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Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Former Canadian World Junior Player Testifies About What Was Said In Hotel Room On Night Of Alleged Sexual Assault
Warning: coverage of the Hockey Canada trial includes graphic details of alleged sexual assault that may be disturbing to readers. A former Canadian world junior team member testifying in the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial said a woman asked the men in a London, Ont., hotel room for sex when an alleged assault occurred. Tyler Steenbergen is a former member of Canada's 2018 World Junior Championship squad. Five of his teammates – Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Cal Foote – have each pleaded not guilty to a charge of sexual assault, with McLeod pleading not guilty to an additional charge of sexual assault as party to the offense. The charges the former NHLers face are in relation to a 2018 incident in which a woman, referred to in court documents as E.M., alleges the men sexually assaulted her following a Hockey Canada gala. Steenbergen has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Once the Crown's re-examination of the complainant wrapped up in the mid-afternoon on Wednesday, Steenbergen appeared virtually to begin his Crown testimony for the jury. After asking Steenbergen about his time at Jack's Bar – where E.M. initially met McLeod and other players – the night of the alleged assault, assistant Crown attorney Heather Donkers shifted to the events that occurred in Room 209 of the Delta Armouries Hotel in London. Steenbergen said he initially went to the room because he received a text that there was 'food in McLeod's room.' He also testified that once he's in the room, he heard someone say, 'Guys, there's a naked girl in the bathroom.' Just before this, Steenbergen said he remembers seeing other players in the room, including Jake Bean and Dube, who entered together. Other players included Sam Steel, Hart, Maxime Comtois, Drake Batherson, McLeod, Brett Howden and Formenton. Bean, Steel, Comtois, Batherson and Howden are not accused of any wrongdoing. Steenbergen testified that a woman exited the bathroom unclothed, made her way to a bed sheet on the floor of the room, began masturbating and saying, 'Can one of you guys come over and f--- me?' Steenbergen testified that after this question, Hart made his way over to the woman and received oral sex from her. Donkers then asked what the atmosphere was like in the room during that moment. 'I feel like when she asked the guys to come over to have sex with her, I feel like everyone was in shock that she had said that,' Steenbergen said. He also said he remembered that after the woman had finished giving oral sex to Hart, she told the guys they were 'being p-----s' and then proceeded to give oral sex to McLeod. Hockey Canada Sexual Assault Trial: Defense Lawyer Questions E.M. On Cal Foote's Alleged 'Party Trick' Warning: coverage of the Hockey Canada trial includes graphic details of alleged sexual assault that may be disturbing to readers. Before Steenbergen began his testimony, the jury saw the Crown's re-examination of the complainant. A major focus was put on re-examining her responses to when Foote allegedly did the splits over top of her, grazing her face with his genitals. Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham asked E.M. to explain further part of her statement to police from June 22, 2018, in which she said, 'It was just funny to them, like, 'Do this,' like, the one just did the splits on my face, just to put it in my face, kinda.' E.M. clarified that the 'it' she was referring to was, 'his penis, in my face.' This line of questioning ended nearly nine days of the complainant's testimony before the jury. This included her Crown testimony, parts of seven days of the defense's cross-examination and Wednesday's Crown re-examination. The trial is expected to resume Thursday morning with the continuation of Steenbergen's Crown testimony.
Time of India
01-05-2025
- Time of India
The jury saw the surveillance footage of hockey players from the 2018 Hockey Canada sexual assault scandal
(Image via Getty: Michael McLeod) After a mistrial on April 25 in the sexual assault trial of five former members of Canada's 2018 World Junior Hockey team, a new jury was selected. As informed by Rick Westhead on his X, on April 26, the new jury consisted of 14 members - 9 women and 5 men. Before this, the 14-member jury had 11 women and 3 men. On Wednesday, the London Court saw timestamped surveillance videos of Taylor Raddysh, forward for the Washington Capitals, entering the Delta Armouries Hotel before 1:00 a.m. on June 19, 2018. Crown Attorney Heather Donkers presented videos from the dance floor at Jack's Bar in London, where Michael McLeod and other hockey players first met E.M. The videos were derived from Michael McLeod and Drake Batherson's phones. Michael McLeod and E.M. arrived at the London Hotel at 1:45 a.m. Another video followed. It showed Michael McLeod and E.M. passing through the hotel's lobby area. The videos were provided by London Police Detective Tiffany Waque and she answered all the questions about the security footage. Another video timestamped between 2:23 a.m. to 3:13 a.m. on June 19, 2018, from the hotel lobby area, showed Boris Katchouk, Drake Batherson, Brett Howden, Sam Steel, Jonah Gadjovich, Robert Thomas, Jake Bean, Maxime Comtois, Colton Point, and Tyler Steenbergen enter at different points and in groups. Before the hockey players entered the hotel lobby, Michael McLeod's phone sent a message - 'Who wants to be in 3 way quick' Tiffany Waque shared screenshots of Michael McLeod's phone conversations from the time of the incident with the court. At 2:10 a.m. Michael McLeod sent a message from his phone to his team group - 'Who wants to be in 3 way quick.' 9 minutes later, Carter Hart replied, 'I'm in.' Crown Attorney Heather Donkers informed the jury that the case was about consent and, equally important, what does not count as consent. Heather Donkers explained E.M.'s side of the story from the night of the incident As reported by Rick Westhead, Senior Correspondent from TSN, on the evening of June 18, 2018, E.M. went out to Jack's Bar in London with her group of friends and had eight alcoholic drinks. When E.M. was at the bar, Michael McLeod and Dillon Dube surrounded E.M. on the dance floor. At 1:20 a.m. McLeod and E.M. left Jack's Bar and went to McLeod's room - Room 209 - from the Delta Armouries Hotel in London. Donkers shared with the jury that E.M. and McLeod engaged in consensual sex. 'Soon after the sexual act ended, the atmosphere in the room changed. E.M. will testify that she observed Mr. McLeod on his phone. And she believed he was messaging people, but she did not know who or what he was messaging.' shared Heather Donkers with the jury. Also Read: 'I kiss the inside of my jersey when I put on': Weird superstitions and pregame rituals of NHL players | NHL News - The Times of India
New York Times
21-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
From Kobe Bryant to Hockey Canada: Athletes and the pursuit of ‘consent' in the digital age
It's nearly 3:30 a.m. on June 19, 2018, and inside a room at the Delta Armouries Hotel in London, Ontario, a six-second cellphone video is being recorded. 'You're OK with this?' an unidentified man asks a young woman, who is shown from the neck up. 'I'm OK with this,' she responds before the video cuts off. Advertisement Almost an hour later, another cellphone video is recorded. This one is about 12 seconds long. The same woman stands with a towel covering her chest. She asks, 'Are you recording me?' before declaring, 'It was all consensual. 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.' This week, almost seven years since those two brief videos were recorded — and first reported on by The Globe and Mail and TSN — those 18 seconds of footage will be at the center of a case that has grabbed the attention of the hockey world as five former members of Canada's 2018 gold medal-winning World Junior Championship team — Alex Formenton, Carter Hart, Dillon Dubé, Michael McLeod and Cal Foote — each face one count of sexual assault, and McLeod a second charge for 'being party to the offense.' In a lawsuit filed by the woman — referred to as E.M. in court documents — she said that eight players assaulted her over several hours in the London hotel room. She confirmed she engaged in consensual sex with one player, but he invited several of his teammates into the hotel room without her knowledge or consent. E.M. maintains she did not consent to any of the sexual contact or acts that followed. She also noted several of the players had golf clubs in the room, and that she felt physically intimidated and unable to leave. The defendants, now aged 25 to 27, came of age during a turbulent period of prominent revelations of sexual violence by formerly esteemed figures. For many athletes from that era, a perception emerged that they were targets due to their fame and/or wealth and that steps and strategies had to be adopted to head off false allegations. In response, athletes sought digital indemnifiers. From 'sex contracts' to strategic sexting to so-called 'consent videos,' more and more athletes are creating digital footprints of their sexual encounters. Advertisement 'There's been a series of events, or cascade of things, leading to cultural change … this mindset or sentiment among some who fear accusations because they think that false accusations are common,' said Kristen Jozkowski, a sexual violence expert and researcher at Indiana University in Bloomington. In 2003, long before the Me Too movement brought widespread awareness to the issues of consent and sexual assault, Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant was accused of raping a 19-year-old hotel employee in Edwards, Colo. The case garnered widespread media attention and dominated headlines. The case did little to impede Bryant's basketball career, while the woman's sexual history was paraded in court and across tabloids. 'The criminal justice system is not designed to protect women in these types of situations, especially with athletes,' said Dan Gilleon, a San Diego attorney who represented a 17-year-old girl who alleged she was gang raped by three San Diego State football players in 2021. (All cases, but one, have been settled.) The criminal case against Bryant was ultimately dropped after the complainant refused to testify, but Bryant settled the woman's civil suit for an estimated $2.5 million. The aftershocks of that scandal on the lives of athletes were significant. Some turned to 'pre-sex agreement forms' as insurance against any allegations. In an interview with Sports Illustrated in 2003, Ava Cadell, an L.A. area sex therapist, said in the wake of the Bryant case she had begun drawing up such agreements. 'Athletes are going to carry consent forms just like they carry condoms,' she said. 'It's another layer of protection.' Stephen Jackson, who played 14 seasons in the NBA, explained to SI why he would rely on a consent form before sex: 'People look at us as targets and try to get what they can out of us.' Advertisement The concern amongst professional athletes spread to college campuses when, in 2006, an exotic dancer hired to perform at a team party accused three members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team of raping her. The details were splashed across front pages; '60 Minutes' devoted five separate segments to coverage of the case. Yet, it would later be revealed that the assault accusation against the trio was a fabrication. A 'Tragic Rush to Accuse' read a headline in the Canadian National Post. In 2009, Apple unveiled its iPhone 3GS, the first model with both photo and video recording capabilities. Visual evidence of sexual encounters became more ubiquitous, in the form of both agreed-upon sex tapes and secret voyeuristic recordings. In 2013, Roxanne Jones, former vice president of ESPN, penned an op-ed for CNN titled 'Young men, get a 'yes' text before sex.'' 'I've actually been encouraging my son and his friends to use sexting — minus the lewd photos — to protect themselves from being wrongly accused of rape,' Jones wrote about her college-aged son. 'Because just as damning text messages and Facebook posts helped convict the high schoolers in Steubenville of rape, technology can also be used to prove innocence.' Said Jozkowski: 'There's at least over 10 years of initiatives, as well as individuals who have sort of attempted to implement this kind of technique of 'I'm going to record a video on my phone. … I'm going to record you saying you're consenting and I'm consenting, and then we have this sort of record to verify our consent. That way, neither of us can say rape later on.'' As the London Five entered their teenage years and climbed the rungs of junior hockey, there were numerous publicized cases where athletes were accused of sexual assault and visual evidence was key to the defense. In 2012, three teenage members of the Ontario Hockey League's Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds — Nick Cousins, Andrew Fritsch and Mark Petaccio — were charged with sexual assault of a woman. But a series of intimate photographs, which depicted the woman participating in a sexual act with more than one male present, ultimately torpedoed the case, according to Sean Sparling, who spent 18 years in Sault Ste. Marie police service's major crimes unit. 'Even if she didn't want it to happen, the photograph raised the issue of whether you could prove lack of consent,' recalled former Sault Ste. Marie Crown Attorney Bill Johnson. Advertisement Commenting on the allegations against Cousins, Philadelphia Flyers director of player development Ian Laperriere later told the Philadelphia Daily News: 'Let's be honest, stuff like that has been happening forever. You can't get away with anything now. He can't put himself in those situations.' In 2014 and 2015, at a time when most of the London Five were making their OHL or WHL debuts, the troubling culture of elite-level youth hockey was laid bare: In 2014, a group of four Olympiques players allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in a Quebec City hotel room, and there was also a complaint of 'gross indecency' involving six players from the same team and an intoxicated woman in the washroom of a pizzeria. Also that year, the University of Ottawa suspended its men's hockey team for an alleged gang rape. Around the same time, a vulgar online handbook of sorts, known as 'The Junior Hockey Bible,' circulated in youth hockey circles. While some of the 84 entries refer to lingo used on the ice against opponents, most of the definitions are for words used to describe women, specific sexual acts to be performed on them, or ways to protect yourself from them. The now-defunct document, which Vice called a 'sexual assault guide book,' defines 'Swamp Donkey' as a type of woman who 'must be avoided before the consumption of at least 13 beers, and after that precede (sic) with caution and only poke her if you can degrade her in some way in front on the boys, preferably on video camera.' Or 'Kangaroo Court,' 'the law of the dressing room … enforced on players who commit crimes with disgusting sluts of the opposite sex.' Other players will make fun of this individual, but 'credit can be given for pretty much anything that degrades the broad in any way. Extra points for anything filmed on camera.' Advertisement While there are several references to recording these encounters, there are also warnings, too: 'You may videotape if possible, but do not make copies. Evidence can be harmful.' In 2015, the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League began teaching 'Unsafe Sexual Behavior' to its players, according to court records. On a training slide titled 'the meaning of consent,' the two following recommendations are provided to athletes: 'A person accused of sexual assault can argue in court that he honestly believed his partner agreed to the sexual activity. This defense is referred to as an 'honest but mistaken belief in consent,'' and 'Do not share information that could incriminate anyone.' The Me Too movement arrived in 2017 — a year before the alleged sexual assault in London. It created greater awareness of sexual violence and calcified concerns amongst some men's groups, leading to more reliance on 'documented consent.' In 2023, two former Ohio State football players were acquitted on rape and kidnapping charges based on a 'consent video,' in which a naked, crying woman states the encounter was consensual. The defense attorney for one of the players said his client took the video after receiving instructions by a school official at an OSU football team meeting to 'always make sure you get it on record that whatever you do is consensual.' Last year, in Hamilton, Ontario, less than 100 miles from London, Jack Densmore, a popular YouTuber known for his controversial videos, testified that athletes, celebrities, and others he partied with advised him to make consent videos, so he adopted the practice himself. But at his own sexual assault trial in 2024, it was determined he had taken a video of a woman without her permission in what he later claimed was an effort to create a record of consent. He was sentenced to three years in prison. Densmore's case underscores the misunderstanding that experts say surrounds consent in general and the effort to capture it digitally. Consent can be given and taken away, and may change over the course of an interaction. And jurors who may be viewing those 18 seconds of footage of E.M. during the Hockey Canada trial in London may have to consider that and more. 'The video may be misleading. It may include a component of a larger interaction. It may be potentially coerced,' said Jozkowski. 'Someone can look a particular way, do a particular thing, and then a moment later, the video is off and they are screaming 'no.'' (Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Images: iStock)
