No other members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team accused of sexual assault will testify after their defence lawyers rested their case Monday.
The high-profile trial, which has seen two juries dismissed since it began in late April, has been proceeding by judge alone and will begin hearing closing submissions inside a London, Ont., courtroom next Monday.
Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault stemming from what the Crown alleges was non-consensual group sex with a 20-year-old woman in McLeod’s London hotel room in June 2018.
McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to an additional charge of being a party to the offence of sexual assault.
After Crown prosecutors wrapped up their case last Thursday, Megan Savard, Hart’s attorney, called him to the stand to testify. McLeod’s lawyer said he would not be calling evidence because McLeod’s police statement in 2018 was shown to court.
Aside from Formenton’s lawyer, who briefly called London police Det. Lyndsey Ryan to the stand Monday, no other defence lawyer said they would be calling evidence.
Court has heard that the team was in town for events marking its gold-medal performance at that year’s championship, and the complainant, known as E.M. in court documents, was out with friends when they met at a downtown bar on June 18, 2018.
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After being with McLeod and his teammates at the bar, E.M. would go on to have consensual sex with McLeod in his room in the early morning hours of June 19. Court has heard E.M., who testified she was drunk and not of clear mind, was in the washroom after she had sex with McLeod and came out to a group of men in the room allegedly invited for a “3 way” by McLeod in a group chat.
It was then that the Crown alleges several sexual acts took place without E.M.’s consent.
Hart told court he received a group text from McLeod with the invite, and said he had a phone call with him. When he was in the room, Hart said E.M. was asking the players to have sex with her, and he chose to ask for oral sex because he did not want to have intercourse.
Hart said the oral sex was “consensual” and brief because it was “weird.” Hart said he was single at the time, and E.M. was annoyed at one point when the men weren’t taking her up on her offers. Court has heard that many of the players were in relationships at the time.
E.M. testified she was naked, drunk and afraid when men she didn’t know suddenly started coming into the room. She went on “autopilot” as a coping mechanism as she engaged in sexual acts, she said.
Hart, once a member of the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers, faced questions from Crown prosecutor Meaghan Cunningham on Friday. She asked about his level of intoxication, the McLeod message and his account of what happened in the room.
Hart insisted he didn’t interpret the message as an invitation for the team to have sex with E.M., and agreed with Cunningham that he “assumed” it was an “agreed-upon” plan with McLeod and E.M.
“Most people don’t send out a text if you have a person who is not agreeing to it,” Hart said.
Hart would later agree with Cunningham that he was “putting a lot of faith in your friend, Mr. McLeod, to set something up that was morally acceptable to you.”
Defence lawyers have suggested E.M. wasn’t as drunk as she has testified she was, wanted a “wild night” with the players and was “egging” them on to have sex with her and accused her of having a “clear agenda” at the trial.
E.M. has pushed back against those claims in a several-day-long cross-examination and at points outright rejected them, saying she was coaxed into staying in the room, was disrespected and was taken advantage of by the group, who she said “could see I was out of my mind.”
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