A Survivor's Reflections on Protesting at the Hockey Canada Sexual Assault Trial

This article presents a first-person account of attending protests outside the London, Ontario courthouse during the 2025 Hockey Canada sexual assault trial as a survivor of sexual violence. By reflecting on what I saw and felt, I will examine the complex emotional, psychological, and political dimensions of bearing witness to legal proceedings while navigating my own trauma history. This personal narrative explores how public demonstrations of support for complainants serve multiple functions for survivor-protesters: validation of our own experiences, resistance to victim-blaming narratives, and assertions of collective solidarity against institutional power structures that have historically silenced sexual violence. By centring the lived experiences of survivors, this account seeks to expand our understanding of trauma-informed protest, secondary traumatization, and the therapeutic dimensions of collective action.

I never intended to become a protester. When the news broke about the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial beginning in London, Ontario, my first instinct was to avoid it entirely. Court proceedings involving sexual violence have always felt too close, too familiar—echoes of my own experiences with assault and the institutional responses that followed. But as the trial of five former world junior hockey players began in April 2025, something pulled me toward those courthouse steps. Perhaps it was the knowledge that E.M., the complainant whose identity remains protected by publication ban, would be facing cross-examination alone. Perhaps it was the need to do something with the rage that has lived in my body for years. Perhaps it was simply the recognition that my silence had never protected me, so maybe my voice could protect someone else.

This article chronicles my experience as both an observer and participant in the protests that emerged outside the London courthouse during the eight-week trial. It is written from the understanding that academic thought is enriched by lived experience, and that survivor voices deserve space not just as subjects of study but as generators of knowledge about trauma, resistance, and healing.

My first morning outside the courthouse in late April, I clutched a hastily-made sign reading “A Skirt Is Not An Invitation" with hands that shook despite the spring warmth. The building loomed above us—imposing, institutional, designed to project authority rather than comfort. I had driven the two hours from my home telling myself I would just observe, maybe hold a sign for an hour, then leave. I stayed until the proceedings ended that day.

The physical space outside the courthouse immediately revealed itself as contested territory. Our small group of survivor supporters clustered on one side, while across the walkway, counter-protesters displayed signs that made my stomach clench.

Standing there with my sign, I felt the weight of representation in ways I hadn't anticipated. I wasn't just supporting E.M.—I was representing all survivors who couldn't be there, who were too afraid, too tired, too broken by previous encounters with disbelief. The responsibility felt both heavy and strangely empowering.

Following the trial proceedings through media coverage while protesting outside created a strange doubled experience of proximity and distance. We were present but excluded, supportive but powerless to intervene in the legal process unfolding inside. When reports emerged about E.M.'s nine days of testimony, describing how she had been degraded, humiliated, spit on and slapped while being pressured into sexual acts she did not consent to, I felt the familiar dissociation that accompanies hearing details too close to one's own experience.

The defense strategies felt painfully predictable: questioning E.M.'s memory, emphasizing her alcohol consumption, suggesting her "truth changes from 2018, to 2022 to 2025." Standing outside with my sign, I found myself mentally composing responses to cross-examination questions I would never be asked, defending credibility I would never be challenged to prove in this context, but had been forced to defend countless times in others.

When the trial was interrupted by not one but two jury dismissals—first a mistrial in April, then the jury being discharged entirely in May—I felt both frustrated by the delays and oddly relieved. Each interruption postponed the eventual verdict that we all knew would be interpreted as definitive judgment not just on this case, but on the credibility of sexual assault complainants generally.

Choosing to protest publicly as a survivor meant navigating complex questions about visibility, disclosure, and safety that felt different from other forms of activism I had engaged in. Unlike protests about external political issues, this demonstration required me to position myself in relation to my own trauma history. Did I disclose my survivor status to other protesters? To media who approached for interviews? To counter-protesters who challenged our presence?

I found myself making different choices on different days. Some mornings I felt strong enough to identify explicitly as a survivor. Other days, particularly when the counter-protesters were more aggressive, I preferred the anonymity of simply being someone who believed survivors deserved support. The flexibility to choose my level of visibility felt important—one of the few elements of control available in a situation where so much felt determined by forces beyond our influence.

The gendered dynamics of our safety became increasingly apparent as the trial progressed. While the male allies who joined our protests were welcomed, they also served as informal protection. I hated recognizing this dynamic, hated that our physical safety was a consideration in simply expressing support for a sexual assault complainant, but I also felt grateful for the informal security network that developed among our group.

The most unexpected aspect of my protest participation was how it simultaneously triggered and healed trauma responses. Hearing details about E.M.'s experience, watching defense attorneys employ familiar victim-blaming strategies, confronting counter-protesters who denied the reality of sexual violence—all of this activated my own trauma memories in ways that left me exhausted and triggered for hours after each day's proceedings.

Yet the collective nature of the protest also provided something I had never experienced in relation to my own assault: community witness, shared understanding, and collective resistance to the isolation that sexual violence typically produces. Standing with other survivors who nodded when I described nightmares triggered by trial coverage, who understood why certain defense arguments made me physically nauseous, who shared their own strategies for managing activation—this created a form of healing I hadn't known was possible.

The simple act of being believed, and believing others, without the need for proof or persuasion, felt revolutionary after years of having my own experiences questioned, minimized, or reframed by friends and family members. Here, survivor credibility was assumed rather than earned, creating space for solidarity rather than skepticism.

Our presence outside the courthouse represented more than support for E.M.—it challenged the institutional power structures that have historically managed sexual violence through silence, settlement, and secrecy. The trial had emerged only because Hockey Canada's quiet settlement of E.M.'s civil lawsuit had been exposed, forcing a criminal investigation that the organization had clearly hoped to avoid.

Standing there with signs declaring "We Believe Survivors," I felt connected to broader movements challenging institutional responses to sexual violence. This wasn't just about five hockey players or one complainant—it was about demanding accountability from organizations that had prioritized reputation management over survivor support, that had used settlement funds to avoid transparency, that had allowed cultures of sexual entitlement to flourish unchecked.

The counter-protesters we encountered were, for the most part, not physically present outside the courthouse. Instead, their attacks came overwhelmingly online—through social media posts, hostile comments on news articles, Reddit threads, and the endless churn of anonymous accounts intent on discrediting E.M. and mocking those of us who stood in support.

In many ways, the online attacks felt more invasive and insidious than the occasional in-person confrontation. On the courthouse steps, at least, we could see who we were dealing with, gauge their tone, rely on allies for support. Online, the vitriol came in waves—sudden, unpredictable, often deeply personal. Posts circulated accusing us of “ruining young men’s lives” or being part of some imagined feminist conspiracy. The tone was openly misogynistic, frequently violent, and chilling in its intensity.

Some of the worst comments were clearly intended to silence us: rape threats, doxxing attempts, grotesque memes designed to humiliate survivors. Even when we chose not to engage directly, the act of reading those words lodged them in the body—a secondary wound layered on top of existing trauma. It was difficult to explain to friends why I would arrive at the courthouse already trembling some mornings—not from anything happening on-site, but from the hours spent late the night before scrolling through comment sections or Twitter threads, trying to monitor how bad the latest wave of online abuse had become.

The online counter-protesters' obsession with the defendants’ “ruined careers” highlighted exactly the institutional priorities we were there to challenge. The assumption that false accusations were more damaging than sexual violence itself, that athletic achievement should provide insulation from accountability, that public sympathy should align with the accused rather than with the survivor—these were the very power structures our simple act of standing and holding signs directly confronted.

What I hadn’t fully anticipated was how emotionally exhausting it would be to serve as witness not just to the trial proceedings, but to the public responses surrounding them. Reading online comments, listening to radio call-in shows, overhearing conversations in coffee shops near the courthouse—all of this demanded constant emotional labour. Every new thread doubting E.M.’s testimony or accusing survivor-protesters of ulterior motives forced me to reckon again with the same tired victim-blaming narratives I had battled for years in relation to my own story.

Some days, the online vitriol felt harder to endure than standing in front of the courthouse itself. Behind the safety of screens, people were emboldened to say the ugliest things—about E.M., about those of us protesting, about survivors in general. It wasn’t just that they doubted her story. They despised us for believing her.

And yet we kept showing up. Because we knew that visibility mattered—that for every survivor quietly reading those same hateful comments, it meant something to see others refusing to be silenced.

Despite the emotional costs, my participation in the protests provided a form of agency that had been absent from my own encounters with sexual violence. When I was raped, I had no control over how institutions responded, how my disclosure was received, how my experience was interpreted by others. But standing outside that courthouse, I could choose how to show up, what message to display, how to respond to challenges to my presence.

The simple act of holding a sign became a form of testimony I had never been able to offer about my own experience. While I had spent years in therapy processing my assault, while I had disclosed to friends and family, while I had engaged with legal and medical systems, I had never had the opportunity to stand publicly and declare that survivors deserve belief, support, and justice.

This public testimony felt different from private healing work. It was less about processing my own trauma and more about creating conditions where other survivors might experience something different than the isolation and disbelief that had characterized my own journey. It was activism informed by personal experience but directed toward collective change.

As the trial progressed, I became increasingly aware of the limitations of legal proceedings in addressing sexual violence. The courtroom focus on specific acts, consent, and evidence necessarily constrained how sexual violence could be understood and discussed. The adversarial system required defense attorneys to challenge E.M.'s credibility, memory, and motives in ways that felt familiar from my own experiences with institutional responses to disclosure.

Standing outside the courthouse, I recognized that regardless of the trial's outcome, the legal proceedings could not address the broader cultural conditions that enable sexual violence, the institutional responses that prioritize reputation over accountability, or the healing needs of survivors who never access formal justice systems. The trial was important, but it was also insufficient.

This recognition informed how I understood our protest. We weren't there because we believed the legal system would provide adequate justice—we were there because community support and witness matter regardless of institutional outcomes. We were creating alternative forms of accountability and care that existed outside legal frameworks while supporting E.M.'s navigation of those frameworks.

When the trial concluded in June 2025 after eight weeks of proceedings, I felt a complex mixture of relief, exhaustion, and uncertainty about what came next. Regardless of the legal outcome, something had shifted through the process of sustained community witness and support. Connections had been formed among survivors who might never have found each other otherwise. Alternative narratives about sexual violence had been asserted and maintained despite constant challenge. The isolation that typically surrounds sexual violence had been temporarily interrupted by collective action.

My participation in the protests taught me that healing from sexual violence is not just individual work—it requires community witness, shared resistance to victim-blaming narratives, and collective action to change the conditions that enable violence in the first place. Standing on those courthouse steps, I experienced forms of solidarity and agency that years of individual therapy had not provided.

The work continues beyond any single trial or verdict. The cultural narratives that enable sexual violence, the institutional responses that prioritize reputation over accountability, the isolation that survivors experience when seeking justice—these systems require sustained challenge and alternative ways of responding to harm.

For me, the protests outside the Hockey Canada trial represented an entry point into understanding how personal trauma can inform collective action, how individual healing connects to social change, and how survivors can move from isolation toward solidarity. It was painful, exhausting, and necessary work that I am grateful to have shared with a community of people committed to believing survivors and demanding better responses to sexual violence.

The courthouse steps may be empty now, but the connections formed there continue. The alternative narratives we asserted about survivor credibility, community accountability, and institutional responsibility persist beyond any single legal proceeding. This is the ongoing work of solidarity—showing up for each other, bearing witness to difficult truths, and creating conditions where survivors are believed, supported, and centred in conversations about sexual violence.

This article is written in solidarity with E.M. and all survivors who have found the courage to speak their truth, and in gratitude to the community of survivors and allies who made it possible to transform individual trauma into collective action.