MANDEL: Only one 'truth' and it wasn't told by Hockey Canada complainant

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So much for “her truth.”

An Ontario judge has found there is only “the truth” and it had nothing to do with the account a young woman has spun over the last seven years in accusing five former members of Canada’s world junior hockey team of sexually assaulting her in a London hotel room in June 2018.

And so in finding all five not guilty in a decision that took most of the day to read, Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia has given the men back their futures and their freedom.

But no matter the acquittals for Canada’s former junior hockey stars Michael McLeod, 27, Dillon Dubé, 26, Cal Foote, 26, Alex Formenton, 25, and Carter Hart, 26, their lives, of course, are forever tattered.

Their promising hockey careers are in ruins: Hart, McLeod, Foote and Dube had NHL contracts that were not renewed after they were charged in 2024. And their reputations will always bear the stain of being dragged through the mud of public opinion that tarred and feathered them as alleged rapists.

Which is not to say that they didn’t likely behave like Animal House louts in that hotel room.

The judge reminded the court that her verdicts weren’t about the young men’s morality but whether they engaged in sexual activity with E.M. in room 209 without her consent. The university student claimed she was extremely drunk, disconnected from her body and so fearful in the room full of strapping men that she felt she had no choice but to go along with delivering oral sex and engaging in sexual intercourse.

In a scathing decision, Carroccia tore her account to shreds, finding E.M. neither “credible or reliable.”

She found E.M. “went to great lengths” to exaggerate her intoxication yet video footage from the London bar where she first met McLeod, then her arrival at the Delta Hotel and inside the room in two “consent” videos showed her walking – and almost running at one point – without any difficulty in her stiletto heels while displaying no slurring or other signs of impairment.

E.M. claimed the players were trying to get her drunk, but again, video from Jack’s bar showed her buying all but one of her own drinks.

It was also difficult to square how E.M. agreed she was fine to consent to go back to McLeod’s room for sex, and it was only later that she was too intoxicated to consent to what followed with the others who came in. How is it that her impairment increased when she didn’t have anything more to drink?

As for her purported fear, that wasn’t something E.M. ever mentioned until four years later, after London Police had closed their case without laying charges and she filed her $3.5 million civil case – a lawsuit that Hockey Canada quickly and quietly settled without the players’ knowledge, or the public’s, until the explosive revelation by TSN’s Rick Westhead.

In the first “consent” video, taken by McLeod without E.M.’s knowledge, “she was speaking normally, she was smiling, she did not appear to be upset or in distress,” Carroccia said.

E.M. testified that after sex with McLeod, she exited the bathroom naked and was surprised to find the room full of men. Why didn’t she go back in and put her clothes back on, the judge asked.

“No one had threatened her or applied any force to her. She made no effort to leave the room. Up until this point, there had been no sexual contact with anyone other than consensually with Mr. McLeod. The complainant provided no satisfactory answer as to why she chose to do this.”

The judge went further. Not only didn’t she believe E.M. was afraid, she accepted the testimony from the players who said she was calling them “pussies” and demanding sex.

“I accept the overwhelming evidence that E.M. was acting in a sexually forward manner when she was masturbating in this room full of men and asking them to have sex with her.”

The acquittals come as no surprise – from the start of the long-awaited, sensational trial, the weakness of the case was screamingly obvious. As Formenton’s lawyer Dan Brown said after the verdict, it appears London Police “got it right” when they found there wasn’t enough evidence to lay charges.

But it was social media outrage following the Hockey Canada payout that led not only to reopening the police investigation but also to forcing the Crown’s hand in going ahead with a hopeless prosecution.

Assuming there’s no Crown appeal, it finally ends here – with five men left to pick up the pieces of their lives.

mmandel@postmedia.com