Complainant in hockey players’ trial pushes back during tense cross-examination

By Canadian Press on May 9, 2025.

A woman pushed back Friday after a defence lawyer suggested she felt embarrassed and ashamed for the choices she made the night she alleges she was sexually assaulted by five former members of Canada’s world junior hockey team.

The heated exchange between the complainant and defence lawyer Daniel Brown capped off a day of cross-examination that focused on what happened at a downtown London, Ont., bar where the woman first met some of the players in June 2018.

Court viewed a series of messages between the woman and one of her co-workers while they were at the bar that night and the following morning. In the morning messages, the co-worker mentioned seeing the woman “having a blast with those guys” and feeling that she was “in good hands,” to which the complainant responded that the men were “funny.”

“That was the end of your conversation on June the 19th, correct? The guys were funny?” Brown asked Friday.

“What do you want me to say? Something horrible just happened to me and I’m gonna tell this kind of a stranger what just went down?” the complainant replied. “I was really embarrassed. I felt so much shame. I was just messaging her as if nothing was wrong.”

“Shame and embarrassment for the choices you made,” Brown said.

“I made the choice to dance,” she began to reply.

Then, as the defence lawyer started to speak again, she continued: “No, I’d like to finish. I made the choice to dance with them and drink at the bar, I did not make the choice to have them do what they did back at the hotel.”

Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault in connection with an encounter that took place at the Delta hotel in the early hours of June 19, 2018. McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to an additional charge of being a party to the offence of sexual assault.

The woman has testified that she and McLeod left Jack’s bar together and had sex in his hotel room, an encounter that is not part of the trial. She was drunk, naked and afraid when men she didn’t know started coming into the room afterward, she previously told the court.

She described going on “autopilot” and feeling like she was watching herself from outside her body as she engaged in sexual acts with the men.

CAUTION: The following paragraphs contain graphic content some readers may find disturbing.

McLeod, Hart and Dube are accused of obtaining oral sex from the woman without her consent, and Dube is also accused of slapping her buttocks while she was engaged in a sexual act with someone else.

Formenton is alleged to have had vaginal sex with the complainant without her consent inside the bathroom. Foote is alleged to have done the splits over her face and grazed his genitals on it without her consent.

The Crown alleges McLeod also vaginally penetrated her without her consent at the end of the night.

The defence has suggested the woman asked McLeod to call his friends into the room because she wanted a “wild night,” and that she later invited the men to have sex with her.

The woman said she has no memory of saying anything like that, and that if she had, it would have been an indication of her level of intoxication. The players should have known better, she said earlier this week, adding they would have known how much she drank at the bar before coming to the hotel.

McLeod and several other members of the 2018 world junior team had gone to the bar that night after attending a gala celebrating their championship victory, the trial has heard.

Formenton was not with them, however, because he was only 18 and too young to get into the bar, court heard. Brown, who represents Formenton, suggested Friday his client would not have known how much the complainant drank. The woman agreed, but said he “would have seen how out of my mind I was in the room after.”

Earlier in the trial, the woman told the court she’d had two coolers at home before going to the bar and two shots immediately after arriving, but that a group of men including some of the players bought most of her drinks after that.

In total, she told the court, she had about eight shots at the bar, most of them Jagerbombs, as well as a vodka soda and a beer. She felt drunk and not fully aware of what was going on around her as she danced and interacted with the group, she said, and was still mentally “all over the place” as she left with McLeod.

Under cross-examination Friday, the woman agreed she bought herself five shots and a vodka soda before interacting with any of the players or their entourage at the bar.

“This is something that you drank and before you even met the players you were already too drunk to be able to comprehend,” Brown suggested. “And that was something you did to yourself, a choice you made.”

“Correct, I had already had a lot of alcohol,” the woman said.

“So it wasn’t any of the players (that) got you drunk. It was that you got yourself drunk,” Brown said.

“They continued to get me drunk though, there were still shots after all that. So if anything, it just shows that I had more than I even thought initially,” the complainant replied.

Brown suggested her alcohol intake may not have been as high as her drink tally implied because the Jagerbombs at Jack’s contained a half ounce of liquor rather than a full ounce.

Cross-examination is expected to continue Monday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 9, 2025.

Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press