Evidence exposed in 2018 World Junior trial involves current Flames player!

On Thursday, before the jury in the 2018 World Juniors case was sent home early, the court heard testimony from Tyler Steenbergen, a former teammate of the five men - Cal Foote, Dillon Dubé, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart and Michael McLeod — accused of sexual assault.

On Wednesday, Steenbergen testified E.M., the complainant, asked players to have sex with her on the night of the alleged assaults in 2018. Yesterday, Steenbergen was asked about a group text chat that began after the players learned Hockey Canada was doing an investigation.

Per CBC, a group chat started by Dillon Dubé asked the players to add anyone who was in the room that night. Dubé then sends a message saying, “There are no criminal charges it’s hockey Canada code of conduct and they are investigating on what happened that might (sic) so it won’t happen again.”

Bean asks, “Could we get in trouble for it or no?” and Dubé responds, “I don’t think so.” McLeod says, “We all need to say the same thing if we get interviewed can’t have different stories or make anything up.”

Steenbergen explained that he didn’t see many of these messages until later because he was at a development camp in Arizona for players who’d just been drafted to NHL teams.

In the trial, CBC shares that the group texts and how Jake Bean, another world junior teammate and current Calgary Flames defenseman, advised the players in the group chat to tell the truth since they “didn’t do anything wrong.”

Bean has not been accused of any wrongdoing. He is not the first current NHL player to be mentioned in the trial, as Brett Howden, Sam Steel and Drake Batherson are playing for the Vegas Golden Knights, Dallas Stars and Ottawa Senators respectively.

In the group chat, the men discuss setting up another group chat or a call, on an app called House Party, or on Snapchat or FaceTime. It’s difficult because they’re all in different timezones, Maxime Comptois doesn’t have Snapchat, etc.

Jake Bean writes, “No, boys. Like we don’t need to make anything up. No one did anything wrong. We went to that room to eat. The girl came, she wanted to have sex with all of us. No one did. She gave a few guys head, and then we got out of the room when things got too crazy.” Bean adds, “And Mikey literally has a video giving her consent.”

Dubé writes, “Ok ya f–-k we are fine the boys who did things got consent so just tell them that it’s fine.”

Bean later replies, “You took the videos because you wanted to make sure nothing bad would happen. And cover yourself.”

They discuss keeping each other “in the loop” and that Hockey Canada can’t go through their phones unless police are involved.

Dubé writes, “Let’s not make her sound too crazy because if she gets wind of this and then she can get even more angry and we don’t need that so just be good about it but the truth with it.”

The messages continue:

“The truth is we didn’t do anything stupid … we had her consent. We didn’t force her to do anything,” Comtois writes.

McLeod replies: “Yeah like it wasn’t her that went to the police it was her mom. No idea why but she already told me she told the police that she doesn’t want to pursue this and it was a mistake. She also text me saying sorry about all this and that she was in the wrong too. I have these texts saved.”

“Keep it,” Comtois tells him, referring to saving her texts.

There are more messages between the men that day, on June 26, about the possibility of speaking to Hockey Canada and about McLeod being in touch with E.M. by text in the days after the night of the alleged sexual assaults.

After a short break, the testimony continued with Steenbergen confirming that on June 26, Hockey Canada sent an email to the players about an investigation.

The discussion continued in the group chat as so, per CBC:

In the group chat, the players talk about how it’s “just Hockey Canada” investigating, not police.

“It’s private and no police are involved so we are all perfectly fine,” Cal Foote wrote in the chat.
On June 27, the men discuss Bullock (the Hockey Canada executive) calling each of them, as well as what he asked and what they should say.

“What do I tell him,” Carter asks in the group chat.

“He won’t ask you anything about what happen (sic),” Comtois replies.

There’s some discussion about Hockey Canada wanting to do interviews in person, and many of the men don’t want that.

“That’s ridiculous … Like this is nothing and we can’t be making this big of deal out of it,” Bean writes.

They discuss getting lawyers.

“If we just called Bullock and tell him everything this probably doesn’t have to happen,” Howden tells the group.

“We didn’t rape anyone,” Comtois says.

“Everyone stop talking in here. And talk to your agents about this,” Bean advises.

Steenbergen also testified that while the men were in the group chats, he got two brief phone calls, from Dubé and then Foote.

“The conversations were brief because Steenbergen was at development camp and was trying to focus on hockey.”
In the first call, Dubé told him he’d gotten a call from Bullock, the Hockey Canada executive, to tell him there’d be an investigation. Dubé told Steenbergen to “just say what you saw” and to not mention what he saw Dubé do, and that Dubé would explain that himself.

The phone call with Foote was “pretty much the same,” Steenbergen said. “Don’t say what he did, that he would go in and explain it himself.”

Steenbergen says he understood that to mean he wasn’t to mention he saw Dubé slapping the woman’s butt or saw Foote do the splits.

The trial then took an unexpected break and the jury was sent home for the day. Whatever is discussed while the jury is not present cannot be reported due to a publication ban.

We however found out the names of all people included in the group chat:
* Carter Hart.
* Jake Bean.
* Cal Foote.
* Dillon Dubé.
* Maxime Comtois.
* Drake Batherson.
* Michael McLeod.
* Brett Howden.
* Sam Steel.
* Alex Formenton.
* Tyler Steenbergen.

The accused — Cal Foote, Dillon Dubé, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart and Michael McLeod — have all pleaded not guilty.
The trial is expected to continue Friday morning.