Hockey Canada trial: Complainant to defence – they were men, not boys
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Her description of the hockey players evolved from “boys” to “men.”
But what the woman who says she was sexually assaulted by five members of the 2018 Canadian junior hockey team won’t say is that she knew the guys she met at Jack’s bar on June 18 and 19, 2018, were the world champs who were in London for a Hockey Canada gala and golf tournament.
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“I just knew they were a group of hockey guys by the end of the night. I didn’t know they were world junior hockey players and I wouldn’t have cared, frankly,” said the 27-year-old woman at the Superior Court jury trial.
“I’m going to suggest to you that you did know they were world junior champions,” lawyer Julianna Greenspan, who represents Cal Foote, said. “Do you accept that?”
“No, I don’t accept that at all,” the woman said.
The exchange Tuesday was part of the woman’s eighth day as the witness, her testimony given through a closed circuit TV link. Greenspan is the fifth and final defence lawyer to question her.
So far, her review of the security video at Jack’s suggests a version of events that doesn’t match the woman’s insistence she was drunk when she returned to the Delta Armouries hotel with Michael McLeod for consensual sex, and that she was assaulted by the men after McLeod summoned them to his room.
McLeod, 27, Carter Hart, 26, Dillon Dube, 26, Alex Formenton, 25, and Foote, 26, pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. McLeod also pleaded not guilty to a second sexual assault charge for being a party to the offence.
The defence has argued the woman, whose identity is protected by court order, asked McLeod to invite the players into the room after they had sex and she wanted them to participate in sexual activity with her.
Greenspan noted that when she first spoke to London police days after the encounter, she referred to the players repeatedly as “boys,” but at the trial, she has consistently called them men.
“The reason you have so carefully changed your language is because you have come into this trial with a clear agenda,” Greenspan said.
“No, absolutely not. I’m older, I understand more. They were men,” she said.
Greenspan also asked the woman about her job and family background. The woman went to Jack’s that night with new co-workers from a retail job.
The woman said she worked at a sporting goods store and agreed it sells hockey equipment, skates, sticks, jerseys and, as Greenspan noted, Team Canada jerseys and hats.
“I was a cashier. I wasn’t in that department at all. I would just see it if it came up through checkout and it didn’t really mean anything to me,” she said.
Greenspan pointed out the store was a sponsor of Team Canada. The woman said she didn’t know that.
Greenspan asked the woman about her family, members of which were involved in hockey.
Her sibling and cousins played competitive hockey. Her mother’s boyfriend played at the junior B level. Greenspan said the woman was “surrounded in her family with hockey fans and hockey players” at the time of the June 2018 encounter.
“I accept that,” the woman said. “But I don’t think I had any real knowledge of that. It didn’t affect me. It wasn’t anything I was interested in or paid attention to. So I don’t know why that has anything to do with me.”
The woman said she knew of the OHL’s London Knights. Also, Greenspan said, the 2018 Canadian junior team played two pre-tournament games in London.
“Then after that, a few months later, you are at Jack’s bar spending time with an entire group of boys who clearly look like they are celebrating something major, and who you say for the first time at this trial that you know they are hockey players who are talking about rings,” Greenspan said.
“I can accept that,” the woman said. “I knew that at some point that night but I didn’t know any of their names. I didn’t know who they were. I just thought a group of hockey boys.”
Greenspan showed a video clip of players arriving at Jack’s and what appeared to be the bouncers signaling the door staff to let them in, suggesting arrangements were made to welcome the team.
At the same time, around midnight, there was video of the woman at the back of the bar, giving a hug to a bouncer, who has a brief conversation with her. The jury has heard the bouncer was a high school friend of the woman’s. Greenspan suggested the bouncer said he had to go with another bouncer but would be right back, but the woman said she has no memory of a conversation.
The woman can then be seen getting money out of a bank machine and heading to the bar nearby. She waited for service, then, once the bouncer returned to his post, she had what Greenspan described as “a lively conversation” with him.
“I’m going to suggest to you that one of the things he says to you … is that the world champions just got in the bar. Do you accept that?” Greenspan said.
“I don’t accept that. I feel I would have known that earlier in the night and I didn’t know that they were hockey players or that they were even there,” until later, she said.
In another video clip, the woman went back to the bar, bought two shots, counted out her change, messaged her co-worker on Facebook, downed the shots and turned toward the dance floor.
The woman accepted that’s when she first started dancing with player Brett Howden. She and Howden were on video talking at the bar and he left his drink with her. She agreed that was when Howden fetched McLeod to meet her.
The video caught their first meeting where they appear to be in conversation. The woman said she didn’t recall the conversation because “it was really loud” in the bar, but Greenspan suggested they may have chatted about who they were and why they were there, including that McLeod was part of the world junior team.
Video from about 1:20 a.m., just before the woman left for the Delta with McLeod, showed the woman talking to the bouncer again for about seven minutes.
“I’m going to suggest to you that one of the things that you chatted about is to report to him that you just spent the night dancing and hanging out with the Team Canada boys,” Greenspan said.
“I don’t accept that because, again, I didn’t know that’s who they were, so I wouldn’t be able to say that,” the woman said.
The woman said she looked drunk in the video because she was leaning on the wall. “Was I drunk enough for him to feel the need to kick me out? I don’t think so, but I know myself and I know I was really drunk in that video,” she said.
Greenspan challenged that idea. “You are perfectly fine engaging with a bouncer whose job it is to identify extremely drunk people.”
“I don’t agree, because I feel if that was the case I would have a memory of that conversation,” the woman said.
“I’m going to suggest that you do have a memory of the conversation and you’re not telling us the truth about what that conversation was,” Greenspan said.
Greenspan also played a video clip taken from a camera outside Jack’s showing the woman walking in high heels to keep up with McLeod.
She showed the witness photos of the shoes taken from screen shots of her in the security videos at the Delta Armouries. They were lace-up open-toed shoes with thin stiletto heels and a gold zipper running up the back.
A pair of the shoes – the same style and model – was entered into the trial as an exhibit. Greenspan said those were the same shoes the woman wore for two hours at the bar while walking, dancing and “jumping around on the dance floor.”
Then, when she went to the Delta with McLeod, she walked up the stairs in the lobby and when she left, she didn’t need to use the handrail to get down the stairs.
Greenspan asked about both big details and little details. She pointed out the woman has maintained a narrative for seven years that she was extremely drunk. “I suggest that if you didn’t follow this mantra of being so drunk your behaviour would not be accepted by others,” Greenspan said, such as the woman’s family and her fiance.
“I think my behaviour was that way because I was drunk and I think the behaviour of others should be questioned,” the woman said.
It wasn’t until near the end of the cross-examination that Greenspan dealt with the allegation against Foote that he “did the splits” on her face.
Greenspan pointed out that in her 2018 statement, the woman only mentioned the incident in two short places over the two-hour interview, telling London police Det. Stephen Newton, that “like, just to put it in my face, kind of.”
It was “funny” to them, the woman told the police officer. Greenspan suggested “that you were acting like this was fun-and-games as well.” The woman said she may have acted that way “to cope with the situation,” but the act wasn’t something she asked for.
Greenspan also suggested that when she heard someone could do the splits, the woman laid down and the man, who was wearing his shorts, stepped over her. “You tried to turn this into a sexual encounter and you reach up and try to touch him” and the “the boy” pulled away, Greenspan said.
“That’s not how I remember it,” the woman said, adding that the man’s genitals touched her. It’s the first time the woman has said that in seven years, Greenspan pointed out.
Greenspan said the woman then turned around three years later and included the “non-contact exchange” in her 2022 civil claim.
“When you were in that room that night, for that whole time, you were consenting and you were laughing with them and you were having a good time with them right up until the very end when you were asked to leave,” Greenspan said.
“I don’t accept that at all. I felt I had no choice,” the woman said.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
jsims@postmedia.com
The London trial of five players from Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team continued Tuesday, the eighth day of testimony by the woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted in a London hotel room by five players. See coverage below.
