By Chris Block
In wake of the findings into the investigation of the Chicago Blackhawks handling of a 2010 sexual assault allegation made by John Doe 1, who we now know to have been 2008 first-round draft pick Kyle Beach, the organization’s response, and attempt to pivot into brand rehabilitation, have raised new questions, and refreshed memories of another recent Blackhawks’ scandal.
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Before I go any further, as much time as I’ve spent thinking about it this past week, I don’t think I can completely articulate how much I admire Kyle Beach for his bravery in filing his lawsuit against the Blackhawks organization and subsequently going on the record and telling his story to TSN last week.
I have had people in my life who have experienced sexual assault. Thus, I’m aware of how those experiences, and the collateral damage it causes can manifest itself in countless ways in a person’s life, their relationships and everyday situations that aren’t exclusive to sex or intimacy. It’s an ongoing struggle that never completely goes away, which is what makes it such a heinous crime.
I may have covered Beach and interviewed him as much as anyone in his career. From his draft in June of 2008 to his final days with the organization in late 2013, I saw his ups and downs. I criticized his on-ice play often. We had our moments, but he was almost always gracious with his time. The chats with him were usually very good. My final interview with Beach came just days before the Blackhawks traded him to the New York Rangers.
Beach was often an introspective, insightful interview. For whatever reason, though, he had problems putting things together on the ice. Obviously, this recent revelation casts a new light on his career. It undoubtedly was a factor in his development.
If only Kyle Beach had someone of more consequence within the Blackhawks organization (no offense to Paul Vincent, Nick Boynton or Brent Sopel) who believed him, or showed Beach some empathy – perhaps Beach’s career path would’ve have played out differently.
And that’s the overriding shame that his former teammates, those in management, and ownership at the time should carry today. What victims need most from those around them is some compassion and understanding. Beach didn’t get that from his peers or the people, like mental skills coach James Gary, who were cast with being part of his professional support system. Could his career have been more successful had his coaches, or upper management gone to Beach in the fall of 2010 and simply said ‘We’re sorry. What do you need? We’re here for you’? – We’ll never know but perhaps Beach will have a bigger impact on the game through the courage he’s showing now.
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During the web seminar to reveal the findings of Jenner & Block’s independent investigation into the Blackhawks handling of John Doe 1’s allegation of sexual assault by then video coach Brad Aldrich in the spring of 2010, Danny Wirtz claimed that ownership was not aware of the allegation, or its handling at the time.
Subsequently, the team released a statement, essentially dumping all responsibility for their failings on now-departed executive management – and claiming they’ve since instituted changes to prevent anything like what happened to Beach, and the inaction regarding it from happening again.
We’ve also since seen statements from some people who believe that there was no way Rocky Wirtz knew of the allegation at the time. But more on that later.
It’s been a few years since I’ve actively covered or written about the Blackhawks or their minor league affiliate AHL Rockford IceHogs. However, watching everything unfold these past five months has brought back memories of my experience covering a different kind of Blackhawks player alleged assault scandal in the spring of 2016.
In the fall of 2015, former Blackhawks forward prospect Garret Ross was arrested after an IceHogs practice and charged with “Revenge Porn.”
The victim in that case was a former girlfriend of one of Ross’ IceHogs teammates. Ross somehow came into possession of private and sexually explicit texts and video and then disseminated those to shame a Sycamore woman after Ross and his teammate had been found to be cheating on their other girlfriends via the Tinder app. Ross and his teammate suspected this Sycamore woman spread word of their cheating and caused their girlfriends to break off those relationships in the summer of 2015.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that young woman the past week. Never have I spoken to her, and I don’t know who she is, but I feel like as journalists we failed her.
Ross and the other un-named top (at the time) Blackhawks prospect stole her dignity. They purposefully embarrassed and shamed her. It was a gutless act they’ve moved on from without much consequence while she is forced to carry with her each day.
It’s difficult to believe the Blackhawks didn’t know. Even given the timeline in which they claim to have learned of crime, and Ross’ arrest – they still did nothing. Ross was given a couple weeks off to hide from the media and when the case had to be dropped on a technicality the Blackhawks quickly reinstated him back into the lineup. The other player never missed any time.
Blackhawks statement following Jenner & Block report Oct 26, 2021
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In March of 2016, the Blackhawks organization was sent scrambling when news reports unveiled that the team had recently found itself amid the ‘revenge porn’ scandal.
On February 3, 2016, Rockford IceHogs forward and Blackhawks’ prospect Garret Ross was charged with nonconsensual dissemination of a sexual image, or ‘revenge porn.’ It was almost three months to the day since charges against Patrick Kane in the alleged sexual assault of a woman in Buffalo were officially dropped due to lack of evidence.
Ross, accompanied by his attorney, turned himself in to police in Sycamore, Illinois on Thursday February 4, 2016. He was booked, posted a $500 bond and released the same day. Somehow, news of a current IceHogs’ player, and Chicago Blackhawks prospect flew under the radar and didn’t make the news in Rockford, or Dekalb County for another six weeks.
The next day Ross was in the lineup when the Rockford IceHogs returned from the AHL All-Star break and played a home game against the Grand Rapids Griffins.
Rockford was pummeled in that game, losing 9-1. Ross was a team worst minus-4 in the contest.
In attendance the day after Ross’ arrest was Blackhawks team owner Rocky Wirtz.
Wirtz rarely made trips to Rockford home games. He didn’t own the team at the time, but he did ride out to Rockford that day to meet with the IceHogs and team officials.
After that game, IceHogs coach Ted Dent was uncharacteristically mellow following such a loss.
“It’s going to happen over the course of 76 games,” Dent said in comments to reporter Reed Schreck and published in the Rockford Register-Star the next day. “You hope you don’t get blown out this bad. Throw it out the window. For whatever reason we had a stinker tonight, and just move on.”
“We had 20 hockey players tonight who weren’t that good.”
Hogs’ forward Mike Liambas, the lone Rockford goal scorer in the game, suggested the entire team wasn’t focused.
“Guys maybe as a whole weren’t ready mentally – that was the biggest issue.”
The Blackhawks team owner was not made available to the Rockford media that night, and the contents of his meetings that day are only known to those who were present.
For clarity, the Rockford IceHogs at the time were owned by the City of Rockford, with the local venues and entertainment board RAVE overseeing operations. However, all matters related to the hockey team were run by staff and management hired through the Chicago Blackhawks’ offices. The day-to-day business, game day arena operations, marketing, public relations and ticket operations were run by staff hired by the business side, owned and run by the City of Rockford.
Ross continued to play for the IceHogs for the next month and a half, until word of his arrest leaked through social media on March 19, 2016 – a Saturday. Ross was quietly scratched from games that night and the next day without any explanation. After the game on March 20th, which I was in attendance for covering as media, I asked Rockford head coach Ted Dent why Ross had missed the past two games and his response was “we’ll call that coach’s decision.”
At that time, I was not aware of the post on Twitter, nor another social media post referencing Ross’ arrest that led to Ross’ being scratched from the lineup Saturday and Sunday.
The next day, after being made aware of the social media posts, I researched the arrest, verified it with Dekalb County and posted a story about it that night. The story quickly got picked up by Yahoo! Sports, TMZ Sports, and then local Chicago media.
Monday was an off day for the IceHogs. On Tuesday, Dent told reporters in Rockford that Ross had been excused from practice for personal reasons. Blackhawks management were still declining comment to news organizations. It wasn’t until the following day, March 23rd, when the Blackhawks finally issued a one paragraph statement and ‘suspended’ Ross.
The Blackhawks claimed to have only learned of Ross’ arrest on March 19 – or 45 days after the arrest and 44 days since Rocky Wirtz made a rare visit to Rockford.
Of course, this claim would indicate that Ross, Ross’ agent and attorney all kept this news from the Blackhawks and – presumably – the organization was embarrassed when the arrest made news six weeks after the fact.
It would also mean the second player, whose name is redacted in the Ross criminal complaint, but at that stage was also at risk of being charged, would have also kept this from Blackhawks management and ownership.
The timing and context in which this saga came down is also important to understanding why the Blackhawks hoped the Ross arrest would stay under the radar.
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It was the summer of 2015, in the wake of their third Stanley Cup in six seasons, when Patrick Kane was alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman in Buffalo. Kane was defiant in saying he “did nothing wrong” and the Blackhawks stood by him. In contrast to that case, which was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence, there’s no denying Ross did what the criminal complaint in his case alleged.
On August 6, 2015, the news first broke that Patrick Kane was being investigated in Buffalo for an alleged sexual assault after a night of partying that previous Sunday. Needless to state, but it was a public relations nightmare for the Blackhawks. A month later, September 17th, with the investigation still ongoing, Kane made his first public statement (and little else) at the opening of Blackhawks training camp in South Bend, Indiana. John McDonough, Stan Bowman and Joel Quenneville were all seated at the table in support of Kane.
Unbeknownst to the organization at the time, Garret Ross was engaged in actions that would eventually become another stain on the team’s reputation and a second sexual assault-type scandal in just a few months.
At 11am on Wednesday September 2, 2015, a ‘Jane Doe’ walked into the lobby of the Sycamore Police Department to report a harassment claim against two Blackhawks prospects who would soon be reporting the Blackhawks training camp at Notre Dame. (Sycamore is about 70 minutes west of Chicago and a 45-minute drive southeast from Rockford.)
The woman explained to Sycamore Police that she had been in a relationship with a player on the Rockford IceHogs (whose name is redacted in the criminal investigation report) from January through February 2015. During that time, she had exchanged nude photos and videos with the player which she considered to be private.
She went on to explain that 6-8 weeks into their romantic relationship, she discovered that this player had another girlfriend. At this point, she broke off the relationship and said that she had no further contacts with that player since February.
The player whose name is redacted in the report, was a friend, roommate and teammate of Ross on the IceHogs.
Fast forward to August, the girlfriends of this player and Garret Ross each learn that these two IceHogs players have been having sexual affairs with other women via the Tinder app. The Jane Doe in this case had at least one mutual friend with those player’s girlfriends at the time. Ross and the teammate each accused ‘Jane Doe’ of “spreading lies” to their girlfriends. She told Sycamore police she had no contact with the player’s girlfriends.
On August 30, 2015, the Sycamore woman began getting harassing text messages from Ross about Tinder and getting dumped by his girlfriend.
Over the course of these harassing texts, Ross sent Jane Doe a sexually explicit video she had previously sent to Ross’ teammate in January 2015 while she and that player were having romantic relations. Ross then followed through on a threat to send said video, which had the Sycamore women’s face visible, to other mutual acquaintances in effort to shame her.
The woman told police she never gave Ross’ teammate permission to share the video with anyone and stated her intentions to pursue charges against both men. Police investigated the matter and on October 7th obtained a search warrant for Garret Ross’ cell phone.
That afternoon, the day before the IceHogs left for their season opening game in San Jose, officers confronted Ross in the parking lot of the BMO Harris Bank Center in Rockford after an IceHogs practice and seized Ross’ phone. When officers gave Ross a copy of the search warrant they asked Ross if he had any idea what this was about – Ross responded that he thought he did but then declined to speak further without an attorney present.
Ross, minus his cell phone, went on to travel with the IceHogs to San Jose for the season opener and continued to play while the investigation was ongoing. In 41 games up until the All-Star break, Ross had 7 goals and 9 assists with a plus-4 rating and 9.2% shooting percentage. For comparison, the same time period the season prior, Ross had 14 goals and 14 assists to go with a plus-20 and 15.1% shooting percentage. Word of the investigation never cracked the newswire.
On Wednesday February 3, 2016, Sycamore Police secured an arrest warrant on Ross for Non-Consensual Dissemination of Private Sexual Images, which had only recently become a felony in the State of Illinois. That day they left a phone message with Ross’ attorney to contact the department. The next day the attorney learned that a warrant for Ross’ arrest had been issued. Ross’ attorney advised police that Ross would turn himself in.
Later that day, February 4th, Ross and his attorney drove to Sycamore. Ross was fingerprinted and processed. On the advice of his attorney, he refused to be interviewed by police and was released after posting $500 bond.
A day later, by coincidence or not, Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz made the rare trip out to Rockford to meet with IceHogs officials and was in attendance later that night for their blowout 9-1 loss to Grand Rapids.
The Blackhawks and much of its upper management on the hockey ops side were on the road in Arizona and Dallas that weekend.
Over the next six weeks, Ross never missed a game. Between the arrest and news being made public, Ross played in 18 games. He didn’t score a goal in that stretch. Ross posted 4 assists, was a minus-10 with 34 shots on goal from February 5 until March 18th. The Rockford team as a whole, that came out of the All-Star break in first-place in AHL Central, went on a 3-4-4 slide to begin the season’s back half.
At morning skate, Saturday March 19th, Ross’ name was listed on the lineup board in the IceHogs’ locker room prior to that evening’s game versus the Chicago Wolves, a rematch from the prior night in Rosemont. That afternoon, a Chicago sports themed blog Sports Mockery posted a story about Ross’ arrest based on a Nick Burzych tweet from earlier in the day.
News that Ross’ arrest was now public quickly made it to the Blackhawks public relations staff, either through keeping eyes on the Sports Mockery blog, or through the Blackhawks hashtag attached to Burzych’s tweet. Either way, word came down from Blackhawks management to pull Ross from the lineup that night. Ross’ jersey was also pulled from a ‘jersey off our backs’ promotion that night that all other IceHogs’ players, including injured and healthy scratches, participated in.
I covered the IceHogs home games both that night, and the next day but was unaware of the Ross news until late Sunday night. No other media members present were apparently aware either. It was a strange couple of days. On Sunday, one Hawks higher up who was always good for at least a handshake, locked eyes with me and then ducked into his office. People on the Blackhawks staff who were typically friendly, or at least cordial were all avoiding me. That was normal when John McDonough was present for an IceHogs game but that wasn’t the case on Sunday. When I asked the IceHogs PR person for updates on Ross – wondering at the time if he was injured or a healthy scratch – I was told they would ask but never received a follow up. Ted Dent was left by the higher ups to do the dirty work. In retrospect, he stood outside the IceHogs locker room postgame Sunday – seemed bracing for my inevitable query about Ross’ pending criminal case – but at that point I was still unaware. Later that night a twitter follower pointed me to Burzych’s tweet and I followed up on it the next day during a break at my day job. By Monday night my story was posted and I was shocked no one else had written about it to that point.
It was a full 24 more hours before the Blackhawks could muster a response to media inquiries. Ross was then ‘suspended’ pending the legal matter. The organization claimed they were entirely unaware of Ross’ arrest until news hit social media six weeks later, or five-plus months since Ross had his phone seized by police in the parking lot on Rockford IceHogs’ property.
Ross’ case was dropped a week later on a technicality when investigators determined Ross was in Michigan when he sent the sexually explicit materials via texts. This meant the case would have to be tried in the State of Michigan, where the charge was considered a misdemeanor offense, as opposed to Illinois, where nonconsensual dissemination of a sexual image/videos had recently become a felony. For whatever reason, the victim opted not to pursue the case in Michigan. She was understandably “infuriated” with how the Blackhawks handled the situation.
The IceHogs went on to drop from 1st to a 3rd place finish in the AHL Central. Ross returned to the IceHogs lineup three days after his charge was officially dropped. He skated in six more games that year, going without a point. Rockford was swept in the first round of that postseason by the eventual Calder Cup winner, Lake Erie. Ross did not appear in a playoff game and was not re-signed that off season.
Ross’s teammate was able to keep his anonymity and escape scrutiny even though it was that unnamed teammate’s action – sharing the private explicit video and texts with Ross – that allowed the crime to take place at all.
These two young men stole a woman’s dignity and escaped accountability completely.
Blackhawks ownership cannot be held responsible for every movement or action of the players under their auspices. But how the team responds to unlawful action – or actions that fall outside the bounds a decency – is absolutely important.
The victim in this case has to live with the consequences of their actions while those players have eluded any sort of accountability. It seemed protecting an asset was more important to the Blackhawks than decency.
Blackhawks management and ownership, for that matter, hid behind the legal system and to our part, the media allowed the Blackhawks to get away with that.
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In 2013, when Kyle Beach returned to the Blackhawks from Sweden, where he was on loan that fall, Beach was sat out, and even left home from a two-game road trip to Charlotte, for what the team determined to be “code of conduct” violations.
Details of those ‘violations’ were never shared with the media, but it is telling that the Blackhawks organization didn’t consider what Ross and his IceHogs’ teammate, both top prospects of that period, as being code of conduct fouls. At least that is until Ross’ arrest leaked through the media. And then once the charge was dropped on a technicality, the Blackhawks essentially said no harm no foul.
We could have asked more questions. I could’ve asked more questions. We could have and should have persisted in the face of gutless “no further comment” responses – But we didn’t. And that was wrong of us. We failed the young woman.
Fast forward now to October of 2021. We now have Stan Bowman putting out a statement in the aftermath of having to relinquish is position and VP and General Manager of the Blackhawks. In his statement, Bowman pointed the finger at others (McDonough, Quenneville) and tried to absolve himself of blame by pointing out that he was only a first-year GM when Kyle Beach brought his story to management.
Well, in 2016 general manager Bowman was in his 7th year at the position.
We also have the Wirtz’ claiming that 2010 doesn’t exemplify the organization that the Blackhawks are today and many changes have been instituted along the way. Well, five years ago they handled Ross and another top prospect’s crime by hiding and then doing nothing.
And today, five months after essentially calling Kyle Beach a liar, the Blackhawks are attempting to co-opt his courage for public relations points. The players who didn’t stand by him when he was John Doe are now wanting to be seen as saluting Beach for his bravery.
There is something profoundly wrong with hockey and the culture that surrounds it. We all, from players to fans, media and organizations abound must admit to that and insist on change. This past week is an opportunity to be the beginning.
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ChrisBlock@TheThirdManIn.com
