MANDEL: 'I never sexually assaulted anyone,' insists Coun. Michael Thompson
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He’s just not that kind of guy.
Under an intense and often humiliating cross-examination, Toronto Coun. Michael Thompson stood firm that he didn’t sexually assault two female guests during a 2022 Canada Day cottage getaway and never even had sex on his mind.
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MANDEL: 'I never sexually assaulted anyone,' insists Coun. Michael Thompson Back to video
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“That’s not the kind of weekend it was,” he insisted.
At the longtime Scarborough councillor’s judge-alone trial, Crown attorney Mareike Newhouse accused the politician of luring three women to the Muskoka cottage he’d borrowed from friend Calvin Barry and plying them with alcohol in hopes of getting lucky. The prosecutor suggested the women were all drunk by the Sunday afternoon when Thompson asked to apply sunscreen to one while the others weren’t paying attention relaxing on the dock.
“I’m going to suggest that when you did apply the sunscreen, you went under her bikini and massaged her buttocks as well as her breasts,” she charged.
“No, that did not happen,” he said firmly.
Thompson also denied the women were intoxicated — despite their testimony — and as a former bouncer, he knows the signs.
The councillor testified that he had consensual sex with the second woman but Newhouse accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex after the other two guests had gone to sleep.
The separated father of two insisted the complainant actually came on to him, even waking him up in the middle of the night and whispering in his ear. He was “fine” with her “very forward” sexual advance but Thompson made it clear to the court that while he didn’t know what to expect with their consensual sexual encounter, he was definitely going to draw the line at sexual intercourse since he’d just met her.
“That’s not a thing for me. So I knew that was not going to happen.”
Newhouse feigned confusion.
“For you, sexual intercourse is a special thing?” she asked. “But you were absolutely fine having your penis in her mouth, though?”
“I didn’t refuse,” he replied.
The Crown suggested that what happened was entirely different.
“You actually went looking for the women in the middle of the night,” she began.
“No,” Thompson said firmly. “She came to see me in my room. I don’t know where she came from. I saw her in my room fully naked.”
“She was drunk,” Newhouse continued.
“No, not that I could observe,” he said.
“I’m going to suggest you took her to the basement; I’m going to suggest she was having trouble actually walking on her own,” the prosecutor continued. “I’m going to suggest you, sir, that by the time you got to your room, you were all over her physically, and she told you ‘No.'”
“No,” Thompson disagreed. “That was never said. Absolutely not.”
The prosecutor then accused him of trying to force oral sex.
“She did that on her own,” he said, insisting it was all her idea.
The accused and the Crown then squabbled in embarrassing detail over the exact mechanics of what transpired.
“I didn’t place it anywhere,” Thompson maintained.
After the weekend was over, Newhouse accused Thompson of ghosting the third — and youngest — female guest because he realized he couldn’t get anywhere with the university student — which he denied — and repeatedly reaching out to the woman he took downstairs to see if she remembered anything.
“You knew she was drunk when the events happened. You were trying, I’m going to suggest to you, to act like everything was absolutely normal when you knew that it wasn’t.”
He denied that as well.
Thompson has testified that he was shocked to be contacted by the OPP in Bracebridge three months later about sexual assault charges and couldn’t figure it out, at first, because he had no connection to the area.
“The connection was that you thought back to sexual assaults that you committed and those are the ones you committed that weekend,” Newhouse charged.
Thompson scoffed.
“I did not commit any sexual assault that weekend or any other time.”
The trial that began last fall, with disjointed dates due to availability, is finally nearing its conclusion — closing arguments are scheduled for June 23.
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