Trial begins in former world junior hockey players’ sexual assault case

A young woman felt she had no choice but to go along with what a group of hockey players told her to do inside a London, Ont., hotel room nearly seven years ago, prosecutors told an Ontario court Monday as the players’ sexual assault trial began.

The woman, who was 20 at the time, had met Michael McLeod earlier that evening at a bar where he and several other members of Canada’s world junior hockey team had gone after attending a gala, prosecutor Heather Donkers told the court.

She’d come out to the bar with friends and had about eight drinks before leaving with McLeod, Donkers said. The two of them went to his hotel room and had sex, the Crown said, noting that encounter is not part of the trial.

Soon after, as the woman lay naked under the covers, McLeod started inviting others into the room, Donkers said. He sent a text to teammates in a group chat, asking if anyone wanted to be in a “three-way” and sharing his room number, and reached out to others in the hallway, the prosecutor alleged.

A number of sexual acts occurred over the next few hours, and while the complainant is expected to testify that she didn’t say no or physically resist, she felt she had to go along with what the men wanted, Donkers said.

“When she was in this hotel room, at age 20, intoxicated, and a group of large men that she didn’t know were speaking to each other as if she were not there, and then they started telling her to do certain things, she did not feel that she had a choice in the matter,” the prosecutor said.

Jurors weighing the case of McLeod and his co-accused — Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote — heard for the first time Monday the detailed allegations against the five players.

All five accused have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to an additional charge of being a party to the offence of sexual assault.

CAUTION: The following paragraphs contain graphic content some readers may find disturbing.

In her opening remarks to the jury, Donkers alleged that each of the players engaged in sexual acts with the woman without her voluntary consent, and that McLeod encouraged his teammates to do so knowing the woman had not consented.

McLeod, Hart and Dube are accused of obtaining oral sex from the woman without her consent, and Dube is also accused of slapping her buttocks while she was engaged in a sexual act with someone else.

Formenton is alleged to have had vaginal sex with the complainant without her consent inside the bathroom. Foote is alleged to have done the splits over her face and grazed his genitals on it without her consent.

The Crown alleges McLeod also vaginally penetrated her without her consent at the end of the night.

The players didn’t take any steps to make sure there was “affirmative consent,” the Crown alleged. “Instead, they just did what they wanted.”

Some witnesses are expected to testify that at some points in the night, the woman offered to perform certain sexual acts or asked whether anyone was going to have sex with her, Donkers said.

The complainant is expected to say that she “was going along with what the men wanted … because she was drunk, uncomfortable, and she didn’t know what would happen if she did anything else,” the prosecutor said.

The woman tried to leave the room on occasion but the men coaxed her into staying, and she found herself “going through the motions” to get through the night, Donkers said.

There may be moments when jurors find it difficult to understand what the complainant was thinking and doing in the face of the “unexpected situation” in the hotel room, the prosecutor said. But the case is not about how jurors believe they would act or how they think someone should act under those circumstances, she said.

Rather, Donkers said, the case centres on consent and whether the complainant “voluntarily agreed to engage in each and every instance of sexual activity that took place at the time that they happened.”

The trial is expected to hear about two short videos that McLeod took of the complainant near the end of the night, in which she says what happened was consensual, Donkers said. The Crown plans to argue those are not evidence that she did consent.

Court is also expected to hear that McLeod texted the woman after the incident was reported to police, asking what she could do to “make this go away,” the prosecution said.

The Crown said it expects to present evidence of a group chat involving all five accused and some other members of the team where they discussed making sure their accounts of that night matched up.

Dube and Foote are also alleged to have called some teammates, asking them to leave out what they had done when discussing that night, the Crown said.

Also on Monday, court viewed some security video from the bar where the complainant and some players were earlier in the night.

Jurors were dismissed early on Monday to give them time to vote in the federal election. The trial is set to resume Tuesday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2025.

Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press