She was the only girl playing on her boys hockey league team.
After 10 years of playing hockey, Kaitlyn Byers is used to trash talk on the ice. But she didn’t expect that to cross over to rape threats.
Byers, 18, spent last season playing for the Spruce Grove Highlanders in Edmonton. She was the only girl on the team and though her teammates and coach were completely supportive, she says boys on other teams targeted her for harassment.
On Nov. 1, Byers was playing against another team within the Edmonton Minor Hockey League. It started with the opposing players being particularly physical, but then one player started telling her “I want to fuck you.” Then it turned into “I’m going to fuck you.”
Eventually, Byers said he pinned her to the ice and kept repeating “I will fuck you whether you like it or not.”
“I get called filthy names all the time and I can take it,” Byers told BuzzFeed Canada. “But this was beyond trash talk.”
She immediately skated to the bench and told her coach what happened, who then went to the referee. But, Byers said, the referee said there was nothing he could do. Her coach actually ended up getting suspended for two games after getting upset with the referee.
Her parents were also upset, and started contacting the league and Hockey Alberta — the governing body for amateur hockey in the province.
But once again, said Byers, no one was willing to help them.
“We were told there was no sexual harassment in place,” said Byers. “They pretty much said there was nothing they could do or that they were willing to do.”
The incident left her shaken, but she refused to be scared off the ice. Her teammates and coach stuck by her side, walking her to the changeroom at games.
In January, they played the same team again. But this time things turned physical.
“They were really rough that whole game,” said Byers.
Then at one point Byers said a player on the other team cornered her, dug his stick into her ribs, and slammed her head into the ice.
“As I went down he said, ‘That’s what you get bitch.’”
“All I knew is that I couldn’t breathe,” she said. “Everything was starting to fade out.”
As she was carried off the ice, chaos erupted around her. She could hear her dad pounding on the glass, the other coach laughing, and people shouting that she shouldn’t play boys’ hockey if couldn’t “take the pain.”
By the time an ambulance arrived, her whole torso was spasming. She ended up in hospital with a concussion and cracked ribs.
“If you had targeted a guy like this he would have been just as injured.”
Fed up, she and her parents went back to the league. They wanted to see someone suspended, at minimum, so they pushed for an incident report and for a sexual harassment policy.
“Absolutely nothing was done,” she said.
Continue Reading.
