(Ottawa) “I implore you, I implore you: you must initiate an independent judicial inquiry. »
Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who presided over the trial of medical abuser Larry Nassar, on Monday urged the Canadian government to move forward to end “the murder of the souls of athletes” who suffer abuse.
The outspoken magistrate – when sentencing physician Larry Nassar to up to 175 years in prison in 2018, she told him, “I just signed your death warrant” – testified before the committee parliamentarian who studies the safe practice of sport in Canada.
In her opening statement, she told elected officials that young Canadian athletes had stopped her for help.
“Your Canadian athletes ask you for the 100% they give you […]. Their health, safety and well-being are at grave risk. They are at risk every day that they perform under coaches who are untrained, insensitive, and whose philosophy is to win at all costs,” the Michigan judge insisted.
As a sign of the warm welcome she received, New Democrat Peter Julian called her a “heroine”. Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner also expressed admiration for his work, but pointed out to him that a public inquiry was not the equivalent of a trial.
True, agreed Rosemarie Aquilina. But a public inquiry would free the voices of suffering athletes and give them a “safe space” in which to do so. And Canada, by creating a public inquiry, would become “a world leader” that would inspire “the whole world”, including the United States.
At the end of the meeting, Bloc Québécois MNA Sébastien Lemire spoke to the media to take stock of the progress made in the past year, welcoming the “spirit of collaboration” between parties on this issue, but also saluting “the courage” of the many athletes who spoke.
The elected member of the Bloc Québécois had adopted in June 2022, by unanimous consent, a motion calling for the holding of a public and independent inquiry. It took several months before Minister Pascale St-Onge indicated that she intended to go in this direction.
She finally committed to doing so on May 11. “The goal is to provide a safe space for survivors to share their experience and identify, at all levels of the sport, where improvements can be made,” she wrote in a letter on Monday.
His office did not provide a timeline on when the exercise might get under way. Behind the scenes, it was argued that while understanding the “sense of urgency”, we wanted to “develop the right approach”. When it comes to public inquiry, the Trudeau government has been scalded with the issue of foreign interference.
The scourge of abuse in amateur sport has been studied by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. Gang rape allegations at Hockey Canada, which surfaced in May 2022, were the trigger for this work.
As the meetings progressed, a number of groups (Canadian Olympic Committee, Own the Podium) pleaded for a public inquiry, as did a long list of athletes, including soccer star Christine Sinclair and ex-American gymnast Rachael Denhollander, victim of Larry Nassar.
Larry Nassar was found guilty of assaulting, between 1996 and 2014, at least 265 gymnasts for whom he was responsible as a doctor for the American Gymnastics Federation. At the end of the trial, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina allowed the victims to address their attacker. One hundred and fifty-six did. Among the victims of the ex-doctor are Olympic champions Simone Biles, Gabrielle Douglas and Aly Raisman, who sued USA Gymnastics for failing to protect them from Larry Nassar. The case was the subject of a Netflix documentary, Athlete A.