Assistant Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham is shown earlier in the trial.
(Alexandra Newbould/CBC)
The Latest
The sexual assault trial of five former Hockey Canada world junior players continues in Ontario Superior Court in London today.Retired London Police Service sergeant Steve Newton, who closed the initial police investigation into the alleged assaults, is in the witness box.Court is watching a video recording of a November 2018 interview Newton did with Michael McLeod, one of the accused men.Proceedings this afternoon have been stalled several times by technical difficulties.Brett Howden, an ex-teammate and now a centre for the Vegas Golden Knights, finished testifying this morning.The accused — Cal Foote, Dillon Dubé, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart and McLeod — have all pleaded not guilty to the alleged sexual assaults involving the complainant, E.M., at a hotel in June 2018.WARNING: Court proceedings include graphic details of alleged sexual assault and might affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone who’s been affected.Updates
May 27
8 minutes ago
IT people to the rescue?
Kate Dubinski
We’re still on a break as technical staff at the courthouse attempt to fix the Crestron system, which shares audio and video to each of the defence team tables (there are five) and to the Crown table.
Because the witness is testifying remotely, via Zoom, there’s an added tech wrinkle.
The two tech workers here are employed by the Ontario courts. They’re trying to find a way for the video of McLeod to be played properly to the courtroom and the remote witness (Newton) without freezing or skipping or being distorted.
“Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?” one reporter suggested.
This is just the latest stalling of court proceedings due to technical issues, which were prominent earlier in the trial.
32 minutes agoKate Dubinski
The five defendants listen on in court. From left to right: Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dubé and Cal Foote. (Alexandra Newbould/CBC)McLeod tells the detective that E.M. bought drinks for the two of them. He says he also bought drinks, and someone bought a round for everyone.
McLeod says to the officer that he doesn’t remember E.M. slipping and falling near the bathroom.
The detective shows McLeod pictures from Jack’s bar’s Facebook account from June 2018 that were posted on social media. McLeod identifies several teammates, as well as an “older guy” he thinks is “maybe from Nike” and was not affiliated with the team, but was one of the sponsors.
Earlier in the trial, E.M. testified about an older man, identified in court as Matt Maccarone, who poured a shot of alcohol down her throat.
In the video, McLeod tells the detective he doesn’t remember the older guy buying Jägerbombs (a mixed drink that has a shot of Jägermeister in an energy drink), but he was probably buying dollar beers for everyone.
The audio is again really off and reverberating, so we are paused again to see if someone can fix it.
39 minutes ago
McLeod talks about meeting E.M. in the bar
Kate Dubinski
The media are now able to resume seeing the Newton-McLeod video interview.
Newton asks McLeod to take him through meeting E.M. at the bar.
McLeod says “pretty much the whole team,” except four younger guys who weren’t old enough to drink, went to Jack’s.
He says everyone was dancing and E.M. started hanging out with the men.
“We had a drink.”
McLeod says there was no sexual contact between himself and E.M. on the dance floor.
“She was kind of close but there was none of that, no,” McLeod tells the police officer in the video.
41 minutes ago
Comparing the dancing to earlier videos shown in court
Kate Dubinski
Videos presented in court earlier in this trial showed E.M. and McLeod dancing very closely and her also dancing with Brett Howden. Very close dancing, grinding and crotch touching could be seen.
“She indicated that when you were dancing there was some touching to the groin region, that she was doing some of the touching — it was going both ways?” the officer asks McLeod. The officer says there also was butt touching.
“I dunno. For me, it would be a super minor thing,” McLeod tells him in the video. “I don’t remember like, super touching her.”
McLeod says he wasn’t “crazy drunk” and it wasn’t a “crazy night of drinking.”
E.M., he tells the officer, was “looking normal” and “she wasn’t like, hammered by any means.”
1 hour ago
Proceedings stalled over poor video audio
Kate Dubinski
There’s an issue with something called a Crestron (an audio-visual delivery platform), so there’s been a bit of a work-around, but now it’s even harder to understand the video.
Some of the lawyers stopped the proceedings because they needed a transcript of the interview so they could follow along to better understand the audio.
Members of the media have asked for the transcript as well. There’s some back and forth about whether they should be made available to us. It’s being made a “lettered exhibit,” which means it’s not part of the evidence — the video is.
The video itself is going to be made an official exhibit so the media can have access to it right away.
1 hour ago
Back from break
Kate Dubinski
The technical problems are (sort of) resolved.
Court is now being shown the video of Michael McLeod being interviewed by London police officer Stephen Newton, the lead investigator in 2018.
The video was taken in November 2018 in the Toronto office of McLeod’s lawyer.
2 hours ago
We’re delayed
Court staff are still trying to work out some technical issues, so the aim is to resume proceedings at 2:30 p.m. ET.
3 hours ago
Back after the break
Lucas Powers
After some technical difficulties with the video showing McLeod speaking to Newton, the police investigator, court has recessed a bit early for lunch.
We’ll be back with more live coverage once proceedings resume around 2:15 p.m. ET.
3 hours ago
The Instagram, texting connection
Kate Dubinski
Also in the video, McLeod tells Newton that the next day, the team had a golf tournament and while there, he got a call from someone at Hockey Canada about a police complaint related to the night before.
He was told E.M.’s mother had made the complaint, not E.M. herself, so McLeod looked E.M. up on Instagram and direct-messaged her, asking her for her number, McLeod tells the detective.
“She was like, ‘What’s up?’ and sent me her number,” McLeod tells the detective of his Instagram interaction with E.M.
“She said it was her mom” that reported the sexual assault, not her.
The video freezes, likely because of an issue with the bandwidth in the courtroom, so technicians are working to figure out the problem and get it back working again.
3 hours agoKate Dubinski
McLeod says the other men began leaving the room closer to 4 a.m., so he “took another video, her consent to the whole thing, just seeing that she wasn’t OK, that she wasn’t drunk, she wasn’t blackout drunk and couldn’t move,” he tells the detective.
E.M. told him she was fine and she consented to everything, McLeod recalls to the police detective.
After that, everyone left but his roommate, Formenton.
McLeod tells the detective he “hopped in the shower, and she came in and we just had sex.”
When E.M. was getting dressed, she couldn’t find her ring, so Formenton and McLeod spent 10 or 15 minutes helping her look for it.
“She seemed really upset” that she couldn’t find it and the two men “tried to calm her down. We could tell she was kind of upset. And that was the night.”
In her testimony earlier in the trial, E.M. said she returned to the room for her ring, but the two men seemed annoyed that she had come back and didn’t help her look for it.
