Hockey Canada sexual assault trial: A timeline of legal proceedings unfolding in a London, Ont. courthouse

Toronto Star

2 days ago

A 'treasure trove' of evidence thrown out and two juries dismissed.
The trial of five professional hockey players accused of sexually assaulting a woman in London, Ont., has been filled with difficult testimony and unexpected drama.
The players, all of whom were part of Canada's team at the 2018 world junior championships, have been standing trial since April.
The Star's courts and justice reporter Jacques Gallant is reporting on the legal saga that has captured public attention and sparked a reckoning over the handling of sexual misconduct allegations in professional sports.
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From left to right: Ottawa Senators' Alex Formenton, New Jersey Devils defenceman Cal Foote, New Jersey Devils' Michael McLeod, Calgary Flames centre Dillon Dube and Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Carter Hart.
Canadian Press/AP compilation
The five players, Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart, Dillon Dubé and Cal Foote, are charged with sexually assaulting a then-20-year-old woman in the early morning of June 19, 2018, in a room at the Delta Armouries hotel following the Hockey Canada Foundation's annual Gala & Golf fundraising event in London. McLeod faces a second charge of 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 men — who now range in age from 25 to 27 — were all members of the team that won gold for Canada at the 2018 world junior championships. All but Formenton were playing in the NHL when they were arrested last year: McLeod and Foote were with the New Jersey Devils, Hart with the Philadelphia Flyers, and Dubé with the Calgary Flames. Formenton, who previously played with the Ottawa Senators, was with Swiss team HC Ambri-Piotta.
The trial has unfolded in court with each player seated at a separate table, alongside their lawyers. Here's a timeline of all the key moments of the trial so far:
April 22: The first trial begins and all players plead not guilty
Justice Maria Carroccia, left to right, Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote are seen in a courtroom sketch.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Alexandra Newbould
At the beginning of the trial, presided over by Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia, all five players stood before a packed courtroom and pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.
The pleas came as no surprise. The accused players are being represented by some of the most prominent criminal lawyers in the province; their lawyers had said since their January 2024 arrests that their clients maintain their innocence.
News organizations are barred from writing about the identity of the complainant under a publication ban that is typical in cases involving allegations of sexual assault.
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April 25: The judge declares a mistrial
Crown Heather Donkers, centre, and Justice Maria Carroccia, back, are shown in court.
Alexandra Newbould/ The Canadian Press
The first trial's jury had only been selected three days earlier had barely heard any evidence when Justice Carroccia declared a mistrial and dismissed the jury, for reasons that were covered by a publication ban intended to protect the players' right to a fair trial by the next jury. (That ban became redundant when the second jury was subsequently dismissed; the Star has since reported that the mistrial was declared over an interaction between a juror and a defence lawyer.)
The court immediately proceeded to select another jury of 14 for a second trial, beginning immediately. All five men once again formally entered their pleas of not guilty.
May 5: Week one; the Crown begins its case
The following week's court proceedings saw Crown attorneys Meaghan Cunningham and Heather Donkers spell out the specific details of the allegations against each of the accused.
Crown Meaghan Cunningham, right, and Taylor Raddysh, depicted in video conference, are seen in a courtroom sketch in London, Ont., Wednesday, April 30, 2025.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Alexandra Newbould
They explained that after the complainant had consensual sex with McLeod in a hotel room, a series of subsequent sexual interactions occurred — all without the woman's consent. Specifically, Formenton engaged in intercourse with the complainant in the hotel room bathroom; McLeod, Hart and Dubé obtained oral sex; Dubé slapped the complainant's naked buttocks; Foote did the 'splits' over the woman while she lay on the ground, 'grazing his genitals over her face'; and McLeod had vaginal intercourse with her a second time
In the first week, the jury saw evidence including screengrabs of McLeod messaging his teammates in a group chat just after 2 a.m. on June 19, writing: 'Who wants to be in 3 way quick,' one message read.
Jurors also saw the complainant in two short videos taken inside the courtroom. In one, taken about 20 minutes before she's seen on camera leaving the hotel, she says 'it was all consensual.'
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'Are you recording me? OK, good, it was all consensual,' she continues. '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.'
May 14: The complainant testifies for a total of nine days
Crown Meaghan Cunningham, and the complainant, depicted in video conference, are seen in a courtroom sketch in London, Ont., Friday, May 2, 2025.
Alexandra Newbould The Canadian Press
In the nine days of her testimony, including seven days of cross-questioning by defence lawyers, the complainant went into graphic detail to describe her allegations about what took place inside the hotel room on June 19, 2018.
She said she met player Michael McLeod at Jack's Bar when she was 20 years old and returned to his room at the Delta Armouries hotel where they had consensual sex, only for multiple men to come in afterward. She has alleged they placed a bedsheet on the floor and asked her to fondle herself, to perform oral sex on them as she was slapped and spat on, and to have vaginal intercourse.
During her cross-examination, the complainant testified that she took on a 'porn star persona' as a coping mechanism in a hotel room full of men she didn't know. She explained that her mind had separated from her body while she engaged in sexual activity with the men.
She did not claim the men physically forced her to do anything that night, nor that she said no to the alleged assaults, but said she nonetheless did not consent to what happened.
She testified she was drunk and in an autonomous state, acting in 'autopilot' while surrounded by large men she didn't know and who should have known she wasn't consenting.
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May 16: Second jury dismissed, trial goes judge-alone
In a shocking turn of events, Justice Carroccia dismissed the second jury suddenly after a complaint that multiple jurors felt that two defence lawyers appeared to be making fun of them in court — something the lawyers vehemently denied.
Following agreement by the Crown and defence, the judge decided to continue to hear the trial without a jury, meaning witnesses who have already testified would not have to come back.
'My concern is that there is a possibility that several members of the jury harbour negative feelings about certain counsel that could potentially impact upon their ability to fairly decide this case,' Carroccia said in her ruling explaining her decision to dismiss the jury.
Before being dismissed, the jury had started hearing testimony from player Tyler Steenbergen, who said he heard the woman demanding to have sex with players in the room, and witnessed Dube slap her naked buttocks and 'partially' saw Foote do the splits over her while she was on the ground.
The judge's decision to dismiss the jury also had the effect of removing any publication bans on evidence heard in pretrial hearings. Such bans are intended to maintain a jury's impartiality by shielding them from information deemed inadmissible at trial.
Without a jury, however, the Star could report what it saw and learned at these hearings.
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Why a Hockey Canada investigator's 'unfair' probe led to the exclusion of a 'virtual treasure trove' of evidence
Hockey Canada initially investigated the alleged incident in 2018, with no conclusion.
However, the woman later filed a lawsuit against the organization and, by 2022, her story had become the focus of nationwide outrage. Facing intense public pressure, Hockey Canada presented the players — some now playing in the NHL — with a stark choice: give an interview to a re-opened internal investigation, or be identified publicly and banned from Hockey Canada activities and programs for life.
Lawyer Danielle Robitaille appears as a witness at the standing committee on Canadian Heritage in Ottawa on Tuesday, July 26, 2022.
Sean Kilpatrick The Canadian Press
What the organization's independent investigator and prominent Toronto lawyer Danielle Robitaille didn't tell the players is that by August 2022, she was aware that London police planned to get a warrant to seize her investigative file as part of its own reopened investigation.
Robitaille's decision to press ahead became the focus of intense argument in the pretrial hearings.
Were you 'oblivious' to how potentially valuable these statements could be in the hands of the police and the Crown, as they made their case for criminal charges, McLeod's lawyer David Humphrey asked Robitaille at the hearings last year?
'I just didn't care,' Robitaille testified. 'It was collateral to me.'
Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas found that how the statements were obtained was 'so unfair and prejudicial' that they could not be used by the Crown at trial, ruled that the statements had to be excluded, and so they were never heard in court.
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Why didn't police lay charges in 2019? Inside the London police investigations in the Hockey Canada sex assault case
The entrance to room 209 is seen at the Delta Armouries hotel in London, Ont. on April 25.
DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS
With the second jury dismissed, Star reporter Jacques Gallant was also able to report details of both London police investigations. The first, launched in 2018, ended without charges being laid. The case was re-opened in 2022 amid intense public pressure after it was revealed Hockey Canada had settled, for an undisclosed sum, a $3.5-million sexual assault lawsuit filed by the complainant.
The renewed police investigation would ultimately lead to the sexual assault charges against the five players.
Documents from the first police investigation revealed that London police Det. Steve Newton came to doubt that a crime had been committed. Among the pieces of evidence that led him to that conclusion were the videos of the complainant inside the hotel room saying it was 'consensual' and surveillance footage showing the complainant walking steadily and unaided in heels in the hotel lobby — appearing to contradict that she was too intoxicated that night to consent.
Newton wondered whether the complainant had been an 'active participant' in the events of June 18-19, 2018; he closed the case in February 2019.
The re-opened investigation eventually led to charges under a different theory of the case: that although the complainant did not say no and was not too drunk to consent, she subjectively believed she had no alternative but to engage in sexual acts with a group of men who ought to have known she was not consenting.
Behind the scenes, Crown attorney Cunningham met with the complainant and warned her that while the Crown felt it had met the test to prosecute, it was 'not a really, really strong case.'
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Read more about the two police investigations from the Star's Jacques Gallant:
Canada
Why didn't police lay charges in 2019? Inside the London police investigations in the Hockey Canada sex assault case
Jacques Gallant
May 29: Crown prosecutors rest their case
Five weeks, seven witnesses and two dismissed juries later, the Crown closed its case, hoping to have persuaded judge Carroccia that the five hockey players were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of sexually assaulting the 20-year-old complainant the night of a charity fundraiser.
'I am formally closing the Crown's case at this time,' Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham said in court.
Read Jacques Gallant's report summarizing the Crown's evidence:
Canada
The defence has closed and the Hockey Canada sex assault trial is ending. Here's what matters from six weeks of evidence
Jacques Gallant
June 2: Defence closes their case in the trial
Of the five former members of the 2018 Canadian world junior championship team on trial, only Carter Hart ended up testifying in his own defence, telling the court that his sexual contact with the complainant was consensual.
The trial's final witness was London police Det. Lyndsey Ryan, who was tasked in the summer of 2022 with leading the reopened probe.
The complainant in the Hockey Canada sexual assault case 'was actually quite upset' when Ryan the news to her in 2022 that the force was taking a second look at its initial investigation that had led to no criminal charges, the detective testified. 'I felt pretty bad because it felt like … I got the sense that I was opening up some wounds that she was trying to close,' Ryan said.
Ultimately, the other four players declined to testify; the trial was put on hold until June 9, after which both sides will present their closing arguments to Carroccia.
Canada
Complainant 'actually quite upset' police reopened Hockey Canada sex assault case, London detective testifies
Jacques Gallant