Crown re-examines E.M. at London hockey trial

Content advisory: This article includes graphic details of alleged sexual assault

LONDON, ONT. – E.M., the complainant in the sexual assault trial of five former members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team, testified Wednesday morning that when she filed a personal injury lawsuit in 2022 against Hockey Canada and eight unnamed players, her understanding was that the players would not be publicly identified.

After E.M. finished being cross-examined by five defence lawyers over seven days, Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham had the opportunity to re-examine her and clarify points she made during cross-examination.

Several of the defence lawyers suggested that E.M. had been careless and irresponsibly made false allegations against several former members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team in connection with an alleged sexual assault in a London hotel after a Hockey Canada event in the city in June of 2018.

Cunningham asked E.M., whose identity is protected by a publication ban, about her understanding of whether the players would be identified in the $3.55 million lawsuit she filed in April 2022.

“My understanding was that they wouldn’t be identified at all and that was the reason for going with the John Doe names,” E.M. testified.

“Does the statement of claim say anything about which of these specific acts each John Doe did?” Cunningham asked.

“No...it doesn’t say who did what,” E.M. testified.

“Does the statement of claim say that eight different people touched you in a sexual manner?” Cunningham asked.

“No, it doesn’t say that,” E.M. testified.

E.M., who is now 27, also testified that when she provided Hockey Canada in 2022 with the names of the eight players connected to her alleged sexual assault, she did not believe that information would be made public. (Carter Hart’s lawyer, Megan Savard, previously referred to E.M.’s statement as a “public document.”)

“I thought it was going to just Hockey Canada,” E.M. testified.

Hart, Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube, and Callan Foote are charged with sexually assaulting E.M. in a London hotel room in the early morning hours of June 19, 2018. McLeod faces a second charge of being a party to the act.

The court has heard evidence that after dancing with McLeod and his teammates at a bar in downtown London, E.M. returned to McLeod’s hotel room and had consensual sex.

E.M. has alleged that after they finished having sex, a number of other men began showing up at the hotel room. E.M. was then sexually assaulted for several hours, taking on a “porn star persona” to get out of the room safely, she has testified.

The defendants have all pleaded not guilty. If they are convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison.

At one point on Wednesday morning, Cunningham asked E.M. to recall the time when she was alone with McLeod in his hotel room before other men began to appear.

E.M. has previously testified that she can’t recall having any conversations with McLeod during that time frame and doesn’t believe that she would have asked McLeod to invite his teammates back to his room.

“I know I had left with only one person and that after a sexual encounter, I’m assuming I’m just staying in bed and then staying there and not expecting anything else,” E.M. testified. “It’s not something that I would do.”

E.M. referred to an Instagram message exchange she had with McLeod the day after the alleged sexual assault. In those messages, which the jury has seen, McLeod asked E.M. to make the police investigation “go away.”

“I was ok with going home with you, it was everything else afterwards that I wasn’t expecting,” E.M. wrote to McLeod in one message on June 19, 2018.

E.M. also testified on Wednesday that she never asked the London police to re-open its criminal investigation of her alleged sexual assault in 2022, three years after an investigation was closed in February 2019 with no criminal charges.

Cunningham asked E.M. why she cooperated with Hockey Canada in 2022 but not four years earlier. E.M. answered that in 2018, she made the police probe a priority.

“Once the police investigation had closed in 2019, and nothing else was happening, the settlement was done, and then Hockey Canada wanted my participation again...it just felt like one more thing to kind of do to just finally put this behind me,” E.M. testified. “The police investigation had already happened.”

During Cunningham’s re-direction of E.M., she pointed out that E.M. referred to the defendants as “boys” during her initial interview with London police on June 2022, 2018.

During the trial, the defence lawyers have repeatedly referred to the players, who E.M. testified were at least 18 or 19 years old in June 2018, as “boys.” E.M. has called the defendants “men” throughout her testimony.

Defence lawyer Julianna Greenspan, Foote’s lawyer, suggested to E.M. on Tuesday that she has an agenda by changing the way she refers to the players now, versus in 2018 when she was 20.

“Do you know how you referred to your female friends during that interview [in 2018]?” Cunningham asked E.M. 

“I believe I referred to them as girls,” E.M. responded. “I was 20...I’d refer to [people around my own age as] girls, guys, boys… That was just how I spoke back then.”

Cunningham also asked E.M. to review her June 22, 2018, statement to police in which she said she wanted to seem “fine” and said “I’m cool with this, but kind in that mentality that I’m stuck in that room with them.”

Cunningham asked E.M. to explain the “cool” reference.

“I’m trying to cope with it,” E.M. testified. “I felt like I didn’t have another choice but to go along with it.”

During the afternoon session, E.M. was asked by Cunningham about her previous testimony about a man doing the splits overtop of her while she was in McLeod’s hotel room.

In her opening statement in the trial, Crown attorney Heather Donkers told the jury that Foote did the splits over E.M. at one point during the night, grazing his genitals on her face.

On Tuesday, Foote’s lawyer Julianna Greenspan suggested to E.M. that doing the splits was a “party trick,” that the man who did the splits over E.M.’s face was wearing shorts, and that when E.M. touched the man while he was over top of her he “recoiled” and moved away from her.

On Wednesday, Cunningham directed E.M. to read a statement she provided to police on June 22, 2018, in which she discussed the splits incident. In that statement, E.M. said that the player put “it” in her face.

“When you say put ‘it’ in my face, what is the it?” Cunningham asked E.M.

“I’m referring to his penis,” E.M. responded.

“When you say in my face what do you mean?” Cunningham asked.

“I meant it was right on my face,” E.M. answered. “It was all that I was seeing. It was directly in my face.”

Cunningham also asked E.M. about her previous testimony about wrongly identifying Sam Steel, a member of the 2018 world junior team who now plays for the Dallas Stars.

On May 9, Formenton’s lawyer, Daniel Brown, showed E.M. a piece of paper with a 2018 photo of Steel. Handwriting under the photo said, “I don’t remember him from Jack’s but he was in the room and I performed oral on him.”

When Brown suggested to E.M. that she falsely accused Steel, she answered, “okay.”

On Wednesday, Cunningham asked E.M. to clarify her conversations about the player photos on June 22, 2018, with Steve Newton, a London police detective.

“I was a little unsure on a few,” E.M. testified. “I knew that the police would still investigate the matter further and be able to actually confirm who it was, so that’s what I meant by I was leaving it up to them. I was trying my best to identify who I thought I could, but I knew the police would still be looking into it – if that wasn’t the correct person they would pick up on that.”