Michael McLeod invited world junior teammates to room: Crown

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By: Jane Sims

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

The text message went out to the boys on the team like a bat-signal to come to Michael McLeod’s room.

“Who wants to be in a three-way quick Room 209, (signed) Mikey,” was the group chat message to the young men on the 2018 Team Canada world junior hockey championship squad who were staying at London’s Delta Armouries hotel for a Hockey Canada gala on June 18 and 19, 2018.

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That message, the Crown said at the Superior Court jury trial of five players from the team, set off a series of events inside that hotel room that are at the heart of the case against them.

But so is the law surrounding consent, assistant Crown attorney Heather Donkers said in the Crown’s opening statement. What Donkers told the jury was not evidence but a roadmap of what they can expect during the coming weeks at the highly anticipated trial that began in earnest Wednesday.

“This is a case about consent and equally as important, this is a case about what is not consent,” she said, before describing what happened before, during and after a night of sex involving a then-20-year-old woman and members of the team, all of whom went on to careers in the National Hockey League.

McLeod, 27, is charged with sexual assault and sexual assault by being a party to the offence. Alex Formenton, 25, a former London Knight, Cal Foote, 26, Dillon Dube, 26, and Carter Hart, 26, are all charged with sexual assault.

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All five men have pleaded not guilty at the trial in London that has garnered enormous media attention.

Donkers told the jury the complainant, whose identity is protected by court order, was out with friends at Jack’s Bar on Richmond Row on June 18 and 19, 2018. At the same time, a group of world junior champs, who were in town for the Hockey Canada gala, decided to keep the party going by heading to the bar.

Several of them approached the complainant and started chatting with her. She was separated from her group and began dancing with McLeod. The jury is expected to see video of the Jack’s dance floor and that McLeod and Dube were among the players who “surrounded” her.

The complainant is expected to tell the jury she had eight drinks while at the bar, and others were drinking too. Just after 1:20 a.m., she went with McLeod back to the hotel where they had consensual sex. “This first act of sexual intercourse is not the subject of this trial,” Donkers said.

But “soon after that sexual act ended, the atmosphere changed,” Donkers said.

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Donkers said they expect the complainant to testify she saw McLeod on his phone and believed he was messaging people. The jury will see those messages, including the one summoning the team to the room for sexual activity.

While the complainant was naked under the covers, McLeod went into the hallway and invited others into the room. “Before long, more and more men began arriving in Room 209,” Donkers said. “There were up to 10 men inside the standard-sized hotel room.”

Donkers said they anticipate the complainant will tell the jury “she felt drunk, surprised by what was happening, and was uncertain how to react.”

Other witnesses, Donkers said, will describe what happened. The complainant was naked while the men were clothed and there was a lot of sexual activity.

“You will hear from some witnesses that at different points of the night, (the complainant) was offering to perform sexual acts, or was asking whether anyone was going to have sex with her,” Donkers said.

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“And you will hear from (the complainant) that throughout the night, she was going along with what the men in the room wanted – what she felt they expected of her – because she was drunk, uncomfortable, and she did not know what would happen if she did anything else,” Donkers said.

Each of the five accused had sexual contact with the complainant, the Crown said, ”without a voluntary agreement to the specific acts that took place.” McLeod, Hart and Dube obtained oral sex. Dube slapped her while she “engaged in a sexual act with someone else.”

Formenton had vaginal sex with her in the bathroom. Foote did the splits over her face as she lay on the floor “grazing his genitals over her face,” Donkers said.

McLeod, at the end of the night, “sexually assaulted her once more by vaginally penetrating her without her consent,” Donkers said.

McLeod’s second charge relates to the anticipated evidence he “assisted and encouraged his teammates to engage sexually with (the complainant), knowing she had not consented,” the Crown said.

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“The Crown anticipates you will not hear from (the complainant) that she said no to the specific sexual acts that constitute sexual assault, nor that she was physically resisting,” Donkers said.

“But we anticipate we will hear (the complainant) testify that when she was in this hotel room at age 20, intoxicated, and a group of large men that she did not know were speaking to each other as if she were not there, and they started telling her to do certain things, she did not feel that she had a choice in the matter.”

Donkers said the complainant tried to leave the room but the men “coaxed her in to stay. And she found herself going through the motions just trying to get through the night by doing and saying what she believed they wanted.”

And the men did not get consent but “instead, they just did what they wanted,” Donkers said.

At the end of the night, McLeod recorded two brief videos where the complainant “made broad statements” such as “it was all consensual.”

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The Crown expects to argue the videos are not evidence of consent to the acts related to the charges.

“Pay close attention not only to what was said in this video, but also what was not said,” Donkers told the jury. She said Justice Maria Carroccia “will instruct you that consent must be given for each sexual act at the time that it is happening.”

The complainant left the hotel “in tears,” called a friend, went home “and cried in the shower,” Donkers said.

The police were contacted, Donkers said, and McLeod sent a text message to the complainant that said: “What can you do to make this go away?” There were other messages between the players in a group chat about what happened “and about making sure they all said the same thing to investigators,” Donkers said.

There were phone calls from Dube and Foote to others asking them to leave out details of what they did when they spoke to investigators.

“There may be moments in this trial when you feel it’s difficult to put yourself in (her) shoes and understand what she’s thinking and doing when confronted with the unexpected situation in the hotel room,” Donkers said.

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“But that brings us back to one of the points that we started with. This case is not about how you believe you would act, or how you think someone would or should act in a scenario like this one,” the Crown said.

“Of course, you are invited to draw upon your collective common sense, but be vigilant and not allow yourself to be tempted by the myths and stereotypes that are produced within society about how victims of sexual assault should behave,” Donkers said.

She asked jurors to “keep an open mind” and base their decision “only on what the law is, not on what you may have thought the law was, or what you think it should be or what popular media may have led you to think.”

The Crown called its first witness, London police Det. Tiffany Waque, who introduced a scale drawing of Jack’s Bar, before breaking for lunch.

After lunch, and after a lengthy break for legal arguments without the jury, Carroccia dismissed the jury for the day.

“I’m going to let you go for the day. Something happened over the lunch hour that I need to think about and discuss with the lawyers,” she said, before dismissing them.

The trial continues on Thursday morning.

jsims@postmedia.com

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