Blackhawks Ignored 2010 Sexual Assault Accusation
The interesting point of this article is the “time” part of the equation. There were a number of people who knew about the abusive behavior of the N.H.L. Blackhawk’s video coach Brad Aldrich. They included the team’s President Stan Bowman and Al MacIsaac another senior management person.
While other senior management also became aware of them, the reports of sexual abuse committed by Aldrich were essentially buried, leaving him free to continue coaching and committing similar offenses for another ten years. He must have felt, and even looked to anyone who knew what the was doing, like he had some kind of invisible shield protecting him.
It is another refrain of the same tune we’ve heard repeatedly in recent years. In this case the offender himself and the management team that failed to act immediately all share blame. The question is, why did it take ten years for the whole story to surface and consequences be delivered?
There is an answer. It’s in the book!
Blackhawks Ignored 2010 Sexual Assault Accusation, an Investigation Says
An independent investigation commissioned by the N.H.L. club revealed on Tuesday that the team failed to act promptly after a player accused a video coach of sexual assault, in part because club executives were concerned about winning the Stanley Cup.
Several Chicago Blackhawks executives failed to report a 2010 accusation that a minor league player had been sexually assaulted by the team’s video coach during that year’s playoffs, according to an independent investigation commissioned by the team. Executives were concerned about distracting the team — Chicago won the Stanley Cup a month later — and did not thoroughly investigate the accusation or punish the coach, Brad Aldrich, according to the investigation.
The inaction by Blackhawks executives, who informed neither the N.H.L. nor law enforcement of the accusation, had devastating effects. Aldrich later made a sexual advance toward a Blackhawks intern during the Stanley Cup celebrations, according to the investigation’s findings, which were released Tuesday. He was allowed to resign from his position after the 2009-10 season, and would go on to hold a number of other jobs in hockey, including at colleges and high schools. In 2013, Aldrich pleaded guilty to having sexual contact with a minor while he was volunteering as a high school coach in Michigan, and he remains on the state’s sex offender registry because of that conviction.
The N.H.L. fined the Blackhawks $2 million on Tuesday for the team’s “inadequate internal procedures and insufficient and untimely response” to the 2010 allegations. Stan Bowman, the team’s president of hockey operations, and Al MacIsaac, the senior director of hockey administration, resigned from their positions. Bowman and MacIsaac were among the team executives who were made aware in 2010 of the minor-leaguer’s accusation, the investigation report said. None of the other executives who were made aware are still employed by the team.
The accusation first became public in May, when an unnamed former Blackhawks player filed a lawsuit saying that both he and a teammate had been assaulted by Aldrich, and that the team had ignored it. The former player said that Aldrich forced him into sexual acts by threatening both violence and his standing in hockey, the report said. A former high school player has also sued the Blackhawks, saying that the team had provided positive references for Aldrich, which enabled Aldrich to assault him.
In a statement after the results of the investigation were released, the Blackhawks wrote, “It is clear the organization and its executives at that time did not live up to our own standards or values in handling these disturbing incidents.”
The investigation, which began in June, was conducted by a former federal prosecutor, Reid Schar from the Jenner & Block law firm. It found no evidence that the Blackhawks ownership or its current top executives, besides Bowman and MacIsaac, were aware of what happened in 2010 before the former minor leaguer was preparing to file his lawsuit earlier this year.
The investigation involved interviews with 139 people, including the former player who made the accusation and Aldrich, as well as 21 current and former players for the Blackhawks and their top minor league affiliate, the Rockford IceHogs. The player who made the accusation was what is known as a “black ace,” a minor leaguer who travels with the team during the playoffs in case he is needed because of an injury or suspension.
According to the investigative report, while both Aldrich and the unnamed player agreed that sexual contact occurred in May 2010, they disagreed about whether or not it was consensual.
According to the report, on May 23, 2010, MacIsaac was told by an unnamed employee that there might have been a sexual encounter between Aldrich and the player. MacIsaac had Jim Gary, the team’s mental skills coach, speak with the player. Gary told investigators he was told that Aldrich was pressuring the player to have sex and threatening that his career would be harmed if he did not.
After the Blackhawks defeated the San Jose Sharks to advance to the Stanley Cup finals, Bowman, MacIsaac and Gary met with John McDonough, then the team’s president; Kevin Cheveldayoff, the assistant general manager; Jay Blunk, the executive vice president; and Joel Quenneville, the head coach.
Accounts of that meeting varied, according to the report, with all participants acknowledging they were informed of an “unwelcome” sexual advance by Aldrich toward the player, but none of them said they were made aware of the nonconsensual sexual conduct the player described in his lawsuit.
Bowman told investigators that during the meeting McDonough and Quenneville “made comments about the challenge of getting to the Stanley Cup finals and a desire to focus on the team and the playoffs.”
No Blackhawks employee would take any action until June 14, five days after the team won the Stanley Cup, and four days after Aldrich made a sexual advance toward a 22-year-old intern and touched him during a celebration of the championship, according to the report.
On June 14, McDonough told the head of human resources about the May incident, according to the report, and two days later the human resources leader met with Aldrich and said that either the team would begin an investigation or Aldrich could resign.
Aldrich chose to resign, and no investigation was conducted then. According to the report, he received a playoff bonus and continued to receive his salary for “several months.” Aldrich also had his name engraved on the Stanley Cup and was allowed to celebrate with it in his hometown, and he received a championship ring and attended the banner-raising ceremony the next season.
According to the report, a different Blackhawks minor leaguer told investigators that during the 2010 playoffs Aldrich had sent him explicit text messages, which included a photograph of a penis. An unnamed front office employee was standing next to the player when he received the photograph, according to the investigation, and encouraged him to report what had happened, but the player never did.
Bowman, who on Tuesday also resigned as the general manager of the 2022 U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team, said in a statement that after he had been made aware of potentially inappropriate behavior he reported it to the team’s president and chief executive, and “relied on the direction of my superior that he would take appropriate action.”
Cheveldayoff is now the general manager of the Winnipeg Jets, and Quenneville is the head coach of the Florida Panthers. According to the statement from the N.H.L., Commissioner Gary Bettman will arrange meetings with both of them soon, and will “reserve judgment on next steps, if any, with respect to them.”
In July Quenneville said that he “first learned of these allegations through the media earlier this summer,” and Cheveldayoff said that he did not know of any accusations against Aldrich “until asked if I was aware of anything just prior to the conclusion of his employment” with the Blackhawks.
Neither addressed the seeming contradiction between those initial statements to the news media and the report’s conclusion that they both attended the meeting on May 23, 2010, where the player’s accusations against Aldrich were raised to team executives.
Cheveldayoff said in a statement that he shared everything he knew with the investigators and wouldn’t comment further until he talked to Bettman, while the Panthers said they would not comment before Quenneville met with Bettman.
Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about
What Goes Around Comes Around:
A stable, positive, non preachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
Blackhawks Ignored 2010 Sexual Assault Accusation
Blackhawks Ignored 2010 Sexual Assault Accusation
It is an old saying full of wisdom ie: “Loose Lips Sink Ships!” Now Jon Gruden, the former coach of NFL Football’s, Los Vegas Raiders, most likely gets the irony of how that saying also applies to him!
Colombo Family Crime Boss and 12 Others Are Arrested, Prosecutors Say
An indictment unsealed on Tuesday accuses the organization of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort a labor union.
For two decades, the leadership of the Colombo crime family extorted a Queens labor union, federal prosecutors said — an effort that continued unabated even as members of the mob clan cycled through prison, the family’s notorious longtime boss died, and as federal law enforcement closed in.
Over time, what began as a Colombo captain’s shakedown of a union leader, complete with expletive-laced threats of violence, expanded into a cottage industry, prosecutors said, as the Colombo organization assumed control of contracting and union business, with side operations in phony construction certificates, marijuana trafficking and loan-sharking.
On Tuesday, 11 reputed members and associates of the Colombo crime family, including the mob clan’s entire leadership, were charged in a labor racketeering case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
All but two of the men were arrested Tuesday morning across New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said. Another was surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday; another defendant, identified as the family consigliere, remained at large, prosecutors said.
The indictment accuses the Colombo family of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort an unnamed labor union that represented construction workers, using threats of violence to secure payments and arrange contracts that would benefit the crime family.
The charges are an ambitious effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take down one of the city’s five Mafia families. In addition to the union extortion scheme, which is the heart of the racketeering charge, the indictment charges several misdeeds often associated with the mob, including drug trafficking, money laundering, loan-sharking and falsifying federal labor safety paperwork.
Detention hearings for the defendants in Brooklyn federal court continued into the evening Tuesday, as they entered not-guilty pleas to the charges; prosecutors had asked the court to keep 10 of the defendants in custody.
“Everything we allege in this investigation proves history does indeed repeat itself,” Michael J. Driscoll, F.B.I. assistant director-in-charge, said in a statement. “The underbelly of the crime families in New York City is alive and well.”
Around 2001, prosecutors said, Vincent Ricciardo — a reported captain in the family, also known as “Vinny Unions” — began to demand a portion of a senior labor union official’s salary. When Mr. Ricciardo was convicted and imprisoned on federal racketeering charges in the mid-2000s, prosecutors said, his cousin continued to collect those payments.
Starting in late 2019, prosecutors said, the senior leadership of the Colombo family became directly involved in the shakedown, which extended to broader efforts to siphon money from the union: for example, manipulating the selection of union health fund vendors to contract with entities connected to the family, and diverting more than $10,000 each month from the fund to the family.
Andrew Russo, 87, who prosecutors describe as the family boss, is accused of taking part in those efforts, as well as a money-laundering scheme to send the proceeds of the union extortion through intermediaries to Colombo associates. He was among nine defendants charged with racketeering.
Mr. Russo appeared in court virtually from the hospital Tuesday; he is set to be detained upon his release, pending a future bail hearing.
The family’s infamous longtime boss, Carmine J. Persico, died in federal custody in North Carolina in March 2019.
Federal law enforcement learned of the extortion scheme about a year ago, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Tuesday; investigators gathered thousands of hours of wiretapped calls and conversations recorded by a confidential witness, wrote the prosecutors, who also described law-enforcement surveillance of meetings among the accused conspirators.
The authorities said they repeatedly captured Mr. Ricciardo and his associates threatening to kill the union official. “I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids,” Mr. Ricciardo was recorded saying in June.
On another occasion cited by prosecutors in the memo seeking his detention, Mr. Ricciardo directed the union official to hire a consultant selected by the Colombo family, saying: “It’s my union and that’s it.” Prosecutors said his activities were overseen by a Colombo soldier and the consigliere who remains at large.
Much of the activity outlined in the indictment took place while the defendants were either in prison or on supervised release for prior federal mob-related convictions. Theodore Persico Jr., described as a family captain and soldier, was released from federal prison in 2020 and, despite a directive not to associate with members of organized crime, “directed much of the labor racketeering scheme,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Persico, 58, is set to inherit the role of boss after Mr. Russo, prosecutors wrote.
Several of the defendants were named in what prosecutors described as a fraudulent safety training scheme, in which they falsified state and federal paperwork that is required for construction workers to show they have completed safety training courses.
One of the defendants, John Ragano — whom prosecutors say is a soldier in the Bonanno crime family — is accused of setting up phony occupational safety training schools in New York, which prosecutors said were “mills” that provided fraudulent safety training certificates to hundreds of people.
In October 2020, prosecutors said, an undercover law enforcement officer visited one of the schools in Ozone Park, Queens, and received, from Mr. Ricciardo’s cousin, a blank test form and an answer sheet; weeks later, the agent returned to pick up his federal safety card and paid $500.
The purported schools were also used for meetings with members of La Cosa Nostra — the group of crime families commonly known as the Mafia — and to store illegal drugs and fireworks, according to the indictment.
Mr. Ragano wasn’t charged on the racketeering count, although prosecutors also sought his detention pending trial. In addition to the racketeering count, several defendants, including Mr. Ricciardo and his cousin, were charged with extortion, conspiracy, fraud and conspiracy to make false statements.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of people identified in an indictment as members of the Colombo crime family. It is 11, not more than a dozen.