Keeping Track of Criminal Cases & SafeSport Suspensions in Skating

[Ms Bumblebee]

@Colonel Green can you explain what happened to the second complaint mentioned in the decision, the one around alleged retaliation in 2024? The decision mentions both complaints, but it's not clear to me whether the sanction was for both complaints. The question of retroactivity shouldn't be relevant to the 2024 complaint because UCCMS was in place by then, and presumably the applicant would have signed the standard athlete agreement agreeing to follow the safe sport rules based on UCCMS.

I think the March 6th 2024 incident is this
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/sport...xual-assault-world-championships/73055621007/

The attorney for the alleged sexual assault victim of Canadian Olympic figure skater Nikolaj Sørensen told USA TODAY Sports Thursday that comments recently made by Sørensen amount to “retaliation” against the victim that should have resulted in his suspension from this week’s world championships.

At a Skate Canada media availability March 6, when asked about the allegations against him and the resulting investigation by Canada’s Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, Sørensen told reporters that he thought the “intention” of the victim of the alleged sexual assault was to “damage” him.
“When something like that comes out in the media, the damage is kind of done and I think that was the intention more than anything,” Sørensen said. He has denied the allegations.

Rule 5.14.2 of OSIC’s Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport which says “retaliation includes threatening, intimidating, harassing, coercing, negatively interfering with sport participation, or any other conduct that would discourage a reasonable person from engaging or participating in an investigation or disciplinary review process…”

Edit. Added a quote from the article about OSIC Rule 5.14.2 regarding retaliation

 

[SnowQueen11]

The whole Sorensen thing wasn’t sitting well with me. I remembered that Sorensen was skating with Vanessa Crone at the time of the incident. I believe she only ever wanted to skate for Canada so I did some Googling and found this article confirming my suspicion:


Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sørensen: “We’re in it for the long haul” | Inside Skating

https://www.insideskating.net/2017/...nikolaj-sorensen-were-in-it-for-the-long-haul


Here are some quotes:


Sorensen makes this statement:


“Nikolaj: Yeah – and then what happened was that, in February 2012, I get this call from Vanessa Crone, Paul [Poirier]’s former partner. She says: I’m interested in skating with you, is it something you would be interested in? Can you get a release so that we can skate for Canada?And so we went through the whole process, signed papers, we were ready to skate for Canada, and then, two and a half months after, she decided to quit”.


Per the records, the incident was April 21st, so it occurred when he was skating with Crone for/in Canada, then he teamed up with Laurence for CANADA, he even tested Canadian tests per the article.

See below:

“BEGINNINGS ARE ALWAYS TOUGH

Nikolaj: That was our first season together, 2012/2013, but we didn’t compete that season. So what happened that year? Interesting stuff.


I had signed some papers with Vanessa, for Skate Canada… and, basically, me and Laurence decided to skate for Canada the first year. Cause we could do all their championships – they have Sectionals, Divisionals, and Nationals, and even though you do National Championships for a country, you can still switch and skate for Denmark after, as long as you haven’t done any international.


And we were even open to the idea of skating for Canada in the beginning – let’s see how it’s gonna go, how well we’re gonna do in Canada. But by the time of our first competition, someone from the federation for the Quebec region called my coaches and said: Nik hasn’t passed his compulsory dances.


Laurence: We have this in Canada, for gold dances.


Nikolaj: Yeah, since 2012 there was a new rule, that if you’re an international skater, you have to have passed your gold dances: the Westminster Waltz, Viennese Waltz, Silver Samba, Argentine Tango and the Quickstep – five dances, in order to compete senior for Canada.

And so he told us this the 3rd of October, and the deadline was the first of October, and we went to a test day two days after, passed all the dances, and Skate Canada still said that we’re after the deadline, so we could not compete for…

Laurence: It was the same day. We went to the test on the same day.

Nikolaj: So we never ended up skating for Canada after all.

But when have you specifically decided to skate for Denmark?

Nikolaj: Right when Canada said we could not skate for them the first year. And the reason why we wanted to skate for Canada was also that you couldn’t get the release the first year [looking at Laurence]. If they give you a Junior Grand Prix, they lock you for 2 years.

But when we heard we couldn’t skate for Canada, we said: You know what? We’re gonna train this year, and just come back next year and skate for Denmark. And so we did a little trip – we went to Lyon, because Patch and Marie were very close to Muriel [Zazoui] and Romain [Haguenauer], and they said: Romain, he really knows the Finnstep very well, so go to Lyon for a week, train with them, get out of here, so you don’t stay in Montreal all year, try something new. So we went to Lyon to do Finnstep with Romain for a week…”

So, doesn’t this mean he was a Skate Canada athlete when it all happened?
How is this a jurisdiction question at all? You have to be a Skate Canada member to take Skate Canada tests.

Anyone have an idea of how to look up his test records or to know how to get more details on this? Is it public information?

 

[ostile17]

The whole Sorensen thing wasn’t sitting well with me. I remembered that Sorensen was skating with Vanessa Crone at the time of the incident. I believe she only ever wanted to skate for Canada so I did some Googling and found this article confirming my suspicion:


Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Sørensen: “We’re in it for the long haul” | Inside Skating

https://www.insideskating.net/2017/...nikolaj-sorensen-were-in-it-for-the-long-haul


Here are some quotes:


Sorensen makes this statement:


“Nikolaj: Yeah – and then what happened was that, in February 2012, I get this call from Vanessa Crone, Paul [Poirier]’s former partner. She says: I’m interested in skating with you, is it something you would be interested in? Can you get a release so that we can skate for Canada?And so we went through the whole process, signed papers, we were ready to skate for Canada, and then, two and a half months after, she decided to quit”.


Per the records, the incident was April 21st, so it occurred when he was skating with Crone for/in Canada, then he teamed up with Laurence for CANADA, he even tested Canadian tests per the article.

See below:

“BEGINNINGS ARE ALWAYS TOUGH

Nikolaj: That was our first season together, 2012/2013, but we didn’t compete that season. So what happened that year? Interesting stuff.


I had signed some papers with Vanessa, for Skate Canada… and, basically, me and Laurence decided to skate for Canada the first year. Cause we could do all their championships – they have Sectionals, Divisionals, and Nationals, and even though you do National Championships for a country, you can still switch and skate for Denmark after, as long as you haven’t done any international.


And we were even open to the idea of skating for Canada in the beginning – let’s see how it’s gonna go, how well we’re gonna do in Canada. But by the time of our first competition, someone from the federation for the Quebec region called my coaches and said: Nik hasn’t passed his compulsory dances.


Laurence: We have this in Canada, for gold dances.


Nikolaj: Yeah, since 2012 there was a new rule, that if you’re an international skater, you have to have passed your gold dances: the Westminster Waltz, Viennese Waltz, Silver Samba, Argentine Tango and the Quickstep – five dances, in order to compete senior for Canada.

And so he told us this the 3rd of October, and the deadline was the first of October, and we went to a test day two days after, passed all the dances, and Skate Canada still said that we’re after the deadline, so we could not compete for…

Laurence: It was the same day. We went to the test on the same day.

Nikolaj: So we never ended up skating for Canada after all.

But when have you specifically decided to skate for Denmark?

Nikolaj: Right when Canada said we could not skate for them the first year. And the reason why we wanted to skate for Canada was also that you couldn’t get the release the first year [looking at Laurence]. If they give you a Junior Grand Prix, they lock you for 2 years.

But when we heard we couldn’t skate for Canada, we said: You know what? We’re gonna train this year, and just come back next year and skate for Denmark. And so we did a little trip – we went to Lyon, because Patch and Marie were very close to Muriel [Zazoui] and Romain [Haguenauer], and they said: Romain, he really knows the Finnstep very well, so go to Lyon for a week, train with them, get out of here, so you don’t stay in Montreal all year, try something new. So we went to Lyon to do Finnstep with Romain for a week…”

So, doesn’t this mean he was a Skate Canada athlete when it all happened?
How is this a jurisdiction question at all? You have to be a Skate Canada member to take Skate Canada tests.

Anyone have an idea of how to look up his test records or to know how to get more details on this? Is it public information?

I doubt it would be public information. Maybe you can ask the Skating Scores?

But contacting Brannon with what you found out may be very, very useful, don't you think? I'm sure she can dig out the rest... and more.

 

[overedge]

I think the March 6th 2024 incident is this
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/sport...xual-assault-world-championships/73055621007/




Edit. Added a quote from the article about OSIC Rule 5.14.2 regarding retaliation

Thanks for finding this. Now I'd like to know what happened with that other complaint. I think that complaints to OSIC have to be addressed individually even if there's more than one complaint about the same person. So is the second complaint still being investigated? Or did the investigation stop when the ban was imposed? Because if it's the latter - with the ban overturned, the second complaint should go ahead.