In 2001 or 2002, a few other Olympians and I first went to the person who ran the sports excellence centre at Claude-Robillard in Montreal. We were told blatantly, “We're so sorry this is happening. We realize this is happening, but there's nothing we can do. You need to go through the hierarchy of your sport”, which is coaches and then the sport organization.
We went to the executive director. The executive director of Water Polo Canada was the former captain who had told me to get ready because there's abuse in the sport, and to prepare myself because that was the way it was. She went on to become the executive director. When we started to call this out and try to force an investigation, she went to one of my teammates, who was the reigning number one goalie in the world. She was 28 years old, at the high point of her career, and the director walked on deck and said, “You are no longer welcome here. You're a problem. You're trouble.” There was nobody.
We went to the places we thought we were supposed to go and where we had been told to go. Even our physiotherapist came out and said there was abuse. She started to speak out against the abuse, because she travelled with us and knew what was going on. We made complaints to Water Polo Canada, and everybody had deaf ears. Then we went to the media. That's when we started to push, and that's when they finally brought in an external body to do an investigation.
You have to know that our whole careers and our personal.... Stuff was starting to be said about me, like I was promiscuous. It's the same stuff that's talked about a lot when it comes to indigenous women. We're problematic. We're promiscuous. We're this; we're that. It was trashing my reputation. I was 26 and 27 years old, and I couldn't play on a team in Canada. Nobody wanted me to play for them anymore, so I ended my career.
Our community is very small, and that's what happened. I was silenced. I thought it was going to be worthwhile and that things were going to change, but they didn't.