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She wasn’t sure who the rowdy guys were at the downtown London bar, but “at some point I figured it was just a group of hockey friends.”
One of them was Mikey, a man she referred to as “McLeod” in court, who seemed really keen to get to know her.
But, she said, she was drunk. Really drunk. More drunk than she would usually be if she went out for a night on the town.
Before she had left home on June 18, 2018 to meet up with co-workers, she had two coolers.
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Once at Jack’s Bar on Richmond Row on the fateful night that’s landed five members of Canada’s gold-winning 2018 world junior hockey team in court, she said she had least eight Jagerbombs shots – shots of Jagermeister liqueur and Red Bull energy drink – plus a shot of vodka or tequila, a vodka soda and a beer.
And so, the complainant, then 20 and now 27, whose identity is protect by court order, said Friday at the Superior Court jury trial that she was intoxicated, “blurry” and “mentally all over the place” when she said she found herself surrounded on the dance floor by young men on the team who were taking turns getting close to her.
The most-anticipated testimony at the trial of the Team Canada Five began Friday afternoon with the female complainant describing what happened before she returned with New Jersey Devils first-round draft pick Michael McLeod to the Delta Armouries hotel. It was there, she says, that she was sexually assaulted in a hotel room by several members of Canada’s world junior team.
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McLeod, 27, Alex Formenton, 25, Cal Foote, 26, Dillon Dube, 26, and Carter Hart, 26, have all pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to a second charge of sexual assault for being a party to the offence.
The team was in London on June 18 and 19, 2018 for a ring ceremony, Hockey Canada gala and golf tournament after winning the coveted tournament six months earlier.
The jury has already seen video of the team in full party mode at Jack’s Bar on Richmond Street, through security video and individual phone videos. The cameras also picked up the woman in the mix with the men, her leaving the bar with McLeod, arriving at the hotel with him and later, after the sexual activity, saying to the camera that she consented to what happened.

Also testifying Friday was Washington Capitals player Taylor Raddysh, 27, who was on the 2018 world junior team. He began his testimony of what he saw on Thursday. Another teammate, 26-year-old Boris Katchouk, who now plays for AHL Wilkes-Barre after several NHL seasons, also testified.
From their testimony, it was clear it was a party weekend for the team. Raddysh admitted in cross-examination that he had too much to drink the night of June 17, 2018 when the team went out upon arrival in London. He also agreed that one of Foote’s party trick is that he can do the splits.
And Katchouk said he was inebriated at Jack’s because he was both celebrating the team’s championship and his birthday.
Both men testified they were invited into McLeod’s room after they returned from the bar. Both said the woman was in a bed under the covers and it wasn’t clear if she was clothed or not. And both said they didn’t stay long.
Raddysh was asked to read into the record part of his police statement on July 5, 2018, in which he said he was in the room for two minutes and noted: “I don’t think I really looked at her.”
Raddysh said he went back to his room next door, but was woken up by roommate Brett Howden. At one point, he told Howden to stop slamming the door. He said he could hear the men “talking and chatting and hooting and hollering” in McLeod’s room.
Katchouk said he was called into McLeod’s room while walking down the hall with a slice of pizza after the night out, and McLeod asked him if he wanted oral sex. He saw the woman in bed and at one point, McLeod left to fetch Raddysh, leaving Katchouk alone with her.
The woman, he said, asked if she could have a bite of his pizza. He agreed that he said in his police statement that she sounded like she was being “playful” and “flirty.” Raddysh came in a minute later and both quickly left.
The woman testified she was 20 and had just finished her second year of university at the time of the encounter. She usually spent her time hanging out with friends, watching shows and reading books, but, when her new co-workers invited her out for the night, she accepted.
But she said she was a little hesitant because she didn’t know them well and “wanted to put in the effort.”
She was shown various videos at Jack’s Bar by Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham in which she ordered drinks, drank them and danced with her friends. She said she met one of the men on the dance floor who introduced her to “Mikey.”
“I ended up taking more shots” with McLeod, she said.
By then, she said everything was becoming “blurry.” She figured out the group of friends McLeod was with were close because they were all dancing together and heading to the bar together.
But she was uncomfortable. She was dancing with McLeod and the rest of the group was surrounding her, noting she “felt uncomfortable that they kept kind of taking turns dancing with me. Everyone was really close together. I was feeling very sandwiched in. Just a lot of passing back and forth.”
She said one man picked her up. Others would be on either side of her pushing into her.
“There was just a lot of kind of touching and points where they would be initiating moving my hands to touch them,” she said. “Just a lot of uncomfortable touching . . . they would move my hands to touch the crotch area.”
The woman said she felt awkward, but she was really drunk and she went along with it. “I know outwardly, it probably appeared like it was all right and I was having fun but it did strike me as odd.”
She was separated from her friends, and at some point they indicated they were leaving. She said, when reviewing the video, that she seemed “unstable,” “off-balance” and “a little wobbly.”
And she couldn’t shake McLeod, she said. She said she felt pressure to be with him at the bar and couldn’t go off on her own.
“I felt like I had tried a little bit to think straight but it was difficult with the amount of alcohol and that pressure and I just kind of accepted we had been close all night, that we’ll just go home, we’ll go to the hotel,” she said.
She noted she “has a hard time saying no and when I’m drunk I think that kind of really shows.”
She said she believed McLeod “assumed” they would be going back to the hotel.
“I know that I felt like if I hadn’t been drunk and been in that position, that wouldn’t have been something I would have done, but I did feel OK at that point,” she said.
She was shown video of her leaving the bar with McLeod and arriving at the hotel. She said it looked like she was “walking funny” and that in the lobby she “looked a little unsure where to go and kind of bumped into him a bit.”
She added: “I just thought it was maybe easier to go along with, than to say no. And I felt like at that point it was kind of already assumed . . . that he would be taking me back to the hotel.”
Her testimony continues on Monday.
jsims@postmedia.com

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