gang rape by several players of the Canadian “youth team” in 2018. And this summer is breaking all records: hockey player Jake Virtanen is being tried in Vancouver these days, who is accused of having an intimate relationship with a girl five years ago without obtaining her consent, two days ago the owner was accused of having sex with a minor “Edmonton” by Daryl Katz, and on the eve of Canada was shocked by another news from the same category.

Daryl Katz / Photo: © Perry Mah / ZUMAPRESS.com / Global Look Press

This time it became known about a gang rape committed during the 2003 World Cup at home by several players of the Canadian youth team at once. Unlike other similar stories, where the word of the victim goes against the word of the hockey player, this time the source of information was some unnamed witnesses who preferred to remain anonymous. In addition, iron evidence was found in the form of a film, which depicts the process of abuse of a girl. It seems that the guilty cannot get out.

The video was deleted, but there is a copy

The story was told by the Canadian television channel TSN, which first notified the Ice Hockey Federation of Canada about it and only then publicly announced everything that it knows about what happened in detail.

It turned out that the primary source of information was the Canadian MP from the Conservative Party, John Neiter. He learned from a witness that there was a rape video he had watched in the spring of 2003, a few months after the World Championships in Canada. Neuter passed on the contact details of the TSN source, including the owner of the camera it was taped on—there were no camera phones back then. The TV channel contacted the source and two more witnesses.

All three unidentified witnesses confirmed the rape and promised to testify in court on condition that they remain anonymous. Asked why they didn’t go to the police, the source said he “didn’t want to get them into trouble.” Subsequently, the owner of the camera erased the video after persistent requests from Canadian hockey players. But there is a copy of that video.

What’s on the video?

The details are truly appalling. It seems that the hockey players, of whom there were about five, committed the rape intentionally, promising to arrange a “roasting” in the first frames. Later, a girl appeared in the frame, who, according to eyewitnesses, was naked and “did not react” to what was happening.

The names of the participants in the crime were not reported, but several hockey players have already made statements on social networks that they are not related to the scandal.

At the same time, the NHL, in a manner already familiar to such cases, notified the public that it was monitoring the situation, and the Ice Hockey Federation of Canada urged possible witnesses to contact the police. Halifax law enforcement agencies, in turn, notified the start of an investigation into the incident.

Who could it be?

There were many well-known hockey players on the Canadian team roster at that World Championship: one of the best goalkeepers of his generation, Marc-Andre Fleury, Brooks Like, who played for more than 10 years for Washington, 2018 Olympic medalist Derek Roy, Pierre Parento, Matt Stejan.

Marc-Andre Fleury / Photo: © Richard Lautens / Contributor / Toronto Star / Gettyimages.com

In addition to a sense of shame, then they took away the silver medal from Halifax, losing in the final match to the Russian team. It was a fixed triumph for our team, in which 17-year-old Alexander Ovechkin shone for the first time at this level. He scored six goals in the tournament, but failed to score in the final. The course of the game from the score 1:2 was broken by Igor Grigorenko and Yuri Trubachev, who became the author of the golden goal. Also world champions that year were Konstantin Barulin, Nikolai Zherdev, Fedor Tyutin, Alexander Perezhogin, Evgeny Artyukhin, Kirill Koltsov.

Now that tournament is famous not only for the victory of the Russians, but also for a terrible sex scandal.

Most likely, by analogy with the accused participants of the “youth team”-2018, the names of the perpetrators will not be disclosed until the last. But the more hockey players will appear in social networks denying their participation in what happened, the easier it will be to calculate the participants.