Calgary Flames forward Dillon Dube was officially charged with sexual assault charges on January 30th alongside four of his former world juniors teammates. The five players are accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a London hotel on June 19th, 2018. It was reportedly following a Hockey Canada Foundation golf and gala event.
“We had no knowledge of pending charges at the time Dillon’s request for a leave of absence was granted.”
– Calgary Flames
The Calgary Flames statement on Dillon Dube’s decision to leave the team on January 21st. Nine days prior to the charges being laid.
The charges came after plenty of speculation surrounding all five players deciding to take some time away from their respective teams around the same time with only one minor change between all 5 players statements. Fans were quick to spot that Dillon Dube had taken a mental health leave away from the Flames while the other 4 teams hadn’t labelled their players leaves as the same, only calling them leaves of absences.
Once the curtain had been pulled on exactly why these players had all taken breaks at the same time, fans swiftly began to point the finger at the Calgary Flames for labelling Dube’s decision to take a leave being due to a mental health break. It also didn’t help the Calgary Flames case that defensemen and fan favorite Oliver Kylington had just returned from a nearly 2 year mental health leave.
The Calgary Flames would not take long to respond, the team would release a statement saying that “We have now become aware of the charge of sexual assault that has been laid against Dillon Dube. We take this matter very seriously. Because the matter is now pending legal proceedings, we will have no further comment at this time. We had no knowledge of pending charges at the time Dillon’s request for a leave of absence was granted.”
London police had originally investigated the case but only until February 2019 without laying any charges due to insufficient evidence. In May of 2022, TSN reported that Hockey Canada had quietly settled a $3.55 million dollar lawsuit brought by the accuser against Hockey Canada, the CHL and 8 unnamed players. The story quickly led to outrage that in return caused the London police to reopen their investigation in July of 2022.
It was after all that, that the London police would finally file a document in court requesting authorization to seek court orders. In the filing, a London police officer wrote that he believed that there were reasonable grounds to believe that five members of the 2018 World Juniors team had committed sexual assault charges which would result in the charges that were laid on January 30th.
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