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Police details in court documents outline alleged sexual assault
involving 5 world junior hockey players
Amanda Margison · CBC News ·
Posted: Dec 18, 2022 8:51 PM ET | Last Updated: December 19
WARNING: This article contains graphic content and may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
New court documents that include interview transcripts and search warrant requests reveal why police investigators say they have reasonable grounds to accuse five World Junior hockey players of sexually assaulting a woman in a London, Ont., hotel room in 2018.
Details of the documents were first published in the Globe and Mail, which went to court to have them unsealed. CBC News obtained them independently Sunday from the Crown. Some of the material in the 94-page package that was submitted in Oct. has been redacted, including the names of those involved and specific sex acts.
None of the police allegations have been proven in court and no charges have been laid. The case was closed by London Police in 2018, but reopened again in 2022. Hockey Canada and the NHL are also investigating the incident.
The documents provide details of how the morning of June 19, 2018 unfolded from the perspective of the victim, who is referred to as E.M., and the subsequent guilt and shame she expressed to her mother, friend and later a police investigator.
The court filings also reveal that the man referred to as Player #1, who took E.M. back to his hotel room after meeting her for the first time at a downtown London bar, sent text messages to other players who would later come to the room where the alleged assaults took place.
He would also film two videos of E.M. in the hotel room where he would ask if she was OK. In one video she is wiping her eyes and slurring her words, the document said. E.M. told police she believed the video was taken at the end of the night and she had no recollection of it.
There is much more to this ugly story at CBCNews.
More child sex abuse images detected last year than previous
21 years combined - watchdog
A quarter of images detected ‘appeared to have been generated by children themselves’,
Hotline.ie warns
Photograph: PA Wire
Brian Hutton
Wed Dec 21 2022 - 19:49
Ireland’s illegal online content watchdog detected 14,772 cases of child sexual abuse on the internet last year – more than all of the 21 previous years combined.
In its latest annual report, Hotline.ie said 2021 was the most “onerous” in its history working to detect and remove online abuse.
A quarter of the abuse images detected “appeared to have been generated by children themselves”, the report warned.
That is probably true but it should be understood that the vast majority of them had no intention of those images going online but they were spread by stupid, adolescent teens, and, or, adults who were able to capture them through trickery or extortion by online predators.
Schools are not preparing children for this kind of behaviour. Children need to be taught that once out there, even if it's sent to only one person under the promise of never sharing it, it's out there and you have no control over where it goes or how often it is reproduced.
Schools are so busy teaching children that girls can be boys and boys can be girls that the real dangers of child sexual abuse are ignored.
In these cases, there was evidence of “grooming or coercion by adults, particularly in the video material, such as a child receiving compliments, instructions or even threats [over video chat, other times from someone present in the room whilst not visible on camera]”.
Almost one in 10 (9 per cent) of the images were computer generated or drawn to depict gross child sexual abuse. Such images are illegal under Irish law.
Hotline.ie said “virtual” child abuse online had been steadily increasing over the past five years. Last year marked an “all-time high” in such images being detected.
“It is a concerning trend as it seeks to normalise the consumption of child sexual abuse imagery, in an attempt to desensitise from the physical and psychological harm suffered by real children who suffer sexual abuse and exploitation,” the watchdog said.
The report also details how sexual abuse images and videos of children aged from just four years old to 12 were the “most prevalent”, accounting for two-thirds (66 per cent) of all images detected.
The severity of the abuse ranged from “explicit sexual activity of a child to penetrative sexual assault of a child by an adult, to sadistic sexual torture and bestiality involving a child”.
In September last year, Hotline.ie launched its dedicated service targeting intimate image abuse (IIA) – the sharing of intimate images or videos without consent.
In its first 12 months of operation, it dealt with 773 reports. A similar operation in the UK dealt with 500 reports in its first year of operation, according to Hotline.ie.
Of the Irish reports, 525 contained the necessary information to locate the imagery online where it could be removed.
Hotline.ie said initial analysis suggested men were most likely to be victims of “sextortion” through “webcam blackmail” or a threat to expose sexual images.
Victims reported being threatened over social media, through dating apps or on video-chat services. However, only one in seven opted to have the abuse reported to An Garda Síochána.
Launching the report, acting Minister for Justice Simon Harris underlined the “important, worthy and difficult work” done by Hotline.ie.
“Each image is a crime,” he said. “Each image has a victim, or victims, who have suffered abuse, and who are re-victimised each time their abuse is viewed as it is shared across the globe. We must never become hardened or inured to these figures.”
Ana Niculescu, chief executive of Hotline.ie, said it could be “overwhelming” uncovering the online abuse “but we can’t afford to look away”.
“There is reason to be hopeful with online safety and cybercrime moving up the national and global agenda,” she added.
Last week, it was warned a three-year backlog in Garda forensic examinations of computers and devices used to view child sex abuse material (CSAM) put children at risk of “preventable abuse”.
Dr Conor O’Mahony, special rapporteur on child protection, said of almost 7,000 reports of online CSAM reported by a national hotline to gardaí in 2020, just 160 were investigated.
Describing such inaction by gardaí on CSAM as “alarming”, he said it left perpetrators “at large for extended periods” even after they had come to the attention of the Garda.
This is deplorable! They have to find the money to do better. Children should be the highest priority, not the lowest.
Scots football coach caged for raping boy and sexually abusing
others during reign of terror
One of evil Russell Conn's victims tried to commit suicide after the vile abuse,
with the coach's crimes spanning 19 years in total.
dailyrecord
Paedophile football coach Russell Conn has been jailed for nine years.
An ex-football coach is who inflicted a 19-year reign of sexual terror over boys, including the rape of a young player, was jailed on Thursday for nine years.
Russell Conn, who managed teams for over 26 years in Ayrshire, targeted teenagers when they were alone. The 59-year-old “groomed and abused” three boys between 1995 and 2014, leaving them “deeply damaged”.
Conn, who also worked as a delivery driver and a painter and decorator, abused two of the boys in his work vans. The court heard he earned their trust and had sexual conversations with them before the attacks.
The jury was told he was guilty of “the grooming and manipulation and sexual abuse of teenage boys” and would often give victims money as well as cigarettes.
Conn denied he’d done anything wrong. But, a jury unanimously convicted him of one charge of rape and four of sexual assault.
Judge Andrew Cubie told him at the High Court in Glasgow: “You were convicted of charges which was deliberate, calculated sexual abuse of three young men.
Russell Conn was jailed for nine years for the horrific crimes. (Image: Daily Record.)
“Their evidence was powerful about their shame, experiences and effect it had on them. The offences were motivated by your own sexual appetite and sexual satisfaction.
“You express no remorse, understanding, or empathy for the wrongdoing you have done or the harm you have caused.
"You were able to carry on your own life while the victims suffered the consequences of your actions and you avoided justice into your seventies. Society has a repugnance to such crimes and the court must reflect that.”
Conn, of Stevenston, Ayrshire, was put on the sex offenders register indefinitely. His first victim, now 42, blamed himself for the abuse and said he had planned to die without ever revealing what had happened.
He said he “buried” what happened to him and “withdrew” into his “shell”, adding: “I had made peace with myself and thought I’d take it to my grave with me.
“I put it in a wee box at the back of my head, but there’s barely been a day gone by where I’ve not thought about it.”
His second victim tried to kill himself within seconds of being forced onto a couch and abused in Conn’s home.
Now a 27-year-old dad of three, he is unable to hold down a job because of mental health problems and struggles to go to the toilet due to the abuse.
Conn was sentenced at the High Court in Glasgow. (Image: SNS Group)
And his third victim, now 23, was discharged from the Armed Forces and spent time in a mental hospital after revealing what had happened to him.
Geoffrey Forbes, defending, told the court at the sentencing that the dad-of-two continues to protest his innocence.
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