The “allegations of a sexual nature” currently being investigated by the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) relate to events that allegedly occurred among the Chicoutimi Saguenéens in 1994-1995, La Presse has learned. The testimonies of two former players evoke violence, intimidation and attacks committed by certain veterans on recruits.
About twenty Saguenéens players of the time and people who were involved in the team’s entourage deny having attended or participated in such events.
But for Carl Latulippe, the memories are clear. At 16, he was drafted in the first round by the Saguenéens. Less than a month after the start of the season, he left Saguenay and wanted to give up hockey, troubled by the abuse he allegedly suffered at the hands of veterans.
Nearly 30 years later, the man who is now a businessman in the automotive industry is breaking the silence. “It is not exceptional, my story. What is sickening is that it is far from unique,” said Carl Latulippe, seated in a restaurant in Quebec.
On March 21, in parliamentary committee, the acting commissioner of the QMJHL, Martin Lavallée, indicated that “allegations of a sexual nature” had “come [to his] ears” in connection with events that took place “in the 1990s”. within a circuit formation. “When we were made aware of the situation, we conducted a quest for information, which quickly led us to set up an independent investigation to ensure we got to the bottom of it,” he added. . He did not identify either the team concerned or the year of the events in question.
La Presse was able to confirm that this investigation targets the Saguenéens of the 1994-1995 campaign, Carl Latulippe’s rookie season.
During his childhood in Val-Bélair, Carl Latulippe did not count the hours spent playing hockey in the street or on the family rink. But the treatment he says he suffered from some veterans of the Saguenéens has destroyed his love of hockey. He never set foot in an arena again after leaving the QMJHL after two seasons.
Stories of ex-players who were victims of violence and assault in their years of Canadian junior hockey have been making headlines since the beginning of February. Although it rejected their request for class action, the Superior Court of Ontario revealed cases of abuse suffered since the 1980s by junior-age players from the three major Canadian leagues. In Quebec, the commissioner of the LHJMQ, Gilles Courteau, in office for 37 years, left his post on March 5, a few days after testifying before the parliamentary commission responsible for shedding light on the extent of the phenomenon. The contradictory versions of Gilles Courteau had been exposed in La Presse1.
Carl Latulippe started playing minor hockey at the age of 5. “It was my passion. […] It was the most beautiful thing I could do,” he says. The naturally talented young man played midget AAA for the Sainte-Foy Governors. At 15, he participated in the World Under-17 Challenge. At that time, Latulippe dreamed of the National League.
At 16, Carl Latulippe was drafted by the Chicoutimi Saguenéens. He leaves the family home for the start of the season training camp. The move destabilizes him. “In 1994, there was no internet. My parents never made more than $40,000 in their lives. I didn’t have a phone. It was far, Chicoutimi! he says.
In his first days in Chicoutimi, he recounts being welcomed as a hero and being asked to be photographed by admirers in restaurants. But as soon as training camp ends and the team is formed, the scenario changes, he says. Carl Latulippe says that veterans impose their rules. That recruits must pay them their meager pay.
He believes that the grip of veterans in Chicoutimi resulted in “repetitive” gestures. More than once, veterans took “towels with soap in them and hit us with them so it didn’t leave marks,” he said.
The event too many for Carl Latulippe would have taken place during one of the club’s first trips, en route to playing a game in Abitibi. On the bus, veterans allegedly asked recruits to undress and masturbate. Young players were reportedly told they had a very short window of time to ejaculate and those who failed to do so would be locked in the bus toilet. To “help” the recruits ejaculate, pornographic films would have been played on the common bus televisions, where adults were present, according to Carl Latulippe.
The latter says he was crowded with other recruits in the bus toilets, still naked. He does not know the exact time they spent in this reduced. But today, he finds it difficult to fly. He avoids crowds. “I’m claustrophobic,” he said.
Shortly after this experience, Latulippe left the Saguenéens. Did he tell anyone in management about the events? “We knew not to go. If we went there, we would definitely get beaten up,” he said.
At the time, the short stay of Latulippe, a first-round pick, let’s remember, was talked about. His teammates felt he was “missing his girlfriend.” The newspapers talk about it. “Weary of playing without joy and unable to adapt, Carl Latulippe has just left the Saguenéens of Chicoutimi”, wrote the daily newspaper Le Soleil on October 8, 1994. “I did not find there the philosophy that I had hockey. I was no longer having fun,” Latulippe would say at the time. “I felt bad about myself,” he also told Quotidien de Chicoutimi.
Another Saguenéens player from 1994-1995, who did not keep a link with Carl Latulippe, confirms his version of the facts. He prefers that his identity not be revealed in this report so as not to suffer reprisals from former teammates, who says he has turned the page on his junior career. We will therefore designate him by the fictitious first name Luc.
“Slaps on the back of the head and punches on the face,” Luc saw. A lot. He also testified that players were locked in bus toilets.
A rookie’s first season was a long one, he says. Tying veterans’ skates, carrying their equipment or buying them soft drinks were all orders that, if not carried out, had consequences. The first weeks of the calendar were particularly difficult.
Picking up a girl in a bar was worth getting asked to “dick up” places by older players. Challenging them meant paying the price the next day at the arena.
Luc did not attend any forced masturbation sessions, but he claims to have seen teammates touching each other without embarrassment on the bus, while a pornographic film was being shown.
According to him, at least one rookie had, after a game on the road, to sit on a bus seat containing the sperm of a veteran who, a few minutes earlier, had had sex with a young girl. woman in the vehicle. “I did it on purpose because I knew you were going to sit there,” that player reportedly said.
Even today, Luc resents head coach Gaston Drapeau, who died in 2014. “An adult should have helped us,” he says. In recent weeks, seeing the revelations about junior hockey accumulate in the media, Luc’s spouse asked him if he had had similar experiences. A few stories reported in Ontario and Western Canada included the insertion of hockey sticks into the anus of victims.
“No, that didn’t happen to me,” he replied. But it could have been, I met so many crazy people. »
As part of this investigation, La Presse spoke to 20 players and people who gravitated around the Saguenéens of the time. The majority denied witnessing anything.
Now coach and general manager of the Saguenéens, Yanick Jean was a veteran on this team in 1994-1995. Asked if he witnessed any violent or sexual acts towards the recruits of the time, his answer is categorical: “Impossible. »
He says the rookie-veteran climate was “fun.” “We were a nice bunch of guys,” he said. If any initiations took place, they were referred to as “team parties”. “But I didn’t get anything from what we read in the papers,” he said.
Personalities now well known to the public were also part of this edition of the Saguenéens. Among them, goalkeeper Marc Denis, who became an analyst at RDS.
Reached by La Presse, Mr. Denis said he “took the leap” upon learning of the events alleged by the victims. He never knew of repeated violence and he has no memory of having seen a pornographic film on the bus.
However, he says he feels “empathy” for people who have “experienced or perceived” events he says he does not know exist. “I’m glad tongues are out if people felt bullied,” he insisted. He retains only positive things from his junior career. “I wish all young people to go through the QMJHL,” he added. Former goalkeeper Éric Fichaud, an analyst at TVA Sports, made essentially the same comments.
Alain Nasreddine, assistant coach with the Dallas Stars, was playing his last season as a junior.
Today a commentator on RDS, André Roy was also a veteran in 1994-1995 in Chicoutimi. He says that while initiations did take place, he “never saw anything of the history of sticks and Antiphlogistine cases,” referring to the shocking revelations from the Ontario Superior Court judgment.
André Roy has already been locked in a bus toilet as a rookie. However, he has no memory of recruits being forced to masturbate. “There was nothing traumatic for me,” he said. It shaped the man I have become. It allowed me to have a career afterwards. »
But for Carl Latulippe, the memories aren’t so rosy. After his short stay with the Saguenéens, he concluded the season with the Voltigeurs de Drummondville, then played a few games the following year with the Harfangs de Beauport. He will hang up his skates in 1996.
On March 2, 1996, the newspaper Le Soleil returned to the departure of Carl Latulippe from the Saguenéens by speaking of a “wasted first choice”. “Some claimed that the veterans of the team took him to task,” the daily wrote. An assertion that Latulippe denied at the time. “Physically, I was ready to move into major junior. But mentally, it was a different story. I had a girlfriend, I was bored, I always went down to Quebec. Eventually, I let it all out,” he said. Why didn’t you speak at that time about the facts?
After his career in the QMJHL, Carl Latulippe will experience substance abuse problems. Is it attributable to what he went through? “To tell you that’s why I used, I wouldn’t tell you that. But to say it’s absolutely not because of that, I couldn’t tell you that either,” he said.
When the story of the Ontario class action hit the media in February, Carl Latulippe first wrote to 98.5 host Nathalie Normandeau who briefly told his story on the air, without naming him.
After La Presse contacted several former Saguenéens players to corroborate Carl Latulippe’s story, the QMJHL, informed of this approach, began collecting information itself, confirmed a spokesperson for the circuit. . On March 20, Latulippe received a call from Karl Jahnke, the league’s chief operating officer, communications and marketing, who wanted to hear his story.
The next day, the acting QMJHL commissioner, Martin Lavallée, told the parliamentary committee that an independent investigation had been launched into events that occurred in the 1990s.
Carl Latulippe says he has no grudge against the veterans who made his life difficult. In particular because many risk having themselves been attacked during their rookie years, according to him. “Today I understand better. I don’t accept it anymore,” he said. But one thing is certain: he does not want any other young person to go through what he says he has gone through.
“The hopes and dreams of our young people cannot be snuffed out by aggressors and organizations that bury their heads in the sand,” he concludes.
The QMJHL’s collection of information from Carl Latulippe and certain former teammates convinced league management to launch an independent investigation into the matter. This was entrusted to Me Philippe Frère, of the law firm Lavery, in collaboration with the investigation firm Gestion Jean Boudreau. It was to these people that, in 2019, the investigation into the allegations of inappropriate initiations that had occurred at the Sherbrooke Phoenix a few years earlier had been entrusted. Moreover, if the preliminary collection was led by Karl Jahnke, who is the QMJHL’s Chief Operating Officer, Communications and Marketing, it is because Natacha Llorens, Director of Player Services for the league, is on leave from disease.
The League declined to comment on this report. However, she encourages potential victims to speak up to “denounce any problematic situations they may have suffered in their major junior career”. An email address and complaints line have been created specifically for people who would like to report abuse.
Phone line: 1-877-650-3555
