‘This interview could be used as evidence': Hockey Canada trial gets to witness player's dawning realization of the trouble he's in

Toronto Star

28-05-2025

Just a bunch of junior hockey players sitting around in a hotel room, chowing on mozzarella sticks and chicken wings, 'round about 2:30 in the morning — with a naked woman on the bed.
What is wrong with this picture?
Where to start?
That was the scene Michael McLeod drew for a police detective, recalling the events of June 19, 2018.
From his lawyer's office, McLeod had willingly submitted to a lengthy interview with Det. Steve Newton, an investigator with the sexual assault and child abuse unit of the London Police Service. It was Nov. 17, 2018, and Newton had already twice interviewed the young woman at the centre of the complaint.
Canada
'Awkward and weird': Hockey Canada trial sees players' video interviews from 2018 London police investigation
Michael McLeod told police in a 2018 interview that he recorded the complainant giving consent because 'it was a weird situation that I wasn't
Canada
'Awkward and weird': Hockey Canada trial sees players' video interviews from 2018 London police investigation
Michael McLeod told police in a 2018 interview that he recorded the complainant giving consent because 'it was a weird situation that I wasn't
Newton had concluded there were no grounds for laying charges, and he'd stressed that point to McLeod. 'I don't feel I have the necessary grounds for sexual assault. I don't have any plans to arrest you and charge you. I'm not detaining you. You can leave at any time.'
He cautioned, however: 'Just understand that if something should change and I do (charge you), this interview could be used as evidence.'
That's exactly by the book. Newton, after speaking to the complainant, had wondered whether she'd been an 'active participant' to what unfolded in that hotel room between the then-20-year-old woman and a number of men, members of the Canadian 2018 world junior championship team.
The players had been in London, Ont., for a Hockey Canada gala and charity event before moving along to a club called Jack's Bar, where they made the acquaintance of E.M. — her name has been protected by a publication ban.
It was, the court has heard, E.M.'s mother who initially contacted police after finding her daughter crying in the shower.
Nearly six years would pass — one police investigation closed, another police investigation later opened — before five players were charged with sexual assault.
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McLeod, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dubé, Cal Foote and Carter Hart have all pleaded not guilty. McLeod is the only one among them facing two charges — sexual assault and being a party to a sexual assault, for allegedly encouraging his teammates to engage in sex acts with the complainant when he knew she wasn't consenting.
Canada
Why didn't police lay charges in 2019? Inside the London police investigations in the Hockey Canada sex assault case
London police documents make clear the high-profile sex assault investigation was reopened in 2022 due to 'a resurgence in media attention' — with
Canada
Why didn't police lay charges in 2019? Inside the London police investigations in the Hockey Canada sex assault case
London police documents make clear the high-profile sex assault investigation was reopened in 2022 due to 'a resurgence in media attention' — with
But, on that November day when McLeod first sat across from Newton, he likely had merely an inkling of where this all might lead — to one of the most high-profile trials in the country, leaving five NHL careers in tatters and one shattered complainant.
On Tuesday, for the first time, the court heard McLeod's own voice speaking at length as an hour and a half of that recorded interview was played at the judge-alone trial. By the end of Part I, the look on McLeod's face suggested a dawning of realization, the trouble he might be in, they were all in. Between then and now, lives were severely disrupted, a $3.5 lawsuit against Hockey Canada by E.M. settled (the amount agreed has never been disclosed), shame for players and their families, public outrage, criminal indictments and disgrace splashing across Canada's most beloved sport.
There was fear in McLeod's eyes.
McLeod recounted how he and E.M. had left the bar and, by mutual agreement, retired to his room at the Delta Armouries. 'We got back to the hotel. We had sex.'
In her own testimony earlier, E.M. agreed that a specific sexual episode was consensual. But not what ensued over the next couple of hours when up to 10 of McLeod's teammates filed through Room 209.
After Hart arrived, McLeod went downstairs to pick up the Uber Eats order he'd placed. When he returned, he told Newton, 'I walked in and she was giving Carter oral sex.'
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Hart and McLeod began eating, joined shortly by three or four more teammates — the number would continue to grow. While E.M. lay nude on the bed. This apparently struck no one as a bad look.
'We were hanging out,' McLeod told Newton, 'but not blacked out drunk. We had our heads on straight.
'She got up on the bed and said 'Who wants to have sex with me? Who's going to step up and have sex with me?''
'We were all stunned.'
McLeod's roommate, Formenton, arrived. 'She wanted to have sex with him. He didn't want to do it in front of us.' Instead, E.M. and Formenton went into the bathroom, re-emerging within 15 minutes.
'Later she offered to give everyone blowjobs. I got one. Carter got one.' Which would make it two BJs for Hart, for those keeping score. 'Maybe Dubé.'
In his interview, McLeod moves backward and forward in the sequence of events. It's somewhat difficult to follow the timeline. He said E.M. became upset, hurt, when there were no takers. 'I had to calm her down.'
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Indeed, throughout the interview, McLeod presents himself as the considerate person in the room, constantly asking E.M. if she was OK. He would take two separate phone videos of E.M. asserting her willingness.
'It was a weird situation,' McLeod continued. 'That wasn't what I was expecting would happen.' Which doesn't align with evidence the court has heard that McLeod had texted several teammates: 'Who wants to be in a three-way quick Room 209.'
The judge-alone trial has heard that McLeod, Hart and Dubé obtained oral sex from E.M.; that, without her consent, Dubé slapped E.M. on her naked buttocks when she was performing oral sex; that Formenton had vaginal intercourse with E.M. in the bathroom; and that, without her consent, Foote did the splits over E.M.'s face while she lay on a sheet on the floor, grazing his genitals over her face in what's known — new word alert, for me — as 'teabagging.'
By 4 a.m., most of the players had left. McLeod shot another video in which, as he recalled, E.M. said: 'I had fun! I consented to all of this. Why are you so paranoid?'
McLeod hopped into the shower. E.M. followed. 'We had sex.'
E.M. then became distressed because she couldn't find her ring. They searched together, along with Formenton.
'She did calm down a bit, but I could tell she was upset when she left.
'And that was the end of the night.'