Testimony concludes at London hockey trial

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

Closing submissions in the sexual assault trial of five former members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team will begin next week, after London Police Service detective Lyndsey Ryan testified Monday about being assigned to review her department’s initial investigation of the incident.

The five defence teams will begin making their closing arguments on Monday, June 9. The Crown will then make its arguments before the defence has an opportunity to respond to the Crown. The closing arguments are expected to take a week.

The judge is not expected to immediately announce verdicts, lawyers involved in the case told TSN afterwards. It could take weeks or months before the judge finishes writing her reasons for her judgments. At that point, the defendants will be notified to return to court for the judge to read her verdicts.

Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Dillon Dube, Alex Formenton and Callan Foote are charged with sexually assaulting a woman in McLeod’s hotel room in the early morning hours of June 19, 2018, following a Hockey Canada ring ceremony to celebrate their 2018 world junior championship months earlier. The woman is referred to as E.M. in court documents and her identity is protected by a publication ban. McLeod faces a second charge of being a party to the act.

E.M. testified that players were spitting on her and slapping her, and at one point, one of the players suggested she put golf balls in her vagina and asked aloud if she “could take” an entire golf club inside of her. E.M. testified she went into an autonomous state and did whatever she had to do to get out of the room safely.

The players have all pleaded not guilty. Their lawyers have alleged that everything that happened in McLeod’s hotel room was consensual.

Hart was the only defendant to take the stand after Formenton, Dube and Foote all decided not to on Monday. Defendants are not legally obligated to testify in their trials.

On Monday, Ryan was called to testify by Formenton’s lawyer, Daniel Brown.

Ryan testified that in the summer of 2022, when Hockey Canada’s decision to settle a civil lawsuit filed by E.M. became public, she was working for the London Police Service’s sexual assault and child abuse unit and was initially given three weeks to review the department’s first investigation of E.M.’s allegations.

Earlier, retired LPS sergeant Stephen Newton testified that he interviewed four of the members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team in November and December 2018 before deciding to close the case without laying charges in February 2019. Videos of McLeod and Formenton’s interviews were played in court, as was an audio recording of Dube’s interview.

Newton also testified that even though he obtained surveillance video from Jack’s bar, he never reviewed the video. He also said that even though he obtained E.M.’s clothing from the night of the alleged sexual assault, he never sent that clothing to experts for forensic testing.

Newton testified that he did not secure any search or production orders as part of his investigation, and was never aware of a June 26, 2018, group chat involving players connected to the alleged incident, or of a text message sent by McLeod to his teammates in the early morning hours of June 19, 2018, inviting them to take part in a “3 way” in his hotel room.

Ryan testified that when she went to E.M.’s home before 9 a.m. on July 20, 2022, E.M. was “quite upset.”

“She thought this chapter in her life was closed with the civil lawsuit?” Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham asked Ryan.

“She was actually quite upset,” Ryan testified. “I felt pretty bad because I got the sense that I was opening up some wounds that she was trying to close… It was a bit overwhelming. She wasn’t expecting this.”

Ryan testified she decided a follow-up interview with E.M. was not necessary because she had E.M.’s video-taped 2018 police interview and her 2022 statement prepared for Hockey Canada and the NHL.

“We thought we had everything we needed from her and an interview would be retraumatizing,” Ryan testified.

Ryan testified that she never interviewed E.M.’s co-workers who were with her at Jack’s bar on June 18, 2018, because E.M. said they wouldn’t have relevant information to add.

“I take it you were weighing the potential for them to have relevant information on one hand and E.M's privacy on the other?” Cunninghan asked.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I was doing,” Ryan testified. “The news had recently broken about this case. It was in the news and whatnot. I knew it would only get bigger… at that point [E.M.’s] anonymity was important to her. My understanding was her friends had no idea what happened that night. I was trying to respect that. My interpretation was they had no relevant information for me that night. I didn’t want to negatively impact her.”

Hart’s lawyer, Riaz Sayani, asked Ryan about a July 28, 2022, phone call in which she spoke to E.M. about her statement to Hockey Canada. The statement, Sayani suggested, contained “significant differences” with her initial 2018 police interview.

In her 2018 statement, E.M. was “self-blaming and not sure if what happened was wrong,” Ryan testified.

Four years later, in her statement to Hockey Canada, “[E.M.] seems to understand how she felt and that what happened in that room was wrong,” Ryan said, reading from her investigative notes.

In the notes, Ryan wrote that she attributed the change to having four years to process what had happened and understand that “acquiescence was not consent.”