Three teenage boys were arrested Monday and will be charged with sex offences following allegations of hazing on a rural high school hockey team.
Two incidents of hazing, allegedly victimizing five teen boys who were rookies on the Prairie Mountain Mustangs, happened in November and January, Manitoba RCMP said Tuesday. The alleged victims were 15 and 16 years old.
The three boys arrested are all 17 years old. Two will be charged with sexual assault with a weapon, sexual assault and forcible confinement when they appear in court. The other will be charged with sexual assault and assault.
The three suspects were released ahead of a court appearance scheduled in Winnipeg on June 10.
The coach should have been aware of what was going on, yes, but may simply have been incompetent and not complicit. They should probably be fired from their teaching job (I assume that’s what they really do for a living) and definitely should not ever again be placed in a position of authority with a youth sports team.
Should the school’s administration have been aware? That one’s more difficult. On the one hand, the offenders might have been very careful about keeping any word of just how bad their “hazing” was from getting out. On the gripping hand, there’s a known cultural problem with team sports in general and there’s been a lot of focus in the media lately on issues with hockey in particular, but if there were no known problems previously, the admin may have assumed it was a not-here problem and gotten complacent.
The people who really should get looked into are recent graduates who were on the hockey team in the past three or four years. The offenders got the idea to do this from somewhere.