Five Canadian ice hockey players accused of sexually assaulting a woman will learn their fate on Thursday in a case that has gripped the country.
The accused men, all former players for Canada’s world junior hockey team, have pleaded not guilty to assaulting the woman in a hotel room in 2018 in the city of London, Ontario, where they had been attending a Hockey Canada gala.
At the centre of the trial is whether the woman, who was 20 at the time, agreed to every sexual act that transpired over several hours in that hotel room. The case also raised questions about whether there is a toxic culture surrounding Canada’s favourite sport.
Before it reached trial, the case brought a reckoning to Hockey Canada – widely regarded as Canada’s representative for ice hockey on the world stage – after it was revealed the sports organisation had settled quietly with the alleged victim in 2022, and had established a fund to pay out similar claims.
Hockey Canada lost top sponsors, was subjected to a parliamentary investigation and had its federal funding suspended in the wake. It subsequently released a proposal to tackle “systemic issues” with the culture of ice hockey.
The complainant, a woman who appeared publicly as EM due to a routine publication ban, accuses a team of hockey players of having sex with her against her will.
The men accused are Michael McLeod, Dillon Dube, Cal Foote, Alex Formenton and Carter Hart. They were all NHL players at the time the allegations came forward, although one was playing in Europe.
During the sometimes gruesome nine days of testimony at the trial, EM spoke of how a one-night stand with McLeod became a group sexual assault. EM stated she went to McLeod’s hotel room after a local bar encounter, where they had consensual sex. However, she claims he brought other team members into the room, and with her in shock and humiliation, they had sex that she claimed she did not agree to.
Throughout the trial, the judge has learned that the players subjected her to a range of sexual activities, including oral sex, sex, and slapping the buttocks of the woman. Players’ lawyers offer a different version of events and insist EM agreed to these activities.
They contend that she had led the men to believe that she desired a “wild night” and that she had negotiated with McLeod, bringing his friends over “to have some fun. The players argue the woman had asked them to sleep with her, and that she had consented to what happened that night in London.
There had been numerous legal turns and reverses since the trial got underway on 23 April, including a claim of mistrial early on and the dismissal of the jury halfway through, after members complained that some defence lawyers had ridiculed them.
In her opening arguments, Crown attorney Heather Donkers cautioned the jury that the trial would be out of the ordinary and could blow common assumptions about assault and consent.
It would not involve whether the woman “excused herself from an unwanted situation”, but whether she “voluntarily consented to participate in every sexual act which occurred”, she contended.
Evidence was presented in the form of texts on McLeod’s phone, where he invited the other players to his room for a “3 way” and asked EM to make an investigation by the police into the night “go away.”.
The court also watched a June 2018 group chat among the players in which they seemed to be talking about damage control after having been told that there would be an in-house Hockey Canada investigation into the matter.
A message on the group chat from McLeod’s phone was: “We all need to say the same thing if we get interviewed [by Hockey Canada], can’t have different stories or make anything up.”
“No, boys, like you don’t have to make anything up. No one did anything wrong. We went to that room to eat. The girl came. She wanted to have sex with all of us,” another teammate responded. The court was also presented with two videos of the woman in a towel following the ordeal, in which she repeats “it was all consensual”.
Throughout days of giving evidence, EM testified that she was “uncomfortable” and went into “auto-pilot” mode as the men ordered her to perform sex acts on them and that they once debated placing golf balls and a golf club inside her vagina.
The woman explained that she had adopted a “porn star persona” as a way to cope. A lawyer for one of the players replied by suggesting that her behaviour led the men to believe she was consenting.
The defence lawyers also pointed to texts EM sent to her friend the next day, pointing out she talked about what happened but didn’t state that she was sexually assaulted.
“I’m going to put it to you that if you did, in any way, shape or form, feel like you had been sexually assaulted or violated that night, you would have told your best friend,” defence attorney Lisa Carnelos told the court.
Just one of the accused players, Carter Hart, took the stand in his defence. Questioned by the Crown as to why the woman was requested to be filmed granting consent, he replied that it was standard procedure for professional athletes.
