One year after the sexual assault case against the five Canadian World Juniors hockey players resulted in an acquittal, the recent arrest of three Toronto Police Service officers surfaces one of the troubling issues raised in that case: the sexual degradation of women as a shared, male bonding experience.
In late May, news broke that three Canadian male police officers employed with the Toronto Police Service were arrested in Spain in relation to an alleged sexual assault in Barcelona. They were off-duty and in the country for vacation. Evan Glennie is charged with sexual assault and assault, Richard Rand with resisting arrest, and Caglar Yigit who was arrested after fleeing to Mallorca, was later charged with assault.
The incident took place in a taxi cab on May 13, 2026, with a woman calling the local police for help. According to the BBC, Spanish authorities provided them with a written statement outlining the victim’s report. The woman had been hired to provide sexual services to one of the officers, however, the men became violent after she said no to participating in “an unexpected group act.” In retaliation, she says they insulted, groped, and assaulted her. Police indicated she sustained visible injuries and was transported to a hospital. The Toronto Star reported that some of the officers showed their TPS badges to the Spanish police who responded to the call for help, ostensibly to avoid arrest.
Similar to the 2018 Canadian World Juniors case, the Spanish woman indicated she had arranged a sexual encounter with one man but was instead met with multiple other men. In the hockey case, the man that the complainant, E.M., had consensual sex with soon after invited his teammates to his room for group sex that she did not consent to. This form of sexuality, based on overpowering and humiliating women as a group, is pervasive in pornography. The category of “gangbang” continues to be one of the most searched terms on pornography websites, year over year. Material that encourages men to see women as deserving of degradation, or even that women desire that, can have harmful real world impacts, including the acceptance of sexual aggression toward women.
Though criticism of Canadian policing’s treatment of women has intensified in the last ten years, like hockey, it continues to be a bastion of male power. Women within the force have faced rampant sexual harassment and assaults by colleagues as revealed in the RCMP’s 2017 Merlo-Davidson Settlement and in the attempted 2023 class action suit against BC municipal police forces. For women victims of sexual assault, a staggering 64% of cases reported to police do not lead to charges. The Globe and Mail’s 2017 Unfounded series named “the persistence of rape myths among law-enforcement officials” as one reason for this. It is not surprising that there are so many cases of individual male officers committing acts of violence against this backdrop of systemic misogyny.
While the police may hold up new victim-centred websites or all-women policing teams as evidence of reform, the arrest of the three TPS officers points to an enduring atmosphere of hostility toward women in policing.