Senators host fan in owner’s suite after she was harassed in Montreal
Katie Kerrick, 19, and her sister are Montreal Canadiens fans … when they’re not playing the Ottawa Senators. But when their hometown team visits Bell Centre, they throw on their Sens gear and pull for the visiting team.
One such visit was Game 2 of their Atlantic Division playoff series on Friday night – a game during which she said they suffered assault and harassment from Canadiens fans, with Bell Centre employees doing nothing to help them.
So now they’re exclusively Ottawa Senators fans.
Here’s a sad (and all too familiar tale for women who attend games) tale Kerrick posted on Facebook:
“I just got back from the Bell Centre, where my sister and I were cheering on our hometown team, the Ottawa Senators. Tonight’s loss was particularly disappointing for us. We have been to the Bell Centre to cheer on the away team before and are used to the good-natured chirping from Habs fans…what we are not used to is being genuinely scared of being injured by grown men.
“Throughout the whole game, we were yelled at, sworn at and called many derogatory names – as we were leaving our seats at the end of the 3rd period, the man behind me was hitting me in the head with his towel repeatedly. After I asked him to stop and he used very offensive language towards me, he continued to hit me in the head the whole way down the stairs.
“I reported him to the section attendant and while I did, he and his friend both went out of their way to shove me with force. As we continued out into the hallway another man hit my sister with a wound-up towel and all the Canadiens fans around us laughed and cheered.
“When the Sens lost, the same man who had earlier pushed me leaned over his friends to throw his entire beer on my sister and I.”
Kerrick told CBC Ottawa that the man called her “a [expletive] whore.”
She said she told two different attendants about the harassment, but neither took an active interest in assisting them.
The Senators? Well, they stepped up to make things right for Kerrick. The team announced that she’ll attend Saturday night’s Game 3 against the Canadiens in owner Eugene Melnyk’s private suite. Which is pretty awesome.
As for the Canadiens, they apologized for the incident and said their “customer service department will follow up” with the ushers.
So in summary: Dudes, stop being completely rude, abusive idiots to women at games. Seriously.
