Seth Udinski, FISM News
FISM News reported earlier this week on the harrowing homosexual abuse case involving former Chicago Blackhawks coach Brad Aldrich. Aldrich had abused and blackmailed a 20-year-old player during the Blackhawks’ playoff push to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2010. The organization had ignored the abuse for over ten years, even though several team executives knew about it.
On Wednesday, 31-year-old Kyle Beach, a former member of the Blackhawks and a current professional hockey player in Europe, came forward as this anonymous victim, known in the report as “John Doe 1.” Beach was 20 years old and recently called up to the NHL when he was sexually assaulted and threatened with physical harm by Aldrich. Aldrich also threatened to ruin Beach’s potential career if he made the abuse public.
Beach’s courage was praised universally in the world of sports for revealing a secret he’d painfully buried for over a decade. He said after coming forward,
[Tuesday] was a day of many emotions. I cried, I smiled, I laughed, I cried some more. My girlfriend and I, we didn’t really know how to feel, we didn’t really know how to think.
Beach also shared the immense pain he felt with the organization that ignored him when he reported the abuse:
I reported this and I was made aware that it made it all the way up the chain of command… and nothing happened. It was like his life was the same as the day before. Same every day. And then when they won, to see [Aldrich] paraded around lifting the Cup, at the parade, at the team pictures, at celebrations, it made me feel like nothing. It made me feel like I didn’t exist. It made me feel like, that I wasn’t important and … it made me feel like he was in the right and I was wrong.
The Blackhawks released another statement soon after Beach came forward. The team said
First, we would like to acknowledge and commend Kyle Beach’s courage in coming forward. As an organization, the Chicago Blackhawks reiterate our deepest apologies to him for what he has gone through and for the organization’s failure to promptly respond when he bravely brought this matter to light in 2010. It was inexcusable for the then-executives of the Blackhawks organization to delay taking action regarding the reported sexual misconduct. No playoff game or championship is more important than protecting our players and staff from predatory behavior.
On Thursday, Joel Quenneville, head coach of the Florida Panthers, announced his resignation from his current role with the Panthers in the midst of abuse fallout. Quenneville was the head coach of the Blackwaks when the abuse first happened.