As taudry as the details of the now-decided charges were, I think the judge made a brave and correct decision. I am a feminist so will stand tall for women's rights. What I love about the decision is the take-away for young women. Do not think that your discomfort in something you have done necessarily negates your own decision. In other words be strong, clear and definitive in yourself...know yourself, your own values, who you are as a person. I think the 'boys' in this case, if even some of the information I have read is true, should be ashamed of themselves.
I agree completely. I’ve read the statements from the judge and fine that EM wasn’t credible and there was video evidence to support her lack of credibility including lack of extreme drunkenness.
It’s sad she felt so badly afterwards, but I know it’s easy for young people to make decisions they later regret.
I guess for me, the bottom line is I can see the players point of view right up until around the time the text goes out to the group chat with the offer of a threesome. Even if I assume she consented to the threesome, or even pitched it, once five plus guys show up at the room, consent is completely out the window. It doesn’t matter if she’s sober. It doesn’t matter what she agrees to at that point because there are five plus dudes way larger than her that, in her mind and within reasonability, showed up for sex with her. If she didn’t make the offer, as she claims, that’s not better. There is almost no way she isn’t intimidated by that situation and her brain likely moves to survival mode at that point. How can I please these guys and stay safe?
The legal system isn’t set up to find the truth. It’s set up to test the accusation. EM lost not because the players were believable, but because she was not. Was she not believable because eight years is a long time to remember details like who initiated and how much you had to drink on a specific night? Ultimately, that was the main problem here. The London police made very little effort to investigate and Hockey Canada handed out bribes to make it go away instead of investigating at all. If this trial had this result seven or eight years ago, I’d feel a lot better about it regardless of the results.
This trial was a total disaster for the Crown and basically a test case for the limits of the "believe all women" movement.
The facts were basically accepted by both sides, and it was clear that the complainant did less than nothing to ever signify the slightest discomfort in what she was engaged in on the night in question. The men involved at the time could hardly believe their luck but knew the situation was bizarre enough to warrant filming the 'consent videos'. The complainant had perverse incentives to tell a self-serving story, in the form of her civil settlement with the NHL and impending marriage to the man she was dating at the time.
"Believe all women" was always going to self-destruct thanks to a case like this. Its premise forces you to believe at least one of three things: 1) women are innocent angels who would never lie about anything related to sexual assault, no matter their mental state or financial/personal incentives; 2) women are meek little babies incapable of asserting themselves even in situations where no violence or threats are apprehended; and 3) that a woman can retroactively withdraw consent to acts for which she did everything possible to convey consent at the time they happened, by later saying she internally did not consent for whatever reason.
Honestly if you believe any of this you might as well argue that women shouldn't be allowed to vote or open bank accounts, because they clearly aren't responsible for their actions. It's one of the most anti-feminist philosophies of the 'woke' movement.
As Rosie DiManno of the Star (!) pointed out in her surprisingly scathing article against the Crown and complainant, the Crown's case was also premised on the proposition that no woman could ever consent to doing something as outlandishly sexual as group sex with five men, evoking prudishness, infantilization and "slut-shaming".
All that said, I am genuinely surprised that our courts got this one right. Another data point that we are entering, thankfully, a 'post woke era'. If this verdict was handed down in 2021 it absolutely would have gone the other way, and we all know it.
Rosie is actually pretty reliably good on these types of stories and that missive today was epic!!! But man, do we as a nation ever miss the great Christie Blatchford at a time like this. What I would give to have had her covering this trial. RIP to one of the best ever.
True, Rosie still has some of that old-school crime reporter left in her, from back before the somewhat-left-leaning Star of my youth got replaced by the Woke Socialist Red Star we have today.
Interestingly other than Batshit Crazy Heather Malick, the Star has actually been sort of muted about this case recently. It was the Globe and Mail that was gleefully chomping at the bit the last few weeks about how we were about to "redefine consent" and had to mealy-mouthedly walk it back since yesterday in articles with the comments conspicuously disabled.
But yah, Blatchford would have a lot to say about this... and a lot of things going on these days! Seems it's always the good ones who go too soon.
Oh man, that Mallick column was an abomination even by her standards! "Tell me you have no clue about what it means to be a lawyer without telling me you have no clue about what it means to be a lawyer."
I was dumber for having read that column. I am rarely shocked that something got printed these days, but this has got to be a new low for editorial standards. I've read drunk Reddit rants that are more coherent.
A lot of issues with this column but the last sentence in particular requires comment: "It’s just, obviously, not the justice that E.M. had in mind."
To which I would add, yes, and thank goodness for that - it indicates that we still have some semblance of a functioning justice system in place. My word, anyone who followed this trial closely knew there was zero chance of conviction way before Thursday. It's a travesty that it went to trial.
Healthy young men and women are ahem interested in sex. Especially post booze. Nothing new here. From a moral perspective both sexes are learning the rules of the road from porn ergo - the pretending to be a porn star explanation. Hockey Canada was right in this case in 2018 and they took their deserved corrections. Most of the players in that room were more interested in looking for food than sex by 3 a.m. and the evidence shows at least two of them asked EM repeatedly if she was OK. Some had girlfriends they apparently wanted to be faithful to. Why didn’t EM simply leave the room? Tell them all to take a hike? She didn’t chose to exercise any agency. Her mother seems to have been driving the case from the outset. Unfair to EM and most of all the 5 young men accused and exonerated whose prime career growth years have been sacrificed to this case. Stereotypes about young hockey players are just that - old stereotypes. Times have changed.
I read a newspaper article yesterday that stated that some teammates were aware of the open invitation to the hotel room but declined when they got the full picture. Good for them but what the hell were the other five thinking? Herd mentality is a dangerous thing and it’s a shame that not one person spoke up to point out the obvious. Sometimes that’s what it takes to shake up a nasty situation and get people to smarten up.
It’s also troubling to carve out Hockey Canada for being responsible for the actions of players on a national team when the players are on their own free time. Hockey Canada should have Code of Conduct rules in place and enforce them without prejudice, regardless of who it is that crosses the line, but it’s ludicrous to suggest that a “hockey culture” encourages the behaviour that is front and centre in this story. What happened in that hotel room is not learned at the hockey rink.
I was impressed with the Judges reasoning behind her verdicts, as she went to great lengths to separate the moral indignities of those who want to short circuit the path to guilty verdicts from the law, which still requires the Crown to make a case for guilt. It was her judgment that the Crown failed to provide the evidence needed and we should be grateful for her clarity in her decision.
This is one of those trial outcomes that makes everyone angry except the 5 accused of a serious crime who aren’t gloating and they shouldn’t either.
One team, one golf tournament and the entire 603,000 Canadian hockey players (both male, female, and other) (not to mention 1 million or so volunteers) must continue to be besmirched by the Pornhub watching High Performance hockey players after a drunken golf tournament? Canada is the home of pornhub. Terry Newman in the National Post today brought out stats about usage of Pornhub by men and women. I would argue there is nothing to change, save the prohibition of the consumption of liquor at any Hockey Canada function. Women must stop being puck bunnies and young men must control their whore-mones, but this is nothing new in this. Epstein's files must be released, Rotherham perps prosecuted, the Marquis de Sade books removed and Pornhub curtailed...... People have interesting sexual perversions but this is up to them. Hockey Canada, with millions of players and volunteers, has a pretty good record compared to other sports and organisations.
After a little reflection I find myself with a mix of reactions:
1. Relief: that a judge was up to the job and avoided genuflecting to the politically correct mob.
2. Irritation: that somehow a woman's moral agency is considered to be less than a man's.
3. Sadness: that our culture promotes this crap and then runs from the consequences. None of the participants here showed much moral fiber and all will carry this for a long time.
What has not yet been mentioned is the long-standing hockey culture of 'hazing' that is extremely troublesome. Rather than building teams through collaboration, working together and supporting each other, hazing reinforces a culture of humiliation, degradation, abuse, breaking down trust and damaging relationships. It impacts emotional states and behaviour. Likely why this group sex event perpetrated on a drunk young woman didn't seem to move the hockey player moral register.
While the legal decision was seemingly correct it does not really, nor could it, deal with the moral decisions made by all participants or the poor administrative decisions made by Hockey Canada.
Do the acquitted defendants now have the opportunity for civil actions against Hockey Canada or the complainant?
For all the smoke and heat generated little light has been created that could serve as a guide to improve the issues of misogyny in junior hockey or the understanding of consent in Canadian law.
Believe all women. Believe all women. Believe all women. I'll just say it over and over again. Like a mantra. Or else.... A journalist might be disappointed. ... Okay.
Reminder to all to keep the comments mature and clean, and especially that the publication ban over EM's identity remains.
From Willie Nelson. “Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. “
Canadian version. “Mama don’t let your daughters hang with hockey players”
The case is an terrific example of the difference between justice/the law and morality.
As taudry as the details of the now-decided charges were, I think the judge made a brave and correct decision. I am a feminist so will stand tall for women's rights. What I love about the decision is the take-away for young women. Do not think that your discomfort in something you have done necessarily negates your own decision. In other words be strong, clear and definitive in yourself...know yourself, your own values, who you are as a person. I think the 'boys' in this case, if even some of the information I have read is true, should be ashamed of themselves.
I agree completely. I’ve read the statements from the judge and fine that EM wasn’t credible and there was video evidence to support her lack of credibility including lack of extreme drunkenness.
It’s sad she felt so badly afterwards, but I know it’s easy for young people to make decisions they later regret.
I guess for me, the bottom line is I can see the players point of view right up until around the time the text goes out to the group chat with the offer of a threesome. Even if I assume she consented to the threesome, or even pitched it, once five plus guys show up at the room, consent is completely out the window. It doesn’t matter if she’s sober. It doesn’t matter what she agrees to at that point because there are five plus dudes way larger than her that, in her mind and within reasonability, showed up for sex with her. If she didn’t make the offer, as she claims, that’s not better. There is almost no way she isn’t intimidated by that situation and her brain likely moves to survival mode at that point. How can I please these guys and stay safe?
The legal system isn’t set up to find the truth. It’s set up to test the accusation. EM lost not because the players were believable, but because she was not. Was she not believable because eight years is a long time to remember details like who initiated and how much you had to drink on a specific night? Ultimately, that was the main problem here. The London police made very little effort to investigate and Hockey Canada handed out bribes to make it go away instead of investigating at all. If this trial had this result seven or eight years ago, I’d feel a lot better about it regardless of the results.
This trial was a total disaster for the Crown and basically a test case for the limits of the "believe all women" movement.
The facts were basically accepted by both sides, and it was clear that the complainant did less than nothing to ever signify the slightest discomfort in what she was engaged in on the night in question. The men involved at the time could hardly believe their luck but knew the situation was bizarre enough to warrant filming the 'consent videos'. The complainant had perverse incentives to tell a self-serving story, in the form of her civil settlement with the NHL and impending marriage to the man she was dating at the time.
"Believe all women" was always going to self-destruct thanks to a case like this. Its premise forces you to believe at least one of three things: 1) women are innocent angels who would never lie about anything related to sexual assault, no matter their mental state or financial/personal incentives; 2) women are meek little babies incapable of asserting themselves even in situations where no violence or threats are apprehended; and 3) that a woman can retroactively withdraw consent to acts for which she did everything possible to convey consent at the time they happened, by later saying she internally did not consent for whatever reason.
Honestly if you believe any of this you might as well argue that women shouldn't be allowed to vote or open bank accounts, because they clearly aren't responsible for their actions. It's one of the most anti-feminist philosophies of the 'woke' movement.
As Rosie DiManno of the Star (!) pointed out in her surprisingly scathing article against the Crown and complainant, the Crown's case was also premised on the proposition that no woman could ever consent to doing something as outlandishly sexual as group sex with five men, evoking prudishness, infantilization and "slut-shaming".
All that said, I am genuinely surprised that our courts got this one right. Another data point that we are entering, thankfully, a 'post woke era'. If this verdict was handed down in 2021 it absolutely would have gone the other way, and we all know it.
Rosie is actually pretty reliably good on these types of stories and that missive today was epic!!! But man, do we as a nation ever miss the great Christie Blatchford at a time like this. What I would give to have had her covering this trial. RIP to one of the best ever.
True, Rosie still has some of that old-school crime reporter left in her, from back before the somewhat-left-leaning Star of my youth got replaced by the Woke Socialist Red Star we have today.
Interestingly other than Batshit Crazy Heather Malick, the Star has actually been sort of muted about this case recently. It was the Globe and Mail that was gleefully chomping at the bit the last few weeks about how we were about to "redefine consent" and had to mealy-mouthedly walk it back since yesterday in articles with the comments conspicuously disabled.
But yah, Blatchford would have a lot to say about this... and a lot of things going on these days! Seems it's always the good ones who go too soon.
Oh man, that Mallick column was an abomination even by her standards! "Tell me you have no clue about what it means to be a lawyer without telling me you have no clue about what it means to be a lawyer."
I was dumber for having read that column. I am rarely shocked that something got printed these days, but this has got to be a new low for editorial standards. I've read drunk Reddit rants that are more coherent.
A lot of issues with this column but the last sentence in particular requires comment: "It’s just, obviously, not the justice that E.M. had in mind."
To which I would add, yes, and thank goodness for that - it indicates that we still have some semblance of a functioning justice system in place. My word, anyone who followed this trial closely knew there was zero chance of conviction way before Thursday. It's a travesty that it went to trial.
Healthy young men and women are ahem interested in sex. Especially post booze. Nothing new here. From a moral perspective both sexes are learning the rules of the road from porn ergo - the pretending to be a porn star explanation. Hockey Canada was right in this case in 2018 and they took their deserved corrections. Most of the players in that room were more interested in looking for food than sex by 3 a.m. and the evidence shows at least two of them asked EM repeatedly if she was OK. Some had girlfriends they apparently wanted to be faithful to. Why didn’t EM simply leave the room? Tell them all to take a hike? She didn’t chose to exercise any agency. Her mother seems to have been driving the case from the outset. Unfair to EM and most of all the 5 young men accused and exonerated whose prime career growth years have been sacrificed to this case. Stereotypes about young hockey players are just that - old stereotypes. Times have changed.
This is a hard topic to wade into.
I read a newspaper article yesterday that stated that some teammates were aware of the open invitation to the hotel room but declined when they got the full picture. Good for them but what the hell were the other five thinking? Herd mentality is a dangerous thing and it’s a shame that not one person spoke up to point out the obvious. Sometimes that’s what it takes to shake up a nasty situation and get people to smarten up.
It’s also troubling to carve out Hockey Canada for being responsible for the actions of players on a national team when the players are on their own free time. Hockey Canada should have Code of Conduct rules in place and enforce them without prejudice, regardless of who it is that crosses the line, but it’s ludicrous to suggest that a “hockey culture” encourages the behaviour that is front and centre in this story. What happened in that hotel room is not learned at the hockey rink.
I was impressed with the Judges reasoning behind her verdicts, as she went to great lengths to separate the moral indignities of those who want to short circuit the path to guilty verdicts from the law, which still requires the Crown to make a case for guilt. It was her judgment that the Crown failed to provide the evidence needed and we should be grateful for her clarity in her decision.
This is one of those trial outcomes that makes everyone angry except the 5 accused of a serious crime who aren’t gloating and they shouldn’t either.
One team, one golf tournament and the entire 603,000 Canadian hockey players (both male, female, and other) (not to mention 1 million or so volunteers) must continue to be besmirched by the Pornhub watching High Performance hockey players after a drunken golf tournament? Canada is the home of pornhub. Terry Newman in the National Post today brought out stats about usage of Pornhub by men and women. I would argue there is nothing to change, save the prohibition of the consumption of liquor at any Hockey Canada function. Women must stop being puck bunnies and young men must control their whore-mones, but this is nothing new in this. Epstein's files must be released, Rotherham perps prosecuted, the Marquis de Sade books removed and Pornhub curtailed...... People have interesting sexual perversions but this is up to them. Hockey Canada, with millions of players and volunteers, has a pretty good record compared to other sports and organisations.
After a little reflection I find myself with a mix of reactions:
1. Relief: that a judge was up to the job and avoided genuflecting to the politically correct mob.
2. Irritation: that somehow a woman's moral agency is considered to be less than a man's.
3. Sadness: that our culture promotes this crap and then runs from the consequences. None of the participants here showed much moral fiber and all will carry this for a long time.
Good reflection.
What has not yet been mentioned is the long-standing hockey culture of 'hazing' that is extremely troublesome. Rather than building teams through collaboration, working together and supporting each other, hazing reinforces a culture of humiliation, degradation, abuse, breaking down trust and damaging relationships. It impacts emotional states and behaviour. Likely why this group sex event perpetrated on a drunk young woman didn't seem to move the hockey player moral register.
While the legal decision was seemingly correct it does not really, nor could it, deal with the moral decisions made by all participants or the poor administrative decisions made by Hockey Canada.
Do the acquitted defendants now have the opportunity for civil actions against Hockey Canada or the complainant?
For all the smoke and heat generated little light has been created that could serve as a guide to improve the issues of misogyny in junior hockey or the understanding of consent in Canadian law.
A not unexpected disappointment.
I hope the judge's decision was the right one.
Believe all women. Believe all women. Believe all women. I'll just say it over and over again. Like a mantra. Or else.... A journalist might be disappointed. ... Okay.
Yes, echos of Justin Trudeau. Which woman am I to believe? The complainant or the Judge?