Why didn't police lay charges in 2019? Inside the London police investigations in the Hockey Canada sex assault case

Hamilton Spectator

17-05-2025

The call came in to London, Ont., police on June 19, 2018, from a woman saying she needed advice.
'So my daughter was out at a bar last night, she came home this morning ... and I can't really get a whole lot of information out of her. She's basically saying she's embarrassed, she's ashamed, she put herself in a bad situation,' the woman said.
'I have reason to believe obviously something happened that she didn't agree to. I don't really know where to go from there.'
That same day, another call came to police, this time from Glen McCurdie, a vice-president at Hockey Canada. A man had called the organization reporting his partner's daughter may have been sexually assaulted in a hotel room with players, McCurdie told police, and the young woman didn't want to come forward.
'All I'm telling you is the allegations that came through the mother's boyfriend,' McCurdie said. 'That's all I've got.'
Those first phone calls would soon lead to an eight-month police investigation into an alleged sexual assault committed at the Delta Armouries hotel in London by members of the 2018 Canadian world junior team, following the Hockey Canada Foundation's annual Gala & Golf fundraising event. A then-20-year-old woman, whose identity is now covered by a standard publication ban, alleged that she was sexually assaulted by multiple players after going back to the hotel room of team member Michael McLeod, with whom she'd had consensual sex after meeting him at a bar.
The inside story of how London police handled the woman's allegations can now be made public after a judge on Friday
dismissed the jury at the high-profile sexual assault trial of five professional hockey players
, following a complaint from jurors that two defence lawyers appeared to be making fun of them. The case will move forward as a judge-alone trial.
The police's probe ended in February 2019 without charges being laid, only to be re-opened in 2022 amid intense public pressure when it was revealed Hockey Canada had settled, for an undisclosed sum, a $3.5-million sexual assault lawsuit filed that year by the complainant.
As London police stated in court records in 2022: 'The media attention surrounding this event is significant.'
That renewed investigation would ultimately lead to sexual assault charges in 2024 against five players who are now on trial: McLeod, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dubé, Cal Foote, and Carter Hart.
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; and that Foote did the splits over her head and his genitals 'grazed' her face.
Hundreds of pages of documents filed in the court proceedings shed new light on London police's original investigation, and finally help provide answers to burning questions: Why were no charges laid back in 2019? And what changed in 2022 that led the police and Crown to believe they now had a case?
The timeline of the two investigations
The documents reveal that a veteran detective with London police's sexual assault and child abuse section spoke to the complainant multiple times in 2018, including several formal interviews, as she went back and forth on whether she wanted to pursue charges. At one point, Det. Steve Newton wondered whether she was being 'coerced' to report as a result of pressure from family and friends. He also interviewed four of the five players now on trial (all except Hart), telling them upfront he didn't have grounds to lay criminal charges. Those who admitted to engaging in sexual activity with the complainant maintained it was consensual.
What appears to have caused Newton the most doubt that a crime had been committed was the video evidence: surveillance footage showing the complainant walking steadily and unaided in heels in the hotel lobby led Newton to question
her account that she was too intoxicated that night to consent
. And, perhaps most importantly, two video clips recorded by McLeod of the complainant smiling in the hotel room following the alleged sexual assaults; in one of them, she says: 'It was all consensual.'
Newton ultimately wondered in a report whether the complainant had been an 'active participant' in the events of June 18-19, 2018; he closed the case in February 2019.
Fast forward to three years later, and London police's Det. Lyndsey Ryan and a team of officers were tasked with taking a second look. While Newton had his doubts that the complainant was too drunk to consent, records suggest that the 2022 investigation approached the case from a different angle: that the complainant only went along with everything because of the intimidating nature of a hotel room full of men she didn't know, and the players
should have known she wasn't actually consenting
.
Bolstering the police's case was a new written statement sent by the complainant's lawyer in the summer of 2022, although police describe it in filings as 'substantially the same' as her interviews with Newton in 2018. (At trial, the complainant admitted that the statement contains multiple errors and was actually written by her civil lawyers.)
Police also
had text messages between the players
from 2018 that had been sent to investigators by their lawyers. And, unlike in 2018, London police decided to get a court order for records from Hockey Canada's independent investigation into the matter, which included interviews with some of the players now on trial. They had refused to speak to police in 2022 to exercise their right to remain silent, but faced the choice of either participating in the Hockey Canada probe or being banned for life from the organization's programs — including Canada's world championship and Olympic teams.
A judge would later toss the players' statements from the criminal case because the way in which they were obtained was so 'unfair and prejudicial' that it
harmed the accused men's right to a fair trial
.
'I just didn't care': Why a Hockey Canada investigator's 'unfair' probe led to the exclusion of a 'virtual treasure trove' of evidence
Finally, in February 2024,
London police announced at a packed news conference
that sexual assault charges had been laid against the players, most of whom were now playing in the NHL. Chief Thai Truong
offered his 'sincerest apology'
to the complainant for the length of time it had taken to get to that point, while Det.-Sgt. Katherine Dann said that investigators had followed additional leads, spoken to more witnesses and collected more evidence.
Crown attorneys are required by policy to only prosecute charges laid by police if there is a reasonable prospect of conviction and it's in the public interest. Behind the scenes, records show that Meaghan Cunningham, the province's lead sexual assault prosecutor as chair of the sexual violence advisory group, was warning the complainant that while the Crown felt it had met the test to prosecute, it was 'not a really, really strong case.'
In a meeting with the woman, her mother, lawyer, and police about three weeks before the players were charged, Cunningham also told the complainant that they didn't have a 'strong argument' that she was incapable of consenting, despite the complainant alleging that in her lawsuit.
'It is an argument we can make,
we will make
, but a judge looking at the totality of the evidence may not accept that argument,' she said.
The courtroom heard graphic details as the Crown laid out its opening statement in the high-profile case against five former NHL players.
The courtroom heard graphic details as the Crown laid out its opening statement in the high-profile case against five former NHL players.
But Cunningham assured her they had stronger arguments to make on other issues, according to notes from the meeting. She also told the complainant that if she was pursuing this hoping for a conviction, she might want to reconsider.
'If that is why you're doing this, (it) may not be worth the personal cost to you,' Cunningham said, according to the notes.
'If you're doing this to get a conviction, (I) don't know that will happen. But if it will give you a sense of accomplishment, then we will do everything in our power to get the right outcome. A conviction is absolutely possible.'
The complainant said she wanted to see the case through.
Within a day of the initial calls to police in 2018, Newton tried to get in touch with the complainant, who agreed to speak with him but didn't want to go ahead with charges.
The woman said she didn't want 'him' — McLeod — to get in any trouble, but she also 'didn't want this happening to another girl either,' Newton wrote in his report.
Meanwhile,
McLeod was texting the complainant
, asking if she had gone to the police; the complainant said she believed her mother had called them.
'But I told her not to. I don't want anything bad to come of it, so I told her to stop,' she says in a June 20, 2018, message to McLeod. 'I'm sorry, didn't mean for that to happen.'
She was 'really drunk' at the time, she said, and 'didn't feel good about it at all after. But I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble, I know I was in the wrong too.'
She said she was fine going back to the hotel with McLeod, but it was 'everyone else afterwards that I wasn't expecting.' She felt like she had been made fun of or taken advantage of, she said.
In the messages, McLeod presses her to tell the police to drop the matter. She finally says: 'Told them I'm not going to pursue it any further and that it was a mistake. You should be good now, so hopefully nothing more comes of it. Sorry again for the misunderstanding.'
(McLeod would tell Hockey Canada's third-party probe in 2022 that he texted her because 'we did nothing wrong' and he wanted her to 'straighten this out.)
The complainant did end up speaking to Newton and outlined her allegations. She also said that the only reason she told McLeod she wasn't going to pursue the matter further was so that he would leave her alone. She told Newton that after meeting McLeod at Jack's Bar, she returned with him to his hotel room, room 209, where they had consensual sex. She said she had become separated from her friends at the bar, and was feeling the effects of alcohol.
Afterward, the complainant reported several of McLeod's male friends coming into the room while she lay naked on the bed. She said a sheet was placed on the floor, and she fondled herself on it at the men's request. She also performed oral sex on approximately four men, and had intercourse with McLeod's roommate (
later identified as Formenton
) in the bathroom.
Michael McLeod films a selfie video with the complainant on the dance floor inside Jack's Bar.
'She said that a couple times during this event she got dressed and was going to leave, however, the males coaxed her to undress again, and she complied,' Newton wrote.
She left after having sex once more with McLeod. She soon returned to retrieve a ring in his room, but said that 'Mikey' became 'mean and derogatory' when she showed up, Newton wrote.
From the complainant's description of the event, Newton wrote, 'it did not sound like at any point she had lost consciousness during this event.'
After McLeod's teammates entered the room, the officer continued, the complainant 'appeared by her account of the event to be an active participant.'
He went on to write that the complainant never reported telling the men she didn't want to perform those sex acts or asking them to stop; the only instance where this happened is when a man 'suggested they insert a golf club and golf balls into (her) vagina.' She told them no, and they didn't pursue it further.
While it's difficult to be certain in the early stages of the investigation, Newton wrote that he left the interview with the belief that the complainant wasn't too intoxicated to make decisions for herself. 'And further that there may have been a certain level of consent given her active involvement,' he wrote, adding: 'I informed (her) of this concern.'
As the complainant debated in 2018 whether she wanted to see charges laid, Newton continued his investigation, reviewing surveillance footage from the hotel lobby on the night of the alleged incident.
'I cannot conclude from viewing the video that either when arriving or leaving the hotel (the complainant) is overly intoxicated,' Newton wrote in his report. 'She is walking in stiletto heels, is not wavering as she walks unassisted. She appears steady on her feet, is not leaning on anything or holding anything/anyone to assist her as she walks.'
Credit: Ontario Superior Court exhibit
He told her the issues in the case 'were her level of sobriety as well as the issue of consent.' He said he'd have to review the case with a Crown attorney before deciding whether to lay charges. He also noted in his report that he provided her advice on a lawsuit.
The complainant 'acknowledged that she has been getting pressure from family and friends to pursue charges and that this is not necessarily what she wants right now,' Newton wrote.
She told him she'd like for him to 'suspend this investigation for the time being,' and that she may contact him again later to have it re-opened.
By mid-July 2018, the complainant was again wanting to pursue criminal charges. 'She informed me that she has given the matter more thought and that she does not want to look back on what happened to her in the future and regret not pursuing it further and doing everything she could to ensure this does not happen to someone else,' Newton wrote.
He had been continuing his investigation, as he worked to identify who may have been in the room that night. He spoke to Danielle Robitaille, the Toronto lawyer leading an independent probe into the matter for Hockey Canada, asking that she pass along his message that he wanted to speak to members of the 2018 team who were now spread out across North America. He soon began hearing from some of the players' lawyers.
The complainant asked Newton if he could access Robitaille's file, including her interviews with the players. The complainant herself had declined to participate in that probe until the end of the police investigation. Newton said Hockey Canada's lawyers made clear they wouldn't turn the file over. He also told one of the players' lawyers, according to his report, that because he didn't believe a crime had been committed, he didn't have grounds to get a warrant for the Hockey Canada file.
What seems to have further cemented Newton's belief that no charges should be laid were
two short video clips
sent by McLeod's lawyer, David Humphrey, in the summer of 2018. They both depict the complainant in the hotel room, as McLeod can be heard asking if she's consenting. In the first clip, Newton noted she appears to be wiping something from her eye and is smiling.
McLeod asks her off-camera: 'You're OK with this, right?' and she responds, smiling: 'I'm OK with this.'
Prosecutors intend to show that the woman was complying because she was surrounded by large men she didn't know while separated from her friends.
Prosecutors intend to show that the woman was complying because she was surrounded by large men she didn't know while separated from her friends.
In the second clip, she's covered with a towel, and still smiling.
'Are you recording me? OK, good, it was all consensual,' she says. 'You are so paranoid, holy. I enjoyed it. It was fine. It was all consensual. I am so sober, that's why I can't do this right now.'
Newton concluded that the complainant didn't seem intoxicated in either video. 'She does not appear to be in distress or non-consenting,' he wrote.
(McLeod told Hockey Canada's probe in 2022 that he took the videos 'for cover, in case she regretted it at some point in her life.')
The woman didn't have a clear recollection of the videos when asked about them, Newton wrote, other than to say the first video would have been taken after the sexual contact with multiple men, and the second video just before she left the hotel room. Although she says in the second video that she's sober, the woman maintained to Newton that she was actually very intoxicated and 'trying to act more sober in their midst as part of putting on a brave face.'
She explained 'feelings of being overwhelmed by these males and feeling that she had to follow through with their requests,' Newton wrote.
(Later, in her written statement in 2022, the complainant said she was just saying whatever she thought the men wanted to hear. 'It seemed to me that they made these videos because they knew they had just spent hours degrading a really drunk girl,' says the statement.)
By February of 2019, Newton had interviewed or received statements from about half of the approximate dozen players who were believed to be in the room that night and either engaged in sexual activity or watched, and still Newton did not have reasonable grounds to believe a sexual assault had occurred.
He interviewed McLeod, Formenton, Dubé, and Foote — at the time Foote was believed to have only been a witness — telling them upfront he did not have grounds to lay a sexual assault charge. The men all maintained the sexual acts they engaged in or witnessed were consensual. Hart refused to speak to police, Newton noted.
After reviewing all of the evidence with his superior, the detective closed the case without laying charges. In breaking the news to the complainant, he told her that
the hotel lobby surveillance footage
and the clips from the room were a 'big part' of the evidence pointing away from her being too drunk to consent.
The complainant 'said she was satisfied with the investigation and understands this result,' Newton wrote. 'She was happy that she stood up for herself and made this report to police causing the subjects of this investigation to need to speak to what they did.'
('I was glad that the police tried to investigate, but I was very disappointed that they thought there was not enough to go further,' says the complainant's 2022 statement. 'I was too drunk to consent, and Mikey and the other guys should have known that. Any decent guy would have seen how drunk I was and not done what they did.')
While Truong wouldn't comment last year on what led to the investigation being re-opened in 2022, his officers make clear in court records that it was due to public pressure.
A group chat including a text from Michael McLeod inviting his teammates to his hotel room.
'Given a resurgence in media attention, the London Police Service has reviewed this investigation with the aim of determining what other investigative means exist and whether reasonable grounds exist to charge any person,' wrote officer David Younan in what is known as an 'Information to Obtain' (ITO) — an application by the police for a court order to seize potential evidence.
Younan wrote in the heavily redacted document in 2022 that as part of the renewed probe, investigators discovered the existence of a group chat between the players from 2018. Some of their lawyers had actually turned the text messages over, and police were just waiting for a court order to view them. Records show that McLeod texted other players: 'Who wants to be in 3 way quick,' and Hart replied: 'I'm in.'
In the days following the alleged incident, the players had texted each other about the Hockey Canada probe, with McLeod telling his teammates: 'We all need to say the same thing if we get interviewed can't have different stories or make anything up.'
The police also needed a court order to seize the investigative file from that independent investigation, Younan wrote.
He noted that Robitaille had told a House of Commons committee in 2022 that she was in possession of a 'range of evidence.' Younan expressed particular interest in the statements the players gave to Robitaille under penalty of being banned from Hockey Canada, statements a judge would later toss from the criminal case. While most of the players now on trial had spoken to London police in 2018 — when they were told upfront that there were no grounds to lay charges — they had declined to speak to police in 2022.
'It is reasonable to believe that Danielle Robitaille asked different questions of the players than our own investigators, and therefore, elicited different answers or new information about what occurred,' Younan wrote in the ITO. 'Any new information would also afford evidence.'
Court records show police also re-interviewed several people, including the complainant's mother, who had found her distraught daughter rocking back and forth in the bathtub on June 19, 2018, repeating 'it's all my fault.' Her mother tried to find out what was going on, asking her if she had had a fight with her boyfriend.
'It's all my fault, I have to break up with (my boyfriend),' her mother reported her saying.
The re-opened investigation focused on two elements, Younan wrote in the ITO: whether the complainant 'subjectively consented' to the sexual acts in the hotel room, and whether the players knew that the complainant did not consent.
Unlike in 2018, Younan said in the ITO that London police now had grounds to believe a sexual assault had been committed. Pointing to the complainant's new 2022 statement, Younan said she 'most clearly expressed her subjective non-consent' when she wrote that she didn't want to do what they were making her do, and that she was unable to say no.
While she may not have been physically prevented from leaving the hotel room, the complainant also felt like she couldn't leave given the number of 'large' men in the room, she said in her written 2022 statement sent to police.
'I was trying to say no, but I couldn't speak up and things were already happening,' she said.
Younan wrote that when taking a global view of the evidence, the complainant 'subjectively believed that she had no alternative but to engage' in the sexual acts.
'Further, I believe that each of the suspects knew or ought to have known that (the complainant) had not consented.'
In her meeting with the complainant just before charges were laid last year, Cunningham told her that while most of the news articles from 2022 'accept as true what is in your statement of claim,' the public's view of the case could shift as evidence was presented in court. She pointed to the video evidence in particular, while saying she doesn't look at the clips as proof of whether or not the complainant could consent.
There is a 'real possibility that the current perception of what happened could change,' Cunningham said.