Earlier this week, a report detailed how senior team leaders badly mishandled Beach’s allegations that an assistant coach sexually assaulted him in 2010.
CHICAGO, Illinois — The former player at the heart of the Chicago Blackhawks assault scandal has come forward publicly.
Kyle Beach tells TSN he felt “alone and dark” in the days following the alleged assault in 2010.
“It’s a big step for me in my process of recovery in the events that happened, and as I truly deal with the underlying issues that I have from them,” Beach told TSN. “For me I wanted to come forward and put my name on this…I’m a survivor and I know I’m not alone, male or female. I’ve buried this for 11 years and it’s destroyed me from the inside out.”
The full interview with Beach and TSN can be found here
Earlier this week, a report detailed how senior team leaders badly mishandled Beach’s allegations that an assistant coach sexually assaulted him.
RELATED: Blackhawks GM Bowman resigns after sexual assault probe
According to the recent investigation the incident with Beach, then 20, and former Blackhawks video coach Brad Aldrich occurred on May 8 or 9 in 2010.
Beach finished his season with the Rockford Ice Hogs of the AHL before getting recalled to Chicago as a Black Ace, an extra player added to the team’s roster for the postseason.
According to the investigation, Aldrich threatened Beach with a souvenir baseball bat before forcibly performing oral sex on him and masturbating on the player’s back. Aldrich later told investigators that their encounter was consensual.
Aldrich left the Blackhawks in the summer of 2010, just after the team celebrated a Stanley Cup victory for the 2009-10 season.
When asked what it was like seeing Aldrich celebrated, even after the sexual assault incident took place, Beach said he, “felt sick to his stomach” after reporting the issue and nothing happened.
“It was like his life was the same as it was the day before,” Beach said. “To see him paraded around, lifting the cup, it made me feel like nothing, and that I didn’t exist. Like he was in the right and I was wrong.”
Beach added that former team mental skills coach and councilor, James Gary, said it was the player’s fault for putting himself in that situation.
Aldridge went on to work for the US Hockey National Program, Miami Ohio, and eventually a job in Houghton, Michigan where he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old high school player in 2013.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more, when I could, to make sure it didn’t happen to him,” Beach said. “When I was playing overseas, and I decided to Google Brad Aldrich’s name and that’s when I found out about the Michigan individual, the Michigan team. And because of what happened to him, it gave me the power and the sense of urgency to take action, to make sure it didn’t happen to anybody else. So, I’m sorry, and I thank you.”
Beach says he hopes to meet the player at some point down the road if he’s open to it.
The ramifications now stretch beyond Chicago.
Florida coach Joel Quenneville is slated to meet with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman on Thursday.
Winnipeg general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff also is planning to talk to the commissioner next week.
Both were with the Blackhawks when the allegations were first reported to team leadership.
