Hockey Canada trial: Defence lawyer suggests complainant was 'egging on' players
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Editor’s note: This story contains details about sexual activities that may offend some readers.
The question to the woman central in the 2018 Team Canada junior hockey players’ sexual assault trial was whether she “was egging on” the players to have sex with her.
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Phrases, defence lawyer Daniel Brown said, like “Are you (going to have sex with) me or play golf?”
There were other phrases, Brown said, and none that the woman, in her sixth day of cross-examination, could recall. “I’m aware of those suggestions, but I was shocked to hear that because it doesn’t sound like words that would ever come out of my mouth. So that’s where I have a hard time accepting I really said that.”
“If we have other witnesses in the room that attribute those things to you, you’re going to say, ‘Well, maybe I said that but … only because I felt like I had to, or because my body and mind separated?” Brown asked.
“I wouldn’t say that,” the woman said. “I’d say, I know I was out of my mind and not feeling like I was in control … it really doesn’t seem like anything I would say.”
There were lots of suggestions Monday from Brown, who represents Alex Formenton, 25, of things that the woman did and said in the early morning of June 19, 2018, when the woman said she was sexually assaulted in a Delta Armouries hotel room after meeting the rowdy players at a bar who were in London for a Hockey Canada gala and golf tournament.
The 27-year-old woman, whose identity is protected by court order, has maintained throughout her testimony that she was drunk and has significant memory gaps and during the alleged assaults she had separated her mind from what her body was doing.
But the defence lawyers for Formenton, Michael McLeod, 27, Carter Hart, 26, Dillon Dube, 26, and Cal Foote, 26, have posited a far different scenario: that the woman asked McLeod, the man she went to the hotel with for consensual sex, to invite the players to his room where she offered herself to the men for sexual activity.
Brown’s suggestions about what went on in the hotel room with the players and in the bathroom with Formenton took on a far different tone than what the woman has described.
The woman has agreed that she grew frustrated at times during the encounter – and Brown suggested it was because no one was taking her up on her offer “and you were getting offended by that.”
The woman said her frustration was because the men were talking about they wanted her to do “and when nothing was happening, and I would try to go, they would still walk me back … and it would just continue… I felt like I couldn’t get out of there unless they got what they wanted.”
But Brown suggested no one wanted to have sex with her and some told her they had girlfriends. The woman didn’t recall that.
His client Formenton, who the jury has heard was McLeod’s hotel roommate, was one of the few players who weren’t at Jack’s bar because he was underage, ultimately said he would have sex with her, but not in front of everyone in the room.
Brown suggested that it was the woman who proposed they have sex in the bathroom and led him there. “I don’t recall that happening,” she said and only remembered going to the bathroom alone and “someone was following me… I just resigned myself to the fact that was what was going to happen in the bathroom.”
The woman said there was no conversation between herself and Formenton. But Brown suggested that the woman touched his crotch and said she would help get him aroused.
She remembered that Formenton put a condom on and they had sex. But Brown asked if she remembered that Formenton wanted to wear a condom, but she said he didn’t have to because she was on birth control. She didn’t recall, but she confirmed she was on birth control.
She didn’t recall that she also offered him oral sex, instead of finishing off the initial sex act. The woman couldn’t recall, but she knew that was how the encounter ended.
And she didn’t remember apologizing to Formenton “because you had sunburns on your chest from sun bathing nude,” Brown suggested. The woman said she did have a sunburn from sunbathing in her back yard.
“Perhaps it happened exactly as you told him and he respected exactly what you wanted him to do… That’s possible?” Brown asked.
“Maybe. I don’t remember saying or suggesting that at all, but…“ and her voice trailed off.
The woman said she couldn’t recall if she gave oral sex to three players before or after her encounter with Formenton.“It’s really blurry,” she said.
Brown also suggested that the woman told the police in 2018 that she thought “Alex was going to be nice to you and ask for a hug before you left.”
Brown suggested Formenton was already in bed when the woman left because he and McLeod were getting up early the next morning to play golf.
Brown asked the woman if she felt “scorned” by the men because they asked when she would be leaving and “hurt” because they didn’t walk her to the hotel lobby.
“I remember feeling that that was odd,” she said. “I never had an encounter that kind of ends in that type of way. I wasn’t scorned about it. I definitely felt disrespected but I felt disrespected the whole night.”
The woman left the hotel room, but returned to retrieve a ring. Brown suggested that Formenton allowed her back in the room after the woman said it was her “grandmother’s ring” when it was just a piece of costume jewelry she had purchased.
Brown said she said that “to get back into the room.”
“I know for certain I never said ‘grandmother’s ring’ because that did not come from my grandmother,” she said.
Brown also pointed out that in her initial interview with London police Det. Stephen Newton, before the investigation proceeded, she was concerned that the men had videos of her and that he might be able to tell the players to delete them.
“I think there was concern. I wouldn’t want that to be out there anywhere. I didn’t know that he could make them delete that,” she said.
Dube’s defence lawyer Lisa Carnelos began her cross-examination by pointing out the woman appeared to be having fun at Jack’s.
“I was really drunk and doing what people do at a bar. So I was having a fun time,” the woman said.
At one point, one of the players picked her up – the woman doesn’t know who it was, except that he was connected to McLeod – and she jumped into his arms and she was smiling, laughing.
“I was fine at the bar,” she said.
Carnelos suggested that once in the hotel room, the men were gathered in small groups and “you weren’t the whole focus of the room.”
Carnelos suggested that the woman made the comment to one player in particular about having sex or playing golf. The man “slapped your butt on one occasion in response,” Carnelos said.
“I’m going to suggest to you that this slap was playful,” Carnelos said and the woman’s response was, “Are you going (to have sex) with me, or just play.’”
“No, I don’t agree with that. I don’t remember that happening,” the woman said.
Carnelos reviewed text messages the woman sent to her best friend after calling her while leaving the hotel and later that day when she texted that she was being “overdramatic” and “feeling really guilty and mad at myself for letting that (expletive) happen.
Her friend sent a text back that she was there if the woman needed to talk and that “you couldn’t have known he was going to be such an (expletive).”
Carnelos suggested that the woman was feeling guilty for cheating on her boyfriend. “I had never had to tell her about anything like this before. This was a situation I never was in before,” the woman said.
Her mother, however, believed she had been slipped a “roofie” and had called the police. Three days after telling her best friend she was fine, she sent her a text to say she had just gone to the police. The friend wrote back “in utter shock,” Carnelos said.
Carnelos also pointed out that the woman did not speak with Hockey Canada until after she settled her civil suit in May 2022. She went through correspondence the woman’s civil lawyer Rob Talach had with Danielle Robitaille, the Hockey Canada investigator, assuring that the woman almost had her statement ready and just had to review it.
She sent it back on July 20, 2021, the same day the woman was told that the London police were reopening their criminal investigation.
She was also told that Robitaillle wanted to interview her about certain aspects of the statement that needed clarifying in October 2022. Carnelos asked if she reviewed her statement before speaking to Robitaille.
“I may have. I can’t recall if I did that or not,” the woman said.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
jsims@postmedia.com
The woman whose allegations of sexual assault are at the core of the London trial of five players from Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team testified for the seventh day on Monday. See below for coverage
