Three Drummondville Voltigeurs players, including the son of former hockey player Shayne Corson, allegedly gang-raped a teenage girl in the fall of 2016.
In a column published on the Radio-Canada site on Tuesday, journalist Martin Leclerc reports that the victim, aged 15 at the time, was attacked in particular by Noah Corson, the offspring of the former National League skater who had already reached majority at the time of the alleged events, and two other minor athletes whose identity cannot be revealed. Moreover, the author of the text specifies that they pleaded guilty to charges of sexual assault in court for adolescents in 2021.
To return to Noah Corson, an adult when these actions were allegedly taken in Drummondville, he is charged with assaulting a minor and has waived his preliminary investigation. He will have to appear at the municipal courthouse in June 2023. The 24-year-old man plays today with the Adirondack Thunder, in the ECHL. Moreover, this team must face the Lions in Trois-Rivières on December 27 and 29. Judging by the refusal of his agents Nicola Riopel and Étienne Lafleur to comment on the information from the SRC, he risks being silent in front of Quebec journalists if he is questioned on this subject.
“Noah denies the allegations of sexual assault and he intends to adequately defend himself in court,” Lafleur told the same source, however.
Already stained by the scandal of the eight players of Team Canada junior who were at the heart of a gang rape that occurred in London in June 2018, the Canadian Hockey League finds itself on the defensive once more. In La Belle Province, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (LHJMQ) reacted with these words.
“Both the league and the Drummondville Voltigeurs have just been made aware of the incident that allegedly occurred in 2016. The QMJHL and its teams will offer their full cooperation to the police investigation and the legal process if they are in demand,” she said.
“Our first thoughts are with the alleged victim and we are overly sensitive to his situation. This explains why the Tour will continue to fulfill its crucial mission of raising awareness and educating our players regarding sexual violence and its consequences.”
Some influential political figures were quick to react to this new embarrassing case for junior hockey in the country. The leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, is far from impressed.
“Sport cannot be solely for the physical or competitive training and the economic or commercial potential of players, especially teenagers. There is a duty to educate, to transmit values to these young people and we can only be indignant at the failure of our sports institutions, particularly in hockey, and the terrible harm that this irresponsible blindness has done suffer too many women, each of them being one too many. How many cases like that of these Drummondville Voltigeurs players remain to be revealed?” he asked himself in a statement sent to the media in the morning.
The publication of the RSC article came at a key moment, since the day before, Hockey Canada revealed the identity of the nine members of its new board of directors chaired by the former sprinter from the Montreal Olympic Games. Hugh L. Fraser; the previous board resigned en masse in October following the scandal over the sports federation’s use of a fund to settle the London rape victim’s lawsuit.
