Closing arguments to begin next week at hockey sexual assault trial

Content warning: This story includes allegations of sexual assault.

LONDON, Ont. — Lawyers for the defence said Monday they will not call any further witnesses or introduce other evidence in the trial of five former NHLers accused of a sexual assault in 2018.

Court will next sit on June 9, when all five members of the defence will begin with closing submissions. Assistant Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham will follow with her closing arguments after the defence lawyers have finished.

Earlier in the day, court heard that the self-blame the complainant, known as E.M. because of a standard publication ban, expressed in her 2018 police interview was in line with the behaviour of people reporting sexual assaults.

London Police Service Det. Lyndsey Ryan, who was in charge of the second investigation in the case, in July 2022, told Cunningham she found the self-blaming of E.M.’s first statement “quite normal, based on previous experience with victims of sexual assault.”

E.M.’s statement to a Hockey Canada investigator in 2022 came four years after the alleged incident. As a result of time going by, Ryan wrote in her report in 2022, E.M. “understands that she was not to blame and her acquiescence did not equal consent.”

Earlier, Ryan told Cunningham that London police elected not to question E.M. more than necessary because after she was told the investigation was being reopened, E.M. was “quite upset” and they wanted to avoid “retraumatizing” her. For reasons of privacy, Ryan said, police also did not interview E.M.’s friends who were at Jack’s bar in 2018 because the friends had not been told E.M. was involved.

“She told you it was a lot of information to take in, that she thought this chapter in her life was closed?” Cunningham asked Ryan, who was in court.

“I got the sense that I was opening up some wounds that she was trying to close,” Ryan said. “It was a bit overwhelming. She wasn’t expecting this.”

An investigation by the London Police Service was launched in the summer of 2018 and closed in February 2019, with investigators concluding that there was insufficient evidence to lay charges. After widespread scrutiny of Hockey Canada’s handling of the situation, London police reopened their investigation in July 2022, laying charges in January 2024.

Ryan’s testimony was followed by lawyers for Dillon Dube and Cal Foote saying their clients would not be testifying in their defence. Carter Hart was the lone player to take the stand.

Michael McLeod has been charged with two counts of sexual assault, including one relating to aiding in the offence. Dube, Foote, Alex Formenton and Hart have each been charged with one count of sexual assault. All have pleaded not guilty to their charges.

The trial is in its seventh week. After the jury was selected on April 22, the trial started on April 23 before a mistrial was declared on April 25 and the trial started over again with a new jury on April 28. The trial became judge-only after a dismissal of the second jury on May 16.