Steenbergen says lawyer may have mischaracterized 2022 comments

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

LONDON, ONT.– Tyler Steenbergen, a former member of Canada’s 2018 world junior team, testified on Friday that a lawyer hired by Hockey Canada in 2022 to investigate an alleged sexual assault in a London hotel room in June 2018 may have mischaracterized what Steenbergen said he saw at the time.

Steenbergen, who is not accused of wrongdoing, previously testified that while he was in Michael McLeod’s hotel room in the early morning hours of June 19, 2018, he saw Dillon Dube slap E.M., the complainant in the sexual assault trial of Dube, Callan Foote and three of their Team Canada teammates. 

Steenbergen also testified that he saw Foote do the splits over top of E.M., although his view was obscured.

Testifying remotely, Steenbergen said that on Oct. 2, 2022, he was interviewed by lawyers from Henein Hutchison LLP, a Toronto law firm hired by Hockey Canada to investigate the alleged incident four years earlier. Both the London police and Henein Hutchison closed their respective investigations in 2019 and then re-opened them in 2022 after news of the alleged sexual assault was made public.

Assistant Crown attorney Heather Donkers asked Steenbergen to review the handwritten notes made in 2022 by a Henein Hutchison lawyer who interviewed him. 

While the notes suggest that Steenbergen said he saw Foote take off his pants and underwear before doing the splits over top of E.M., Steenbergen said he does not recall whether Foote took off his underwear.

“I do feel they may have miswrote a few of the statements I provided,” Steenbergen testified. “He did the splits, and that’s all I know. I don’t know what he was wearing or was not wearing.”

McLeod, Hart, Alex Formenton, Dube, and Foote are charged with sexually assaulting a woman referred to in court documents as 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 defendants have all pleaded not guilty. If they are convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison.

Steenbergen was the first witness to testify after the judge in the case, Maria Carroccia, granted a motion from the defence for a mistrial.

Rather than opting for a new trial, which would have required E.M. to testify again, the Crown consented to a motion from the defence to move forward with the three-week-old case as a judge-only trial after one of the jurors suggested in a note that two of the defence lawyers were acting unprofessional.

Steenbergen has previously testified that both Foote and Dube phoned him after learning Hockey Canada was conducting an investigation into the alleged sexual assault and asked him not to reveal what he had seen those players do the night of the alleged incident, saying they would explain it themselves.

Under cross-examination by McLeod’s lawyer, Anna Zhang, Steenbergen testified about seeing E.M. emerge naked from the bathroom in McLeod’s hotel room.
McLeod testified that E.M. was not crying, or falling over, and did not seem to be shocked that new men were appearing in the room. The court has previously heard that at one point there were 10 men in the standard-size hotel room.

E.M. came out of the bathroom, moved to a bedsheet on the floor and started masturbating before she said, “Can one of you guys f--k me?” Steenbergen testified.

“That’s kind of what caught my attention,” he said. “I heard that and felt uncomfortable at that point. I’d never seen or heard that before.”

During her testimony, E.M., who was 20 in 2018 and is now 27, told the court that she was drunk when she was at McLeod’s hotel room and has some memory gaps about what happened there. She has testified that she was “scared and confused” and didn’t remember asking players for sex, but has said that it doesn’t sound like something that she would have said.

She has testified that because she felt so vulnerable and threatened, she became autonomous, as if her mind and body separated, and she felt “as if my mind kind of floated to the top corner of the ceiling.”

Zhang asked Steenbergen if he was “giggling and laughing” about the situation.

“I had an awkward laugh,” Steenbergen said. “I didn’t know how to react to the situation that was in front of me.”

Later on Friday, Riaz Sayani, a lawyer for Carter Hart, asked Steenbergen about him witnessing Hart receiving oral sex from E.M. and Dube slapping her.

“The woman demands vaginal intercourse. Hart responds, calls her over, and there’s a conversation,” Sayani suggested.

“Yeah possibly. I was trying not to pay attention,” Steenbergen answered. “But it very well could have happened.”

Sayani suggested that E.M. got up on her knees and pulled Hart’s pants down. During the time of the oral sex act, Hart was not erect and he ended the encounter, the lawyer suggested.

“It’s possible he ended by saying ‘I’m done’ or ‘I can’t do this’?” Sayani asked.

“Yes, it’s possible,” Steenbergen answered.

Sayani also suggested that when Dube slapped E.M., it was not a hard slap but rather a “butt pat.” Previously, Steenbergen testified that Dube’s slap as “wasn’t hard but it didn’t seem soft either.”

“Is it fair to say it looked like foreplay?” Sayani asked.

“Yes, it’s possible,” Steenbergen responded.

Steenbergen is expected to resume his testimony on Tuesday morning.