Carter Hart to face cross-examination at world junior sex assault trial
Carter Hart, one of five members of Canada's 2018 world junior hockey team accused of sexual assault, is set to face questions from Crown prosecutors.
Hart testified Thursday in the high-profile trial, which has seen two juries dismissed since it began in late April and is proceeding by judge alone, and will be subject to cross-examination inside a London, Ont., courtroom Friday.
Hart, Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault stemming from what the Crown alleges was non-consensual group sex with a 20-year-old woman in McLeod's London hotel room in June 2018.
McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to an additional charge of being a party to the offence of sexual assault.
Crown prosecutors rested their case Thursday after their last witness, retired London police Det. Steve Newton, finished his testimony Wednesday.
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2:29
World junior trial hears 2018 police interviews with 2 accused
Lawyers for each of the five men can put forward witnesses or call evidence — but McLeod's lawyer said he would not be calling evidence because McLeod's police statement in 2018 was shown to court this week.
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However, Megan Savard, Hart's lawyer, called her client to the stand Thursday.
Court has heard the team was in town for events marking its gold-medal performance at that year's championship, and the complainant, known as E.M. in court documents, was out with friends when they met at a downtown bar on June 18, 2018.
After being with McLeod and his teammates at the bar, E.M. would go on to have consensual sex with McLeod in his room in the early morning hours of June 19. Court has heard E.M., who testified she was drunk and not of a clear mind, was in the washroom after she had sex with McLeod and came out to a group of men in the room allegedly invited for a '3 way' by McLeod in a group chat.
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It was then the Crown alleges that several sexual acts took place without E.M.'s consent.
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World junior trial: Court watches Michael McLeod's 2018 police interview
Hart told court he received a group text from McLeod with the invite, and said he had a phone call with him. When he was in the room, Hart said E.M. was asking the players to have sex with her, and he chose to ask for oral sex because he did not want to have intercourse.
Hart said the oral sex was 'consensual' and brief because it was 'weird.' Hart said he was single at the time, and E.M. was annoyed at one point when guys weren't taking her up on her offers. Court has heard many of the players were in relationships at the time.
E.M. testified she was naked, drunk and afraid when men she didn't know suddenly started coming into the room. She went on 'autopilot' as a coping mechanism as she engaged in sexual acts, she said.
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Defence lawyers have suggested E.M. wasn't as drunk as she has testified she was, wanted a 'wild night' with the players, was 'egging' them on to have sex with her and accused her of having a 'clear agenda' at the trial.
E.M. has pushed back against those claims in a several-days-long cross-examination and at points outright rejected them, saying she was coaxed into staying in the room, was disrespected and was taken advantage of by the group who she said 'could see I was out of my mind.'
The trial is expected to continue into June.
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The Crown and the goalie. If this had been a penalty shot, the goalie stoned her. When Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham opened her cross-examination of Carter Hart on Friday, it quickly became evident that she was going in with elbows up. 'Would you agree with me that …' and 'I'm going to suggest to you that …' — these are standard gambits to hurl questions that are actually statements, basically drawing the witness into an acquiescent, even complicit, response. The interrogator can't venture into areas that haven't already been explored under questioning in chief. So, to start, Cunningham returned to how much Hart had to drink on that night of June 18, 2018, as most of the Canadian world junior championship team had hit a couple of London, Ont. saloons — Joe Kool's, Jack's Bar — following a Hockey Canada charity gala where they'd received their rings. 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Prosecution cross-examines ex-NHLer Carter Hart at Hockey Canada sexual assault trial 'I'm going to suggest that at no time in the room did you ever take her aside and say 'Are you Sounding rather like a disapproving schoolmarm, Cunningham observed that now Carter was about to achieve both his immediate ambitions. 'You got to do both those things at the same time.' And, because of the 'quick'' postscript, the text invite was a 'time-limited offer,' suggested Cunningham. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'You thought you were only agreeing to a sexual encounter with McLeod and a woman. At this moment, you have no idea who this mystery woman was, right?' The McLeod text 'calls for Mr. McLeod to speculate what the woman might or might not want to do.' Hart: 'I had assumed it was an agreed plan with the girl. Usually, most people don't send out a text if you have a person who is not agreeing to it.' 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'You don't know her age, her level of intoxication, her degree of willingness, and despite not knowing any of these things, you say, 'I'm in.' 'You were drunk that night, you were hoping for sexual encounters that night. You didn't meet anyone for that purpose and now, all of a sudden, this opportunity has presented itself. I'm going to suggest to you that you didn't have any reservations. You were in. You were putting a lot of faith in your friend, Mr. McLeod, to set something up that was morally acceptable to you.' If this was the prosecutor wielding her hammer, Hart wasn't rattled. With his mother in the courtroom — as she has been throughout — Hart had already spent a full day under questioning from defence lawyers, giving a fairly detailed account — despite memory lapses — of everything he did, what his teammates did, inside Room 209: that he'd obtained oral sex from a woman whose name he didn't know, that oral sex was performed on two other teammates, that Formenton and the woman had intercourse in the bathroom and that (a clothed) Cal Foote had executed the splits over the woman's face. That woman is the complainant, known only as E.M. under a publication ban. E.M. has testified that she had consensual sex with McLeod after they left Jack's Bar, but that she hadn't consented to anything that happened later, when up to 10 players converged in McLeod's room, at least some of them in response to his group invite for a threesome. Hart, McLeod, Formenton, Foote and Dillon Dube have all pleaded not guilty. Cunningham banged away, drilling down on details, splitting hairs about memory gaps, circling, pecking. Too many blank spaces in the narrative, she asserted. 'You spent more time in that room doing things for which you have no memory than things for which you do have memory.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW But Hart remained calmly consistent in his testimony, unflappable — everything that happed in that room was consensual and it was E.M. who was the aggressor, urging the players to 'f—- me,' pouting when they declined and threatening to leave if nobody stepped up. As Hart did, for oral sex, even though he couldn't get a full erection and pulled away within a minute, no longer keen, struck by the weirdness of it all. 'I'd never seen a girl act like that, forward and sexually demanding. She was feeling comfortable to say those things in front of everybody.' Cunningham countered that it was merely Hart's 'perception' that E.M. was annoyed when 'nothing was happening.' Hart had said Thursday that he'd sent a text to another teammate, romantically unattached, inviting him up. 'I'm going to suggest that it was you who wanted to keep the party going, you wanted to keep her there for sexual activity because no one else seemed interested.' Hart: 'Possibly.' Cunningham moved into the area of Foote performing the splits over E.M., a flexibility party trick that he'd often shown teammates. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'Do you know what teabagging is?'' Cunningham asked. Indeed he did — technically, performing the manoeuvre over a sexual partner's face and placing the scrotum in their mouth for sexual pleasure. Or, as Cunningham put it to the witness: 'It's where a guy sort of squats and lowers himself over someone's face and dangles testicles in their face or mouth. 'That's what's being suggested, right?' Hart disagreed, insisting Foote hadn't removed his shorts and he'd never touched E.M. 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