Alleged victim in 2017 World Junior case takes the stand and describes exactly what 5 players did to her

Charged with one count each of sexual assault are former NHLers Dillon Dube, Cal Foote, Carter Hart and Alex Formenton. Michael McLeod has been charged with two counts of sexual assault, including one relating to aiding someone else in the offence. All defendants have plead 'Not Guilty'.

Today, the alleged victim E.M. took the stand for the first time in the trial and told the jury exactly what happened on the night of June 18th, 2018. She explained how she had consensual sex with McLeod, but never consented to group sex with McLeod's teammates. She describes feeling “degraded” and “humiliated,” as players spit on her, slapped her, and encouraged her to insert golf balls and golf clubs into her vagina.

From E.M.'s testimony via Katie Strang of The Athletic:

“I remember them making comments about putting golf balls in my vagina and asking if I could take the whole club and put the whole golf ball in me.”

She described her mind reeling over the requests, finding them “extreme” and “painful” and wondering what else they would ask her to do from there.

“I was already naked and drunk and feeling very vulnerable at this point,” she said. “I didn’t understand why the one man I had left with kind of disappeared and left me in that situation.”

As the men surrounded her, she said, she felt disassociated from the situation, with her mind separating itself from her body and floating to the top corner of the building, where she said she watched everything happen: “It didn’t feel like I had any control.”

E.M. said she performed oral sex on three men while others were yelling commands: “Suck! Suck it!” And telling her to “Spit on it.”

“That’s when I started feeling someone spit on my back as well,” she said.

E.M. said that after performing oral sex on the three men she laid back on the bedsheet. While she was lying down, one of the men, she said, “did the splits” over her:

“He put his penis on my face at that moment,” she said.

Asked what she thought when this happened, E.M. described it as “gross” and “didn’t think it was respectful.”

“It felt degrading,” she said.

E.M., who over the course of her testimony said that she had memory gaps, said that players were encouraging each other to have sex “with this girl” and that when she went into the bathroom, one of the men followed her.

“He put a condom on and he bent me over the bathroom sink,” she said. When she was asked about this interaction, she said she was not really doing anything, but “was just kind of bent over and he was having sex with me.”

She said that after this, she was encouraged to perform oral sex on McLeod on the bed, at which point she said multiple people began slapping her buttocks: “They were taking turns trying to hit as hard as they could. I told them to stop at that point.”

At multiple points, including when she said she was performing oral sex on McLeod, she heard references to phones, with the men telling each other to put their phones away or commands of “no phones.” She said this worried her that they were potentially recording the events.

She said that by the end of the night she was feeling tired, thirsty and physically sick. She felt like she was going to vomit and went to the bathroom to try to put her clothes on.

She said they would notice that she was crying and didn’t want to let her leave while she was distraught.

“Oh, she’s crying,” she heard one person say. “Don’t let her go.”

When asked by Cunningham whether anyone in the room checked in with her as the sexual acts were taking place, E.M. responded it was “only at the end was that brought up.”

She described feeling the need to go along with what the men wanted, which she described as her body’s way of protecting herself from the situation.

The court later heard E.M. respond to recorded videos of herself consenting to acts that took place. “It wasn’t a reflection of how I felt,” she said of what she said on both videos.

Last week, the court heard graphic descriptions of the alleged assaults that took place. Namely, Formenton and McLeod are accused of having vaginal sex with the victim without her consent, McLeod, Carter Hart and Dillon Dube are alleged to have obtained oral sex without the victim's consent, Dube is also accused of slapping the victim's behind without her consent and Cal Foote is accused... essentially... of "tea bagging" the victim without her consent. That is, where he 'grazes' his genitals over her face.

More from TSN investigative reporter Rick Westhead:

Lawyers also painted a detailed picture of how the evening began and how quickly things got out of hand.

Full details from Westhead's report for TSN:

Donkers told the jury that on June 18, 2018, E.M., who was then 20, went out to Jack’s Bar in London with a group of friends and consumed about eight alcoholic drinks over the course of the evening. While she was at the bar, McLeod and Dube were among the hockey players who surrounded E.M. on the dance floor, Donkers said.

Shortly after 1:20 a.m., McLeod and E.M. left the bar together and went to McLeod’s room – Room 209 – at the Delta Armouries Hotel in London where the hockey players were staying. Donkers said E.M. and McLeod engaged in consensual sex.

“Soon after that sexual act ended, the atmosphere in the room changed,” Donkers said. “[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.”

Donkers said the jury would see copies of those text messages, “which include messages Mr. McLeod sent to his teammates in a group chat asking ‘who wants to be in a 3 way quick. 209- mikey.’”

“You will also hear that Mr. McLeod went into the hallway and invited people into his room, where [E.M.] still lay, naked, under the covers of the bed,” Donkers said. “Before long, more and more men began arriving in room 209. There were up to 10 men inside this standard-sized hotel room at different points in the night.”

Donkers said E.M. will testify that she felt drunk, surprised by what was happening, and uncertain how to react.

“You will hear from some witnesses that, at different times in the night, [E.M.] was offering to perform sexual acts or was asking whether anyone was going to have sex with her,” Donkers said. “And you will hear from [E.M.] that throughout the night, she was going along with what the men in the room wanted — what she felt that they expected of her — because she was drunk, uncomfortable, and she did not know what would happen if she did anything else.”

Donkers said that McLeod, Hart and Dube obtained oral sex from [E.M.], that without her consent, Dube slapped [E.M.] on her naked buttocks while she was engaged in a sexual act with someone else, that, without her consent, Formenton had vaginal sex with [E.M.] in the bathroom, and that without her consent, Foote “did the splits over [E.M.]’s face while she lay on the ground, grazing his genitals over her face.”

“We anticipate you will hear evidence that at the end of the night, Mr. McLeod sexually assaulted [E.M.] once more by vaginally penetrating her without her consent,” Donkers said.

“…We anticipate you will hear [E.M.] testify that when she was in this hotel room, at age 20, intoxicated, and a group of large men that she did not know were speaking to each other as if she were not there, and then they started telling her to do certain things, she did not feel that she had a choice in the matter. On occasion, she tried to leave the room, but the men coaxed her into staying. And so, she found herself going through the motions, just trying to get through the night by doing and saying what she believed that they wanted.”

Donkers said jury members would hear testimony about two brief videos that were taken by McLeod of [E.M.] towards the end of the night, in which [E.M.] made statements including “it was all consensual.” 

Last week, the court reportedly saw video evidence from the night of the allegations.

The videos, which do not have sound, show members of the team arriving at Jack’s Bar at about the same time as the alleged victim. The players, many of whom wear T-shirts and backward baseball hats, have their I.D.’s checked before walking into the establishment.

According to TSN lead investigative writer Rick Westhead, videos of the alleged assault will also be revealed to the court:

Donkers told the jury that London police were given five videos in 2022 from the cell phone of Batherson. Donkers also said McLeod provided police with two videos in 2019 that were filmed in his hotel room on June 19. One of the videos was filmed at 3:25 a.m., and the other was filmed at 4:26 a.m.  

Police were also provided with one continuous Snapchat video in three segments from McLeod’s phone, Donkers told the jury.

Needless to say, these videos may provide the prosecution with the "Smoking Gun" that they need in such a case.

Stay tuned.