Prosecutors make final pitch to judge in hockey players’ sex assault trial

By Canadian Press on June 11, 2025.

LONDON — Crown prosecutors are making their final pitch to the judge presiding over the sexual assault trial of five former members of Canada’s world junior hockey team.

Defence lawyers made their closing submissions this week, repeatedly challenging the complainant’s credibility and reliability as a witness and arguing she was an active participant in a sexual encounter that took place in a London, Ont., hotel room in the early morning hours of June 19, 2018.

They argued the woman made up a narrative to avoid taking responsibility for her choices that night and adjusted that narrative after the initial police investigation closed without charges in order to obtain a civil settlement.

Court has heard Hockey Canada settled a lawsuit involving the organization and eight unnamed players in the spring of 2022 before any of the players were aware of it, and revived its own investigation into the allegations in the months that followed. Police also reopened their investigation around that time.

The trial — which began in late April and heard from nine witnesses, including the complainant and one of the accused — largely turns on the issue of consent.

Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault, while McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to an additional charge of being a party to the offence of sexual assault.

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 inside the hotel room’s bathroom without her consent, and Foote is accused of doing the splits over her face and “grazing” his genitals on it without her consent.

Most of the 2018 world junior team was in London that June for a series of events marking their gold-medal performance earlier in the year. After an open-bar gala hosted by Hockey Canada on June 18, many ended up at Jack’s, a downtown bar where the complainant was drinking and dancing with co-workers, court has heard.

The woman, then 20, was introduced to McLeod by one of his teammates and eventually they left together to go to his hotel room, where they had sex, court has heard. That encounter is not part of the trial, which centres on what happened afterward.

McLeod sent a text to a team group chat asking if anyone wanted a “three-way,” and Hart replied he was “in,” according to screenshots shown in court. Over the next while, several teammates came into the room, though a few only stayed a short time, court heard.

The arrival of unknown men scared the woman, who was naked and drunk at the time, she told the court over more than a week on the stand. She felt she had no choice but to go along with what they wanted, and engaged in sexual acts while on “autopilot,” she said.

Under cross-examination, the woman said she took on a “porn star persona” as a coping mechanism because she believed it would bring the situation to an end more quickly, as she felt the men expected a “porn scene.”

Two teammates called by the Crown testified the woman at some point asked the group whether anyone would have sex with her. Hart, the only accused player to take the stand in his own defence, also recalled the woman making similar comments.

The complainant said she had no memory of saying anything like that, but that it was possible given her level of intoxication.

In their submissions to Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia, lawyers for McLeod, Hart, Formenton and Dube argued their clients engaged in consensual sexual activity with the complainant.

Foote’s lawyer, meanwhile, argued Wednesday her client did not touch the woman sexually — or at all.

Julianna Greenspan pointed to Hart’s testimony that he saw Foote, fully clothed in a shirt and shorts, do the splits over the complainant’s torso without coming into contact with her body, “all in the full context of smiles and laughs, not just by those directly around, but also (the complainant) herself.”

The judge should be left with a reasonable doubt that “whatever allegedly took place was a non-threatening and momentary interaction in jest,” and “qualitatively distinct” from the sexual conduct admitted by the other accused players, Greenspan argued.

Carroccia is expected to deliver her ruling on July 24.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2025.

Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press