‘Let’s Bring the Boys In’: Group Rape and the Culture of Silence
By Mariah Luther Cooper
CN: This piece contains many references to sexual violence.
In April of 2022, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation on medieval English raptus laws, eyre court cases, and literary scenes of sexual violence. After submitting my dissertation, I thought that there was nothing else I could possibly have to say about this topic, but within a matter of months I was proven wrong. As will be discussed throughout this essay, considering modern-day sport culture encourages medievalists to re-read historical cases of sexual assault with multiple people present as group rapes, and to reevaluate the historiographical silence on non-penetrative participants in medieval cases of sexual assault.
During the summer of 2022, the so-called “Hockey Canada scandal” made headline news. A shocked nation listened in disbelief about a series of group sexual assault allegations while the ire of public scrutiny erupted caused by decades of institutional coverups. It all started on May 26, 2022, when Rick Westhead broke the story that Hockey Canada settled a lawsuit of alleged group rape committed by members of Canada’s 2018 gold medalist World Junior hockey team. According to the statement of claim, the alleged victim, known as E.M., was sexually assaulted by as many as eight members of Canada’s 2018 World Junior hockey team in June of that year. It was not until May 2022, when Westhead revealed that Hockey Canada paid E.M. $3.55 million dollars to settle the dispute, that the public became aware of the “scandal.” Five members of the 2018 team were officially charged with sexual assault, four of whom currently hold National Hockey League contracts (Calgary Flames’ Dillon Dube, New Jersey Devils’ Cal Foote and Michael McLeod, Philadelphia Flyers’ Carter Heart, while Alex Forementon formerly played for the Ottawa Senators).
On July 18 and 19 of 2022, it was revealed that Hockey Canada maintains a $15 million dollar “reserve,” called the National Equity Fund, which was in part supplemented by minor hockey registration fees. This fund was used to settle “uninsurable liabilities” which included “potential claims” of sexual assault. We have since learned that Hockey Canada has paid nine complainants of alleged sexual assault from the National Equity Fund, amounting to $ 7.6 million dollars, but Hockey Canada failed to disclose a second slush fund, the Participants Legacy Trust fund, which was used to settle sexual assault allegations made between 1986–1995. Since 1989 there have been fifteen police investigations into Canadian Hockey League players committing group rape, of which “at least 50 players have been accused…with 25 eventually charged…[and] only one of those charged has been convicted, after taking a plea deal to a lesser offence.” Recently, four Quebec Major Junior Hockey League players have been implicated in a group sexual assault of a minor; three players pled guilty while the fourth stood trial and was found guilty. On July 22, 2022, Halifax Regional Police opened an investigation into the 2003 Canada World Junior hockey team after a “six- or seven-minute video” showed 2 players engaged in a mock “pre-game interview” where the interviewee tells the camera “that viewers were about to see ‘a f — -ing lamb roast’.” The video allegedly shows the players entering a hotel room where one player is raping a non-responsive woman while “five or six other naked players…stood around the woman masturbating and appeared to be waiting their turn.” This video, as discussed below, altered how I viewed medieval cases of sexual violence as a group activity.
It might be difficult for readers outside of Canada to grasp the cultural shock that these revelations reverberated throughout the country as Canadian junior hockey players are treated as “young gods.” There is something unique about hockey in Canada. It is a sport of immense privilege and cultural currency. The past two years have been a reckoning for Hockey Canada and the toxicity of the culture that surrounds its prized players. Former NHL player, Mike Danton, stated that group sex was a form of a team-building experience. It should be noted that Danton was allegedly abused by his former agent, David Frost. Danton offers a rare insight into hockey culture where group sex is (in his opinion) not simply “teenagers just being experimental,” but rather premeditated and intentional. Danton describes group sex at hockey parties in his own words: “hey, let’s bring the boys in and let’s do this.”
Group sex amongst teammates is not new, nor is it unique to hockey. Netflix’s Roll Red Roll focused on Steubenville Ohio’s “Big Red” football team members “gang rape” of an unresponsive women. Carissa Harris has analyzed Baylor University’s football team’s many “gang rapes of freshmen women” as a “team bonding” activity and how it resonates with sexual assault in the Middle Ages. Harris describes the Ched Evans and Clayton McDonald trial, in which the teammates allegedly raped a heavily intoxicated woman, as demonstrating homosocial bonding similar to the medieval past. Harris is one of the few scholars who has addressed the contemporary “bro culture” of sexual violence and its resonance with the Middle Ages.
After thinking about the frequency of collective sexual assault in modern-day teams, I decided to re-read the medieval court cases from my dissertation, just to see if I may have missed anything. I was shocked that cases of group rape appeared frequently in plea rolls, but I failed to recognize them. I did not pay attention to the other people involved in seemingly lone-rape cases, and it turns out that I am not alone in this oversight.
I want to pause here. I intentionally use the term “group rape,” not “gang rape,” to denote sexual assault committed by more than one individual, or by one individual with multiple people present in facilitating the assault in some capacity. The historiography of medieval English group rape is notably scarce with very few scholars discussing the occurrences of multi-perpetrator rape in the archival records, and none (to my knowledge) fully considering the other people mentioned in seemingly lone-rape cases. Medieval English raptus scholars correctly note that it is not always stated if multiple men penetrated the victim or not, resulting in a trend to dismiss the frequency in which multiple men are accused of being involved somehow in the rape. This is why I refrain from using the term “gang rape,” because it is traditionally used to discuss multiple perpetrators penetrating a single victim. However, I believe that we need to consider the Hockey Canada scandal and how groups of men can be present during lone rapes or help to facilitate the rape.
I kept thinking about the 2003 World Junior hockey video, and how there were all those players watching and masturbating while the rape was happening. This did not seem like a lone rape to me, and yet, according to the logic of English raptus scholars, we should read such cases as lone rapes because only one perpetrator penetrated the victim. I fundamentally disagree with this reading. In fact, I think that such a penetration-focused reading is perpetuating a rape culture that silences victims of non-vaginal penetrative sexual assault.
Of the 179 eyre court raptus cases I looked at, dating between 1201–1330, 17.32% of them involved more than one person. This is a significant amount. I, like many other scholars, initially dismissed the other people involved acting as “accessories to the crime” because they were not accused of having sexually violated the victim. But these other people were allegedly involved in some capacity, and thus they deserve more attention. While there are medieval cases in which the archive explicitly states that more than one person is accused of having penetrated the victim, the following two cases exemplify the types of cases that have always been misread as lone rapes.
A young girl named Juliana le Hare claims that a man named Richard raped her. Despite being unmarried, and still living in her father’s home, young Juliana demands to have her day in court. She alleges that Richard violently raped her of her virginity. Juliana explains to the court that another man, Stephen, helped Richard. Juliana notified the authorities that it was Stephen who forcibly grabbed her against her will, pulled her into a dark cellar, and closed the door on her. There was no way out of the cellar. Juliana was stuck. She was alone and there was nothing she could do when Richard came in and raped her. Despite following the expected legal processes, the jurors did not believe young Juliana.
An older woman named Heloise was alone in her home likely waiting for her husband’s return, when suddenly Heloise’s thoughts were intruded by a startling sound. “What is that noise?” she probably thought to herself. The noise got louder and louder. She hears the voices of two men, Hugh and Alexander, who are breaking into her house! Alarmed at the intrusion, Heloise doesn’t know what to do or where to hide. Before she can find a safe exit, Hugh and Alexander are inside. Hugh rapes Heloise, presumably with the aid and voyeuristic spectatorship of Alexander.
These cases exemplify what I call group rape. They are the types of cases that scholars have misinterpreted as lone rapes, because in both instances one man is accused of being the primary perpetrator who committed the rape, while the other man is an “accessory to the crime.” I understand where this logic comes from, in that it is often not clear what the “Stephens” or “Alexanders” in the case records are accused of doing. But the Hockey Canada scandal provides us with an awareness that these rapes are either facilitated by other people or occur in front of an audience.
The emphasis on the primary perpetrator as the penetrating culprit does not justify this neglect of group rape. Such a focus on penetration ensures that medievalists are largely missing the extent to which group rape is occurring in the medieval plea rolls. Focusing on penetration obfuscates the multiple pressures that victims of sexual assault face and contributes to an outdated emphasis on penetrative rape at the expense of other forms of sexualized violence. There is often a lack of information about what the other people mentioned in the plea rolls are doing, but that does not erase the fact that they were allegedly involved. We need to start paying attention to the other people acting as “accessories to the crime”; we need to acknowledge the fact that seemingly lone-rape cases may have been occurring with the help of other people and/or in front of other people. Historiographical silence should not be justified by the silence of details documented by medieval court scribes.
Silence is often the invisible thread to the tapestry of rape culture. Silence through payment was frequently a “solution” used by Hockey Canada by requiring alleged victims to sign non-disclosure agreements upon acceptance of cash settlements. Silence is part of the “bro code” perpetuated by coaches, staff members, and other teammates who knew that group sexual violence was occurring amongst teammates in rookie hazing initiations and team parties. Silence amongst insiders with knowledge of alleged group rapes perpetuated by teammates ensured that the public was kept in the dark. Silence in the archives has been used as a crutch for medievalists to be silent on the frequency of group rapes in the medieval past.
Group rapes in contemporary sport culture encourage historians to reconsider how voyeuristically watching sexual assault in the past could have been used to prove that “you’re one of the guys.” Language is important and I hope that medievalists begin to incorporate group rape — not gang rape — into the jargon of raptus scholarship. I also hope that medievalists can move past the outdated phallocentric definitions of rape, as these harmful perspectives are contributing to the silence of victims both historically and in the present.
Mariah Cooper has a forthcoming monograph, Representations of Rape and Consent in Medieval English Laws and Literature (Arc Humanities Press) and she is co-editing a forthcoming series on Disney and the Middle Ages (Brepols). This essay is part of a larger scholarly article on medieval group rape and homosociality which is currently under review with Floregium. Mariah has appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio discussing her doctoral research, and recently her work was noted in the Provincial Legislature House of Assembly. Mariah is currently a Teaching Fellow at Acadia University, and she was awarded an SSHRC-Postdoctoral Fellowship for a future research project on medieval histories of rape myths.
