Exclusive: Youth coach facing assault charge was cleared by third-party firm investigating Hockey Canada abuse claims
A youth hockey coach is set to appear in a Canadian court charged with assaulting a child after being cleared of abuse for the same incident by Hockey Canada’s “independent third party” that investigates abuse within the sport.
The charge laid by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – the country’s national police service – demonstrates a disparity in standards between police investigations into abuse and internal civil investigations managed by sports organizations.
Also of note is that Sport Complaints – the independent third party that investigated the case on behalf of Hockey Canada – did not report the alleged abuse to law enforcement. The incident occurred in the province of Alberta where the Child, Youth, and Family Enhancemnet Act requires concerns of child sexual exploitation or abuse or neglect to be reported to authorities. According to Hockey Canada’s Maltreatment, Bullying, and Harrasment Treatment and Protection and Prevention Policy, “any Participant engaged in a Hockey Canada activity, who has reasonable grounds to suspect that a Minor Participant is or may be suffering or may have suffered from any form of child abuse, has a legal obligation to immediately report the suspicion.”
The criminal charge of assault, scheduled to go to trial in an Alberta court on Wednesday, relates to two incidents in 2023 involving an adult coach and a seven-year-old child. The Guardian is declining to name the parties involved as the charge involves a minor.
Sport Complaints cleared the coach of any allegations of abuse in its official report of the incidents, instead describing the two incidents now subject to the criminal charge as “inappropriate” and taking place in a “playful environment”.
The Sport Complaints decision to clear the coach of any allegations came after an investigator interviewed the child via Microsoft Teams, a method contrary to how investigators trained to interact with children would conduct an interview.
“If the parent doesn’t make a report to police then certainly the [investigating] organization should make a report to law enforcement immediately,” said Teresa Huizar, CEO of Washington DC-based National Children’s Alliance (NCA), an organization that assists law enforcement in bestpractice investigations of child abuse.
“The actual criminal investigation should take precedence over what is happening within the sport. That ensures kids are getting justice and not getting retraumatized and not having to tell their story over and over again. But it also ensures that [the sport] isn’t giving improper privilege over community safety and is holding offenders accountable.”
Hockey Canada’s “duty to report” policy states any personnel or partner “who has reasonable grounds to suspect that a participant is or may be suffering or may have suffered from emotional, [or] physical abuse … shall immediately report to the local child protection agency and/or the local police detachment”.
Hockey Canada said in a statement to the Guardian that it “cannot comment on how the ITP handled a particular complaint” but “we can comment on the Maltreatment Complaint Management Policy that determines the work of the ITP, and the ITP’s responsibility to report matters to police.
“More specifically, Schedule A of the Maltreatment Complaint Management Policy describes the Investigation Procedure. Within Schedule A, Article 9 states “Should the investigator find that there are possible instances of offence under the Criminal Code or behaviour which might constitute child abuse under the relevant provincial/territorial legislation, the investigator shall advise the Complainant and the ITP that it must refer the matter to the police.” This means that ITP-appointed investigators are required to determine if the criteria for referring the matter to the police/ law enforcement are met and they then inform the Complainant and the ITP accordingly.”
According to a witness statement seen by the Guardian made to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in September 2023, the coach allegedly placed the then seven-year-old upside down in a locker room garbage can. The incident occurred after the child allegedly threw a puck in the direction of the coach.
The same statement to police alleges a second incident when the coach “aggressively grabbed” the child by his helmet cage, pulled his head forcefully forward and shook the child’s head from side to side and up and down. “His helmet half came off and his face mask/ cage was up by his nose,” according to the statement. That incident allegedly occurred after the child shot a puck in the direction of the coach.
The Sport Complaints investigation into the incidents stated that the coach “denied any physical abuse, such as head jerking, or that the helmet ended halfway up [the child’s] head”. The coach said he “just put his fingers in [the child’s] mask cage and that the entire incident took place between 10-15 seconds.”
According to the report, the child told the investigator during the video interview that he did not recall the incident and that the coach did not hurt him.
“There is 40 years of science behind how children need to be interviewed,” said the NCA’s Huizar. “There is specialized forensics training that is available not only in the US but elsewhere and those models have the same underlying principles. They align with the scientific evidence about how children’s memory works, the language that needs to be used, how to ask questions in a non-leading way and that training is absolutely essential.
“When kids, especially very young children, are being questioned improperly they can think that they must have not answered a question right because the person keeps asking them questions again. Kids will guess what the adult is looking for. On serious criminal matters the interviews really must be done by trained forensic interviewers.”
The Sport Complaints investigation found that the ice hockey coach did not engage in verbal or physical abuse or contravene any policy of Hockey Canada, Hockey Alberta, or the Spruce Grove Minor Hockey Association, where the incidents are alleged to have taken place.
Police took a different view of events with officers obtaining a statement from the alleged victim at a child advocacy center – a specialist facility staffed with officers from local and national police forces, prosecutors, and staff from provincial health and children’s services, specializing in managing abuse cases that involve minors.
“Children require a developmentally appropriate, legally sound, way of approaching these conversations,” said Huizar whose organization supported agencies who worked with the FBI investigating the disgraced US gymnastics team doctor