Hockey Canada trial: Team captain expressed regret in police interview

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After his first interview with the young woman who claimed she had been sexually assaulted by Team Canada world junior hockey players in a London hotel room, the lead police investigator had some nagging doubts.

“I left the interview with the belief that (the 20-year-old woman) was not necessarily intoxicated enough not to make decisions during this event and further, that there may have been a certain level of consent, given her active involvement,” London police Det. Stephen Newton wrote in his notes on June 22, 2018.

That was three days after the woman had been in Michael McLeod’s hotel room at the Delta Armouries hotel in the early morning hours with several of the players who were in town for a Hockey Canada gala and golf tournament to celebrate the team’s gold medal performance.

Newton, a veteran officer who has since retired after 32 years, kept investigating even though he had “developing concerns” the woman was being pressured by her family, especially her mother, to move forward with the investigation.

But his initial assessment, after eight months of investigation reviewing video, text messages and interviewing players, didn’t change.

“You never crossed that threshold of reasonable and probable grounds to believe any criminal offence had been committed in this case, correct?” Alex Formenton’s defence lawyer, Daniel Brown, asked Newton at the Superior Court trial of five 2018 Team Canada players.

“I would agree with that,” Newton said.

The court was aware police restarted the investigation in 2022 and pressed charges in 2023 after reports surfaced the woman settled a lawsuit with Hockey Canada, the Canadian Hockey League, and eight unnamed players, who didn’t learn about it until later. This sparked public outrage.

McLeod, 27, Carter Hart, 26, Formenton, 25, Dillon Dube, 26, and Cal Foote, 26, all have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. McLeod also has pleaded not guilty to a charge of being party to a sexual assault.

The complainant, now 27 and whose identity is protected by court order, met the team first at Jack’s bar on Richmond Row. She went back to the Delta Armouries with McLeod for consensual sex. She testified several men, as many as nine or more, came into the room and she was sexually assaulted. However, she said she suffers from memory loss surrounding some key events because she was drunk and, as a coping mechanism, had separated her mind from her body.

The accused and their lawyers maintain the woman was the aggressor, begging and even taunting the men to have sex with her.

Newton began his testimony for the Crown on Tuesday to introduce videotaped interviews of McLeod and Formenton, and an audiotaped interview with Dube in the fall and winter of 2018. An audiotaped interview with Foote wasn’t presented to the court.

Newton never interviewed Hart. All the interviews were voluntary. Before each interview, the men were cautioned that while Newton didn’t have sufficient grounds to lay charges, the interviews could be used in a court proceeding if circumstances change.

McLeod’s interview was played Tuesday, while Formenton and Dube’s accounts were heard Wednesday morning. All three men admitted to sexual involvement with the woman and agreed the woman consented to the sexual activity and wasn’t intoxicated.

“The purpose for conducting the interviews was to get their side of the event and just to complete the investigation,” Newton said and agreed that by the time he talked to the players, he had made assessments about the case based on all the evidence he had collected.

The cross-examination allowed the defence to ask Newton about the decisions he made during the first investigation.

The initial contact began hours after the woman left the hotel room. Newton confirmed a fellow police officer told him they had been contacted by a friend who wanted advice related to a woman who may have been sexually assaulted by a group of hockey players.

The woman didn’t want to come forward. Newton’s advice was for the woman to go to the St. Joseph’s Health Care’s sexual assault centre and complete a sex assault kit.

The next day, Newton reviewed a report by the boyfriend of the woman’s mother, who said the woman “didn’t want her name given out to the police or anyone else at that time” and didn’t want to get McLeod in trouble.

But the boyfriend reported the woman was “extremely drunk and may have blacked out.” He added that she was so intoxicated that she didn’t even recall going to the hotel with McLeod and that she woke up naked in the hotel “with several young men in the room.”

The next day, the woman’s mother contacted the police and suggested her daughter had been drugged. The woman still didn’t want to come forward, but she was going to get medical attention. However, Newton received more information that the woman refused to go to St. Joseph’s and would only make a police report if charges wouldn’t be laid.

Newton agreed the woman wanted the police to talk to the hockey players, and nothing more. He interviewed her on June 22, 2018, and made it clear she could change her mind.

He also established that it was important for her to be truthful and give as much detail as possible. He also told her the decision to press charges was hers alone and he would be supportive of her decision.

Newton already had secured video from the hotel – which he believed would be the best evidence closest to the time of the encounter to show the woman’s level of intoxication – and video from Jack’s. The hotel videos showed her having no signs of impairment.

After the interview, he obtained the clothing the woman was wearing that night, should it be necessary for forensic testing.

He did a photo array with the woman two days after the first interview with pictures of the players from the Hockey Canada website. He had already watched the Delta hotel video and it appeared she wasn’t intoxicated. He told the woman but assured her he would continue to investigate.

On July 12, 2018, the woman contacted Newton, saying she had changed her mind and wanted to go ahead with charges.

By then, Newton said he had been in contact with Danielle Robitaille, a Hockey Canada investigator who was doing her own probe. She denied his request for her interviews, but agreed to pass on his contact information to the players and their lawyers.

The woman gave Newton copies of text messages between her and McLeod hours after the encounter, as did McLeod’s lawyer, David Humphrey, who had contacted him by mid-July along with two other lawyers. Newton also had two videos recorded by McLeod of the woman appearing to consent to all sexual activity in the room.

“You recognized that they had important evidentiary value, or at least important evidentiary value on the issues of consent, intoxication and capacity to consent?” Humphrey asked. Newton agreed.

Newton made arrangements to talk to the woman about the videos and she told him she didn’t recall them being recorded.

At police headquarters, Newton told the woman her level of consent was a central issue and he couldn’t conclude she was intoxicated. But he would continue to talk to the players.

However, he couldn’t compel the players to talk because Newton didn’t believe he had grounds for charges.

“It was surprising that anyone came forward to you and said they would take you up on your offer to be interviewed, especially when you told them that you had no basis to believe a criminal offence had been committed,” Brown said.

“It was actually somewhat surprising. I’m happy they did,” Newton said.

In February 2019, Newton contacted the woman and told her he was unable to form grounds to lay a charge and his assessment was she was not too intoxicated to consent to the sexual activity. His criminal investigation was closed.

Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham told Justice Maria Carroccia she might have one more Crown witness to call.

The trial continues on Thursday.

jsims@postmedia.com