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Toronto Star

Hockey Canada trial: What happened when the prosecutor faced off with the goalie

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. In Hart's estimation: five to eight drinks at the gala, three or four pints of beer at Joe Kool's, three to five dollar-beers at Jack's. It was only the third time he'd consumed alcohol in his life, thus an inexperienced drinker, thus drunk. At 1:13 a.m., Hart sent out a group text. 'Rippers anyonr(sic) and then I'm going.' Ripper is slang for strip club. Cunningham: 'At this point in the night, you're in the mood to see naked women?' Yes, said Hart, he was. The witness had already frankly stated that his objective that evening was to get drunk and have sex. Hardly a scandalizing intention for a healthy 19-year-old male out on the town celebrating. In any event, none of his mates took Hart up on the peeler-bar suggestion. It was then, at 2:10, that Hart received a text from teammate Michael McLeod. 'Who wants to be in a 3-way quick'' and he'd responded, 'I'm in.' Canada 'The whole night was weird, wasn't it?' 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.' Cunningham: 'You're just assuming that he wouldn't make that invitation if it wasn't something she'd be interested in.' Hart: 'Correct.' Canada 'I just didn't care': Why a Hockey Canada investigator's 'unfair' probe led to the exclusion of a 'virtual treasure trove' of evidence The players were 'compelled' to sit for an interview with Hockey Canada. But they weren't told The witness said he hadn't actually yet made up his mind on going through with the threesome, despite having a brief conversation with McLeod as he walked back to the Delta Armouries hotel with two teammates, Alex Formenton and Rob Thomas. 'Did you like the idea of engaging in sex with Mr. McLeod and a woman?' asked Cunningham. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'I was open to the idea, but I hadn't made up my mind. I hadn't met her yet.' Cunningham rounded on the witness. '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. Cunningham asked six ways from Sunday if Hart was sure that things had never got out of hand in that room. 'Yes. If something happened that she didn't want, I would have left or other guys would have put a stop to it.' All we know for certain is that E.M. never put a stop to it. She said so under oath.