Hockey Canada trial: Complainant quizzed on lawsuit details, drinking

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Editor’s note: This story contains details that may be disturbing to some readers

Her lawsuit claimed eight John Does from Team Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team had caused “terror and fear” in a London hotel room where she said she was sexually assaulted.

That came as a shock to the five men who were cleared after an eight-month London police investigation in 2019 who are now on trial.

The jury hearing the case was told Wednesday the five former NHLers didn’t even know they were identified as sex abusers until after Hockey Canada settled the lawsuit in May 2022.

“It would not surprise you that my client and the other men in this room learned of the existence of a lawsuit when it was published in the news,” Megan Savard, the defence lawyer for Carter Hart, said during her day-long cross-examination of the woman at the centre of the case.

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” she said, but Hockey Canada was handling that part. “It’s nothing that I did.”

That bombshell – that the five men were named as part of the eight John Does in a settled sexual abuse lawsuit before they had a chance to respond to the allegations – came at the end of a long day of questioning where the 27-year-old woman admitted to “taking on the persona of a porn star” in the hotel room where the men had gathered, she said, to cope with the stressful situation.

McLeod, 27, Hart, 26, Alex Formenton, 25, Cal Foote, 26, and Dillon Dube, 26, all of whom had National Hockey League careers, each have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. McLeod also pleaded not guilty to a second sexual assault count for being a party to the offence.

The woman, who was 20 at the time, and whose identity is protected by court order, met the team while they were out carousing at Jack’s Bar on Richmond Row in London after a Hockey Canada gala to celebrate their world championship on June 18 and 19, 2018. She went back to the Delta Armouries with McLeod for consensual sex, but claims she was sexually assaulted by the men when they were summoned by McLeod to his room.

The woman has maintained during her testimony she was drunk and has memory gaps about what happened in the hotel room. She has described being on autopilot once the men were in the room.

But the defence theory that has emerged during three days of cross-examination is that the woman wasn’t forced into sexual acts, but was the initiator of the activity, first by telling McLeod to get the men she met at the bar to the room, and then by offering herself to them while naked and on a bedsheet on the floor.

“I know, outwardly, that I was looking different than I was feeling on the inside,” the woman said.

Savard asked the woman about the relationship she had with her then-boyfriend, now fiance, and how she told him what happened. “I told him what had happened and he just knew my character and he knows me, so he didn’t question it,” she said.

Savard also went over the woman’s alcohol consumption at the bar that “dollar beer” night that included two coolers before leaving home, eight Jagerbomb shots, a tequila shot and a beer.

Savard referred to the drinking pattern as “a regular Saturday night” for the woman who has testified she was familiar with the downtown bar scene and would have between six and 10 drinks often after four pre-drink coolers.

“Also, would you be surprised to learn that there’s maybe half as much alcohol in a Jack’s Jagerbomb than you normally get?” Savard asked, adding that on dollar beer night, the bar didn’t serve full pints of suds.

“That does surprise me,” the woman said. “I thought it would be kind of the same everywhere.”

The questions about the “porn star persona” arose from Savard’s questioning about the woman’s memory gaps. In earlier cross-examination by McLeod’s lawyer David Humphrey, it was suggested to the woman she said to the men, “Someone have sex with me. You guys are all (expletives).”

The woman said the words didn’t sound like something she would say, but she agreed that comments like those might have led to the players saying to each other: “This girl is . . . crazy.”

“It’s possible that you said those things as a kind of coping mechanism,” Savard suggested. The woman agreed.

Savard said the woman’s porn star persona would have been “to ask a room full of boys, who is going (to have sex with) me or offer a sexual act.”

The woman said that didn’t sound like something she would do. “I don’t feel like it did,” she said.

But Savard asked if she was indicating, by inviting a sexual act, that it “was a sign of intoxication to the point that these guys should back off.”

“I feel they should have known. They knew how much I was drinking that night. They saw it themselves and there was way more of them than there was of me and nobody thought that this was not a good situation.”

But Savard said the men were strangers to her and none of them would know what she was like when she was sober, let alone be aware of her personality or what kind of sexual comment was out of character for her. She also didn’t know their sexual experience.

Savard suggested during the encounter in the hotel room, the men would prompt her to do something, she would make herself available to do it, then they would not take her up on the offer or stop it themselves, and she would get frustrated and try to leave, only to be asked to stay.

Savard identified times when the men backed off her advances. She also suggested the woman wanted the men to believe she was “cool with this.”

“I did suggest to you that you that you were trying to present as funny and cool with this, right?”

The woman said she thought that was only going on in her mind, but “maybe that was coming off as well.”

The woman admitted she didn’t know the players and said she wanted to make 100 per cent sure, once she went to London police in 2018, she didn’t wrongfully accuse one of the hockey players.

But Savard said the woman did exactly that when she said Sam Steel, not her client Hart, was the player with whom she had oral sex. She was told it was Hart by the police when the decision was made not to press charges because other players, not her, had pointed at him. She also suggested the woman identified player Drake Batherson as one of the first men in the hotel room.

It was her identification of player Jonah Gadjovich, a man who the woman said was at Jack’s bar that night, in the lawsuit that pointed to her lack of precision when identifying the players.

Gadjovich was John Doe No. 8 in the statement of claim on which she signed off, because he was in some of the photos from Jack’s Bar. “The way that came out was because he was one that I knew the name of for sure and I knew he was at the bar based on the pictures,” the woman said.

She identified him to her lawyers, who included him in the statement of claim. “I didn’t know what his role was in the room. I just know I identified him as someone at the bar that night,” she said.

Gadjovich later was identified by name in her written statement to Hockey Canada – a statement she has said was drafted by her lawyers and which she signed – as John Doe No. 8. “I’ll just say that wasn’t my decision on that,” the woman said.

The woman said she didn’t know how civil statements of claim work and why the men were identified as John Does and “honestly, that was not me who drafted that statement of claim,” calling it “lawyer stuff.”

“I’m not sure where I am at fault for that here,” she said.

However, Savard pointed out Gadjovich’s name was publicized even though he did not do the things she outlined in the statement of claim.

“I agree and he’s obviously not getting into trouble for anything, so they knew that he’s probably in the clear. . . . So, no harm has come from it as far as I can see for him right now,” the woman said.

“You think no harm has come from suing Jonah Gadjovich for $3.55 million along with the other defendants?” Savard asked.

“It was settled by Hockey Canada,” she said. “None of the defendants had to say anything or do anything with that. I don’t think they even knew about that. ”

Savard said Gadjovich, like the others, “never had an opportunity to clear his name because none of the defendants ever found out about his case before Hockey Canada settled it.”

The woman agreed none of them had a chance to respond. “That’s my understanding, but I don’t know how that has anything to do with me. That would have been Hockey Canada handling that,” she said.

The trial continues on Thursday.

jsims@postmedia.com

See below for coverage from the London courthouse on Wednesday as defence lawyers cross-examine the complainant whose allegations are the heart of the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial