Seven years after an encounter that put sports culture under a national microscope and sparked a new wave of conversations about consent, a judge is set to rule this week on whether the actions of five hockey players inside a London, Ont., hotel room that night constituted sexual assault.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia is expected to deliver her decision Thursday in the trial of Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote, young men who played on Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team.

The players, now between the ages of 25 and 27, have all pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to a separate count of being a party to the offence, an unusual application of a charge that court heard is more typically seen in murder cases.

Years of public discourse and speculation regarding the allegations – fuelled by a civil settlement, parliamentary hearings and revived investigations by police and Hockey Canada – set the stage for a complex trial whose twists and turns captivated the country over roughly two months this spring.

Challenges and setbacks arose almost as soon as the trial began, including a mistrial in the first few days and a sudden switch from jury to judge-alone proceedings weeks later in order to avoid a second.

The change means that when Carroccia delivers her ruling, the judge will also lay out the reasons for her findings – unlike a jury, which only hands down a verdict. In Canada, unlike the United States, jurors are forbidden by law from discussing jury work, including deliberations, with anyone aside from mental health professionals.

The public benefits from that additional insight in high-profile cases such as this, said Lise Gotell, a professor at the University of Alberta who teaches on consent and sexual assault.

Regardless of the outcome, the case has cast a spotlight on Canada’s high legal standard for consent, some experts say, and its impact is likely to reverberate beyond the courtroom.

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World junior defence wraps closing submissions, Crown begins final pitch

“Whatever the outcome of this trial is, the implication … will have been to put this kind of hockey masculinity, hockey culture on trial,” Gotell said in a recent interview.

“Because even if the judge determines that there was no sexual assault, definitely what occurred in that hotel room – although I realize there are competing stories about that – is deeply troubling.”

The events at the heart of the trial took place in June 2018, as the accused and many of their national junior hockey teammates were in London for a gala and golf tournament to celebrate their victory at that year’s championship.

After an open-bar gala hosted by Hockey Canada, most of the team ended up at a downtown bar where the complainant was drinking and dancing with co-workers, court heard.

The woman, who was 20 at the time and cannot be identified under a publication ban, eventually left with McLeod and the two of them had sex in his hotel room, court heard. That encounter is not part of the trial, which instead focused on what happened after several other members of the team came into McLeod’s room.

Prosecutors allege McLeod was the “ringleader,” arranging to have his friends come to engage in sexual acts with the woman without her knowledge or consent and expecting her to go along once they arrived.

The woman did not voluntarily consent to the sexual acts that followed, nor did the players accused in the case take reasonable steps to find out whether she did, the Crown alleges.

“She was incredibly vulnerable in that room. … She was naked and there were 10 of them. They all knew each other, and she was a stranger to all of them,” prosecutor Meaghan Cunningham argued in her closing submissions.

“These are circumstances where the law demands more steps be taken (to confirm consent) than in other situations.”

Under Canadian law, consent must be communicated for each specific act at the time it takes place and cannot be obtained retroactively or given broadly in advance, she said.

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What’s the biggest takeaway from the world junior hockey trial?

Defence lawyers, meanwhile, argued the woman actively participated in sexual activity with the men, even taunting them to do things with her at times.

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She made up the allegations to avoid taking responsibility for her choices that night, including her decision to cheat on her boyfriend, they argued in closing submissions that largely took aim at her credibility and reliability as a witness.

David Humphrey, who represents McLeod, said the woman’s account of what happened is undermined by some of what she told police in 2018, as well as the testimony of other eyewitnesses and other reliable evidence.

The woman initially portrayed herself as too drunk to consent, then came up with the explanation that she engaged in sexual acts out of fear when she filed a civil suit after the initial police investigation was closed without charges, he argued.

The onus is not on the accused to prove their innocence or disprove the Crown’s case, Humphrey said, nor is the court tasked with assessing whether the men “could have been better behaved or more respectful.”

From the widespread public speculation that preceded the charges to the parallel Hockey Canada investigation and the number of accused and eyewitnesses, “nothing about this case is common or typical,” said Daphne Gilbert, a professor at the University of Ottawa who teaches sexual assault law.

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World junior trial: Court watches Michael McLeod’s 2018 police interview

It all comes down to Carroccia’s understanding of consent, and it will be interesting to see how the judge addresses the issue of what represents reasonable steps to determine consent, Gilbert said.

“We don’t have great case law on what constitutes reasonable steps … so from a legal perspective I think that’s going to be a really interesting legal question,” she said in a recent interview.

The judge’s findings and reasoning regarding the charge of being a party to the offence of sexual assault could also explore new legal territory, Gilbert said.

On a broader social level, the case could have a “chilling impact” on the reporting of sexual assault allegations, particularly in light of the complainant’s lengthy testimony, the professor said, adding she would like to see Carroccia say something about how people can trust in the justice system.

Gilbert, whose class on sexual assault law touches on ethical defence practices, said the ruling would ideally address “some of the tactics of the defence lawyers.”

“There’s ways of doing it without being brutal and without brutalizing a complainant, and I thought a couple of the lawyers went too far,” she said.

For example, Formenton’s lawyer, Daniel Brown, at one point repeatedly referred to the complainant as having a “sober” persona and a “fun” persona, which Gilbert said she found offensive.

Brown declined to comment. The other defence lawyers did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

Police closed their initial investigation without charges in early 2019, a decision court heard was based in part on the lead detective’s view that the complainant did not look overly intoxicated in security footage from the hotel.

It wasn’t until three years later that the incident first came to the public’s attention.

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Carter Hart takes the stand in world junior sexual assault trial

TSN reported in the spring of 2022 that Hockey Canada had quietly settled a lawsuit against the sporting organization and eight unnamed players for an undisclosed amount.

The lawsuit was settled before the unidentified players even got wind of it, court heard, and Hockey Canada soon found itself at the centre of a growing scandal that drew political scrutiny and dealt a major blow to its finances as corporate sponsors paused or withdrew funding.

The organization reopened its investigation into the allegations and said it would publicly name and impose a lifetime ban on any players who didn’t participate.

Police also revived their probe and obtained a production order for Hockey Canada’s investigative file, which included interviews conducted that fall with McLeod, Dube and Formenton. Those interviews were later excluded from the trial after a judge found they were secured under threat of penalties that could affect the players’ careers.

The players’ identities were made public when they were charged in early 2024.

At the time, four of them played in the NHL – Dube for the Calgary Flames, Hart for the Philadelphia Flyers, McLeod and Foote for the New Jersey Devils. Formenton had previously played for the Ottawa Senators before joining a team in Switzerland. All were allowed to go on indefinite leave.

The trial began in April of this year and heard testimony from nine witnesses, including Hart and four other world junior teammates who were in the room at various points that night.

Video or audio recordings of the interviews McLeod, Formenton and Dube gave police in 2018 were also played in court, as were two short videos of the complainant taken by McLeod about an hour apart the night of the encounter.

In one of the clips, the woman says it was “all consensual,” though she told the court that wasn’t how she truly felt.

It’s not uncommon for professional athletes to take such videos, Hart testified, and the defence argued the clips present “crucial evidence” that the woman was consenting and not afraid. Prosecutors, however, argued the videos are not evidence of consent nor do they represent reasonable steps to determine whether the woman was voluntarily consenting.

The complainant took the stand via CCTV over nine days, seven of them cross-examination by the defence, with tensions rising on several occasions.

Memory was a recurring issue for many of the witnesses, who pointed to the passage of time as well as the alcohol they had consumed that night.

The trial heard that shortly after 2 a.m., McLeod texted a team group chat asking if anyone wanted a “three-way,” and Hart replied, “I’m in.” McLeod did not tell police about the text when he was interviewed, instead saying he had told “a few guys” he was ordering food and had a girl in his room.

The woman was still naked and drunk when men she didn’t know started coming into the room, she told the court. She was surprised and scared, and felt she had no choice but to go along with what they wanted, she said, engaging in sexual acts on “autopilot.”

She tried to leave at various points, and while no one physically stopped her, someone coaxed her into staying each time, she said.

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Ex-teammates testify as world junior trial resumes by judge alone

Two players who were called as Crown witnesses, Tyler Steenbergen and Brett Howden, as well as Hart, testified that the woman asked the group whether anyone would have sex with her. At one point, she seemed upset no one was taking her up on it, Hart testified.

The woman, meanwhile, testified she didn’t remember saying such things, but that if she did, it was because she was intoxicated and had taken on the persona of a “porn star” as a coping mechanism.

About a week after the encounter, the players who were in the room formed a group chat to discuss how to respond to Hockey Canada investigators looking into the incident, court heard.

When asked about the chat, Hart said he thought everyone in it was “just agreeing to tell the truth,” though he agreed under cross-examination that he was asking for advice on what to say because he was worried about getting in trouble with the sports organization.

The Crown alleges the men in the chat collectively built a narrative about that night, including that the complainant was “begging for sex,” but prosecutors faced pushback from Carroccia during submissions on the issue. The judge said there was another competing inference available: that the men were repeating what they believed happened.

The trial was “extremely messy,” both in terms of procedure and evidence,  said Gotell, the University of Alberta professor.

“The jury had to be dismissed once, and then it was dismissed twice, and then moved to a judge-alone trial as a result of a defence application,” she said. “All of this messiness could potentially create opportunities for appeal.”

The trial was forced to restart days after it began when a juror and a defence lawyer had a brief interaction during the lunch break. A new jury was selected, then dismissed weeks later after one of them told the judge some panel members felt Formenton’s lawyers were mocking them.

In both cases, Carroccia found the incidents raised concerns that the jury could harbour negative views of the defence. The trial continued without a jury to avoid rebooting a second time.

Prosecutors had opposed both mistrial applications, and on the second occasion, they argued that switching to a judge alone after the Crown had presented most of its evidence could prejudice its case.

Gotell said while the evidence in most sexual assault cases is messy, what makes this one different is the number of eyewitnesses.

Typically, the alleged offences happen in private with only two people present, though there may also be forensic evidence such as rape kits, she said. In this case, however, there were many people in the room over the course of the night, she said.

“That’s an awful lot of people who could potentially, and again over seven years, could potentially say very different things, right?” she said. “I think that that’s what makes this messy.”