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Canada Trial
LONDON, Ont. – Michael McLeod’s first interview with police in 2018 differs in at least one key area from defense attorney arguments that have emerged in the sexual assault trial in London, Ont., of five former Canadian national junior team players.
McLeod, Dillon Dubé, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton and Cal Foote are each accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room after a Hockey Canada gala in London, where the team gathered to celebrate their 2018 World Junior Championship run. All five players pleaded not guilty in the trial, which is now in its sixth week.
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McLeod’s interview, which was conducted in person by then-London Police detective Steve Newton in November 2018, was shown as Newton took the stand on Tuesday. In the interview, McLeod tells Newton (who is now retired) his version of events about what happened that night with him and E.M., the complainant in the trial whose name is protected by a publication ban, as well as what he said occurred between her and his teammates in the room.
In the interview, McLeod describes leaving the bar with E.M. after a night of drinking and dancing to go back to have consensual sex. McLeod then details a number of his teammates — as many as eight or nine, he said — coming into the room. In his initial recounting of what happened, he does not say anything about E.M. encouraging him to reach out to his teammates and invite them back to his room to participate in group sexual activity — which has been a key part of the defense’s case. He also did not disclose to police some of the text messages he sent to teammates that morning that the Crown has used as evidence.
The Crown has previously introduced evidence that McLeod sent a group text message to teammates asking: “Who wants to be in 3 way quick” at 2:10 a.m. The Crown has also shown a text message exchange between McLeod and teammate Taylor Raddysh at 2:15 a.m. in which McLeod asks Raddysh if he wants a “gummer,” which is slang for oral sex.
McLeod’s defense attorneys have repeatedly asserted that E.M. was the one who initiated group sexual activity, saying she told McLeod she was interested in a “wild night” and urged him to reach out to invite other players to the hotel room.
In a later portion of the interview, McLeod said that he texted his teammates to tell them he was ordering food and that he had a girl in his room.
McLeod, who said he and his teammates “all had our heads on straight for the most part,” described walking back into his hotel room after fetching food he had delivered to see E.M. performing oral sex on Carter Hart. He said that throughout the course of the night, she asked other players to have sex with her and performed oral sex on McLeod and Dubé. He said he also believed she had sex with Alex Formenton in the bathroom.
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In her testimony, E.M. said a bed sheet was laid on the ground and she was instructed by players to lay on the sheet, touch herself and moan. She testified that there were golf clubs in the room and players instructed her to insert golf clubs and golf balls in her vagina. She described feeling vulnerable and scared as players shouted to each other and encouraged her to perform sexual acts. She said she was spit on and slapped throughout the course of the night.
When asked by Newton, McLeod said he doesn’t remember her lying down on a bed sheet, masturbating herself or any mention of golf clubs or balls. McLeod and multiple other players who have testified as Crown witnesses said that E.M. initiated the sexual acts, saying that she was demanding sex from the players and grew upset with them when they declined.
In his November 2018 interview with Newton, McLeod said E.M. got upset when players declined to have sex with her and that he had to “calm her down.” He said he told her that players were uncomfortable having sex with her in front of each other.
McLeod said once she was “feeling better” she gave oral sex to him, Hart and Dubé.
“Right before that happened, I kinda took a video – that was the first video – and made sure I didn’t get any of her naked or anything. I tried to just get her face in it. I just said ‘Are you OK with this?’ and she said ‘Yes’ and so throughout the night I was just trying to make sure she was OK with this because it was a weird situation.
“I wasn’t expecting what was gonna happen with all the guys coming in and I was kind of worried something like this might happen,” McLeod said, adding, “so I took that first video to make sure she was OK with it.”
That video, and an additional video in which E.M. says it was “all consensual,” were sent to police via email in July 2018, according to Newton.
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In her testimony, E.M. said she did not recall being filmed in either of the videos, both of which have been introduced as evidence, but believes they were likely made toward the end of the night. Though she did not recall these videos being made, she testified that she remembered McLeod was “hounding” her at multiple points throughout the night to say what happened was consensual.
Asked by Newton if he felt she was an active participant or not, McLeod said she was.
“She looked like she was kind of leading the way and asking for it. Asking for …”
Newton then interjected, asking McLeod what he saw from her that suggested that. McLeod said, “She just seemed excited and she wanted to do stuff with guys.”
McLeod, when questioned by Newton about the way the night ended, said that it was kind of “weird.”
“All these guys are smart guys. They know kinda what’s best for them. They didn’t want it to get out of hand, so they just left and it was getting late, so ….”
Newton asked: “Was it getting out of hand?”
“No, no,” McLeod said, though he described the situation as “definitely different.”
Toward the end of the interview, Newton asked McLeod if anyone took any other videos besides the ones he provided to the police. McLeod said they did not because they made a rule against taking videos and repeatedly told each other not to film.
When asked about what he understood to be the “rules of engagement,” McLeod said, “No videos, guys,” referring to the players’ understanding. “Be smart about this.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Brett Howden was accused by the defense during cross-examination of minimizing his interactions with the complainant in the hours before the alleged incident at the center of the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial and lying about a phone call he said he had with a teammate about the matter.
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In a pointed back and forth, Julianna Greenspan, attorney for Cal Foote, suggested that Howden, now a member of the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, purposely withheld information from investigators to avoid further scrutiny of his own actions.
Howden, a key Crown witness in the case, was the first member of the 2018 Hockey Canada World Juniors team to interact with the complainant at Jack’s bar the night of the incidents. After dancing with the woman — known in this trial as E.M. — he introduced her to McLeod.
On Monday, Greenspan showed Howden surveillance video from the bar and pressed him repeatedly to acknowledge he slapped E.M. on the buttocks multiple times. Howden dug in and even after Greenspan showed him the video two additional times, with a portion of the video slowed down, maintained that he only slapped her once.
As Greenspan’s cross-examine of Howden continued on Tuesday, she pressed him further about his own actions the night of the incidents at the center of this trial, suggesting that Howden had minimized his interactions with E.M. at the bar in past interviews with both Hockey Canada and police investigators.
In July 2018, Howden told Hockey Canada investigator Danielle Robitaille that E.M. was just “part of a mixture with a bunch of girls on the dance floor.” When Greenspan pressed Howden on that characterization, he said that he was responding to short surveillance clips of a long night.
“A few minutes with someone who ends up in room 209, right?” Greenspan asked. “A few minutes of direct, very close dancing contact.”
“Yeah, but I’ve also never seen this girl in my life,” Howden said. “And on the dance floor at the bar, you can tell that it’s obviously dark … I don’t think it’s fair that a couple minutes out of a whole night that you just expect me to know this girl that I’ve met for the first time in my lifetime.”
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“Things aren’t fair, are they Mr. Howden?” Greenspan asked, prompting the Crown to object about the basis of the question.
Greenspan suggested to Howden that he knew about his contact with E.M. at the bar when he talked to Hockey Canada investigators.
“No, I’m not going to accept that, because like I told you it was a long night,” Howden said. “And I don’t know how I could remember exact moments of a multiple-hour night.”
Greenspan continued to press Howden about his “direct and repeat contact” with E.M., describing his evidence as a “false memory” to which Howden said that he had been drinking over the course of a “long night.”
“I was being as honest as I could,” Howden said.
“I’m going to suggest that you did know,” Greenspan said. “You did know exactly and at least until you find out about Hockey Canada and police getting involved, you never thought for a second that there was anything wrong with what happened. Agree or no?”
“No, I didn’t think I did anything wrong that night,” Howden said.
“And knowing what you did on the dance floor, knowing what happened at Jack’s bar, and everything else, you never thought that there was any problem with your behavior, right?” Greenspan asked.
“Yeah, correct,” Howden said.
The Athletic’s Dan Robson contributed reporting from Toronto.
(Photo by Don Emmert / AFP via Getty Images)
