‘Awkward and weird': Hockey Canada trial sees players' video interviews from 2018 London police investigation

Hamilton Spectator

28-05-2025

It was a 'weird situation' to have a woman demanding to have sex with his teammates in his hotel room, hockey player Michael McLeod
told police in a 2018 interview
, which is why he said he constantly checked in with her and recorded her giving consent.
London police documents make clear the high-profile sex assault investigation was reopened in 2022 due to 'a resurgence in media attention' — with
London police documents make clear the high-profile sex assault investigation was reopened in 2022 due to 'a resurgence in media attention' — with
The high-profile Hockey Canada sexual assault trial heard McLeod in his own words for the first time on Tuesday, as his November 2018 video-recorded interview to London police detective Steve Newton was played in court while Newton was testifying as a Crown witness.
'Throughout the night, I was just trying to make sure she was OK with this, because it was a weird situation that I wasn't expecting was going to happen with all the guys coming in,' said McLeod, seated in a room at his Toronto lawyer's office in a white shirt and dark jacket.
'I was just kind of worried something like this might happen.'
That's why he took a video of the woman in the room on his phone, in which he asks her if she's 'OK with this' and she says, smiling, that she is.
That video has previously been shown at trial
, along with a slightly longer video taken later in the night, in which the woman says: 'It was all consensual.'
The woman has testified she was just saying
what she thought the men wanted to hear
.
McLeod had met the then-20-year-old complainant, whose identity is covered by a publication ban, at Jack's Bar in London, Ont. and they returned to his room at the Delta Armouries hotel where they had consensual sex in the early hours of June 19, 2018.
But then multiple members of the 2018 Canadian world junior championship team came in afterward,
with the woman testifying this month
she went 'numb' and in 'autopilot' mode as she engaged in the sexual activity as a coping mechanism as she was surrounded by large men she didn't know.
The jury has heard — in graphic detail — her allegations about what took place inside a London, Ont., hotel room in 2018.
The jury has heard — in graphic detail — her allegations about what took place inside a London, Ont., hotel room in 2018.
McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube, and Cal Foote have pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting the woman, and McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to being a party to a sexual assault for allegedly encouraging his teammates to engage in sexual activity with the complainant when he knew she wasn't consenting.
The Crown has alleged that McLeod had intercourse with the complainant a second time in the hotel room's bathroom; that Formenton separately had intercourse with the complainant in the bathroom; that McLeod, Hart, and Dubé obtained oral sex from the woman; that Dubé slapped her naked buttocks, and that Foote did the splits over her head and his genitals 'grazed' her face.
Newton was the lead investigator on the case in 2018, after the woman's mother called police and her mother's partner called Hockey Canada. He interviewed the complainant several times, as well as most of the players now on trial, and found he did not have grounds to believe a crime had been committed, something he told the players upfront before interviewing them.
As the Star has reported, Newton wondered in his report
whether the complainant was an 'active participant' in the events of June 18-19, 2018, and found that the consent videos and surveillance footage of the woman walking unaided in heels led him to doubt that she was too intoxicated to consent, as she had told police. He closed the investigation in February 2019.
The complainant exits the lobby of the Delta Armouries hotel in the early hours of June 19, 2018, soon after leaving the hotel room where she alleges she was sexually assaulted by five members of the Canadian world junior hockey team.
Source: Ontario Superior Court exhibit
As part of Newton's investigation, he reviewed individual photos of members of the junior championship team with the complainant, and wrote down her comments next to each one as to whether she recognized them or not.
The players were charged in 2024 after London police reopened their criminal investigation amid intense public pressure, after it was reported Hockey Canada had settled, for an undisclosed sum, a $3.5-million sexual assault lawsuit filed by the woman against the organization and eight unnamed John Doe players.
A composite image of London police Det. Steve Newton's handwritten notes on the complainant's comments during a June 26, 2018, photo-identification interview.
In the part of the interview played in court Tuesday before the lunch break, McLeod doesn't mention that he sent a text in a players' group chat about a '3 way' in his room just after 2 a.m. on June 19, 2018, which has been entered as an exhibit at trial.
He told Newton that after he and the woman had sex, a few men came into the room, and he left them with the woman while he went down to the lobby to get food he had ordered on Ubereats; when he came back up, he said he saw Hart receiving oral sex from the complainant.
A screenshot of a group chat involving members of Canada's 2018 world junior championship team, including a text from Michael McLeod inviting his teammates to his hotel room for a three-way.
'She seemed completely fine with it, and the other guys were just kind of hanging out on the bed,' he said.
'It was kind of a little different, but we ate the food and hung out, had chicken wings. And after that, it didn't last too long, the blowjob, and then we kind of just hung out after for a bit.'
And then more men came into the room, McLeod said, bringing the total to eight or nine players.
'We were really drunk, but we weren't blackout drunk by any means,' he said. 'Like, we all had our heads on straight for the most part.'
McLeod said the woman was naked and then got on the bed, asking something along the lines of: 'Who wants to have sex with me? Who's going to step up and have sex with me?'
McLeod said it was surprising, as no one wanted to have sex with her in front of the other men. He said she was referring to the men as 'pussies.' The men would just look at each other, he said, 'like this is pretty weird, like you do it, you do it.'
McLeod said the woman would become upset that no one wanted to have sex with her.
'I had to like kind of calm her down and kind of say like 'Are you OK?' Like I told her we're only not going to have sex with you because no wants to have sex in front of nine other guys, so she kind of felt better about that.
'Later on, we're hanging out again, and she's feeling better and she was offering to give guys blowjobs,' McLeod went on. 'I got one, and Carter Hart got another one, and maybe Dillon Dube.'
He said he and the complainant had sex a final time in the shower when most of the men had left.
One of the other men who was willing to have sex with the woman was Formenton, McLeod's hotel roommate that night, but in the bathroom out of view of the other men. He told Newton most of the men had been resisting the woman's demands because they had girlfriends.
'So I volunteered,' he told Newton in a November 2018 video-recorded interview entered as an exhibit during pre-trial hearings. 'But I obviously didn't want to do that in front of guys, I found that very awkward and weird. So we both walked into the washroom and that's where we had intercourse.'
He echoed McLeod's comments that the woman was getting upset and frustrated that few men wanted to have sex with her. Newton asked him if it was possible she was upset because she was embarrassed with what was going on
'I think she was embarrassed that nobody did anything to her, and I think she was maybe embarrassed that she thinks she wasn't hot enough and that no one gave her the attention while she was sitting there naked,' Formenton said.
'But really, it was just because everyone had girlfriends and no one found it not awkward to do that in front of people.'