Hockey Canada trial: Complainant says she felt like she was 'bullied' by players

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Editor’s note: This story contains details some readers may find disturbing

The best way she said she could describe what happened in a hotel room when she was naked with a group of loud, obnoxious hockey players was to compare it to an out-of-body experience.

“I felt just a weird feeling of just my mind separating itself from my body. I just remember the way I picture that night and it felt as if my mind floated to the top corner of the ceiling and I just started watching everything happen,” said the 27-year-old complainant at the sexual assault trial of five 2018 Team Canada world junior champs.

“The fear and confusion of that feeling and the situation I was in, it didn’t feel like I had any control. It didn’t feel like I had a choice.”

The woman gave the jury a detailed, harrowing account of what happened in Room 209 at the Delta Armouries on June 19, 2018, when the world champions were in London for a Hockey Canada gala and golf tournament to celebrate their win.

But the jury also got the first hints about the aftermath – the closed police investigation, a civil suit and a media storm – that eventually led to the charges before the court.

And it also heard, during the defence cross-examination, that the woman had a steady boyfriend at the time of the incident.

Michael McLeod, 27, Alex Formenton, 25, Cal Foote, 26, Dillon Dube, 26 and Carter Hart, 26, all have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. McLeod pleaded not guilty to a second sexual assault count for being a party to the offence.

The complainant, whose identity is protected by court order, was 20 when she met McLeod and some of the team at Jack’s Bar on Richmond Row and went back to the Delta Armouries to have consensual sex with him.

The first part of Monday was spent with Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham asking the woman to describe everything that happened after she and McLeod had sex.

The woman said she went into the bathroom to clean up, then returned to the bedroom, still naked, to see McLeod clothed and texting. He left the room, but before she knew it, two men showed up in the room.

Then, more men came in. They laid a bed sheet on the floor and encouraged her to lie on it. She said she was intimidated and confused.

“They had wanted me to lie down and touch myself. And they also had golf clubs in the room that were on the floor as well. I remember them making comments about putting golf balls in me.”

She described three men dropping their pants and waving their penises in her face before she performed oral sex on them. Another man did the splits on her.

The men “were loud with each other, talking loudly, back and forth, joking a lot,” the woman said. “I just felt like I was being bullied. They were laughing at me. They were spitting on me at points and slapping me. It just seemed like a joke to them.”

One of the men, she said, followed her into the bathroom, put on a condom and had sex with her. She performed oral sex on him after that.

She said she tried not to think about what was happening. “It seemed like the only safe thing to do was to just give them what they were wanting.”

The woman said, at certain points, she tried to leave but the men would say, “We’re having fun. It’s fine. We want you to stay.” Other times, she said she was crying.

She said she performed oral sex on McLeod in front of the others. He asked the men to leave, then went into the bathroom with the woman, had sex again and the two of them showered.

She was shown two videos in which she appears she consented to the activity. She had no recollection of the first one and said she still looked “really drunk“ in the second one made with McLeod’s phone.

“He knew what I needed to say to just get out of there. I think he knew it wasn’t consensual,” she said.

After showering, she got the bum’s rush out of the room. McLeod and his roommate – whom the jury has heard was Formenton – told her they had to get up for a golf tournament.

She got dressed and left, but realized she had left a ring behind, so went back. “They seemed really annoyed that I was asking for that and they just kind of opened the door and let me in and went back to bed.” After a short, fruitless search, she found her way out of the hotel, called an Uber and her best friend.

She got home shortly after 5 a.m., and got into the shower crying. Her mother checked on her.

Her mother called the police the next day, sparking a series of messages from McLeod to the woman asking her to stop the police investigation.

“You said you were having fun,” McLeod wrote.

She wrote back that she was drunk and “I was OK with going home with you. It was everyone else afterwards that I wasn’t expecting. I just felt like I was being made fun of and taken advantage of.”

McLeod wrote that her mother was “misrepresenting” what happened and the complainant needed to stop the investigation. “What can you do to make it go away?” he wrote.

Later that evening, she told McLeod she told the police “it was a mistake . . . Sorry again for the misunderstanding,” she wrote. McLeod thanked her.

The initial cross-examination began to weave an alternative narrative. McLeod’s lawyer, David Humphrey, pointed out the woman said, in the phone call to her friend as she was leaving the hotel, that she had sex with the man she met at the bar – who was “a jerk” – and didn’t mention having sexual relations with anyone else.

Humphrey also asked the woman about “a serious boyfriend” she had in June 2018 and she felt guilty for cheating on him. The woman said she told him what happened. “I did explain I was drunk . . . I did know I was being as honest as I could with him.”

She said she told her mother she had gone to a hotel with “a guy named Mikey” and more people had come into the room, but blamed herself for what happened. Her mother pieced together they were a Hockey Canada team, “went into Mama Bear mode” and called the police. Her mother’s boyfriend called Hockey Canada.

The police said the woman would have to make the complaint. She and her mother went to London police headquarters on June 22, 2018, and met with Det. Stephen Newton who explained her options. She gave a statement and she said she just wanted the men to “be spoken to.” She later reconsidered and wanted him to go ahead with a charge.

But Newton advised her he needed grounds. Based on his review of the Delta security videos, “he told you he did not see you in those videos as being overly inebriated when arriving or leaving the hotel,” Humphrey said, but he was supportive of any decision she made.

“I do recall him saying that,” the woman said.

A month later, the police had the two “consent” videos from inside Room 209. By February 2019, after reviewing the video evidence and interviewing some of the players, Newton told her he didn’t have grounds to believe she was too intoxicated to consent and he was closing the investigation.

Two years later, in April 2022, a civil statement of claim was filed against Hockey Canada, the Canadian Hockey League and eight John Does for $3.55-million. The woman agreed she had an understanding the claim would be served on Hockey Canada, and not on the eight individuals.

She said she stood by the statement of claim that said the actions of these men “caused terror and fear in her mind” and “ongoing apprehension of imminent physical harm of a sexual nature.”

Hockey Canada quickly settled the lawsuit on the basis that it all be confidential, the suit and the settlement. But then, the story exploded in the media.

She agreed her statement to Hockey Canada investigators in July 2022 was drafted by her lawyers. “I thought this was done. I thought it was case closed. I didn’t know there’d be still more that would be asked of me,” she said.

She wrote her own statement in March 2025 when she met with the Crown and was allowed to review the video footage at Jack’s. Humphrey noted she pointed out five things where she was showing intoxication.

She admitted she and her friends went to Jack’s regularly and often had six to eight drinks and would often throw up at the end of the night. And, she agreed, her boyfriend often gave her a ride home.

The trial continues on Tuesday.

jsims@postmedia.com

See coverage below of the woman’s testimony Monday from LFP reporter Jonathan Juha