Five former members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team pleaded not guilty in their high profile sexual assault trial that began on Tuesday, April 22, in London, Ontario.
Dillon Dube, a former Cochrane resident and captain of the 2018 gold medal winning team, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Michael McLeod, and Cal Foote were charged with sexual assault early last year in connection to an alleged group sexual assault that took place after a Hockey Canada gala event in 2018.
McLeod faces an additional charge of being a party to the offense of sexual assault. The former NHLers entered their pleas one at a time in a London courtroom Tuesday morning. The trial is expected to unfold over several weeks, beginning with jury selection on April 22.
News of the alleged assault broke in May 2022 after TSN reported Hockey Canada had settled a $3.5 million civil lawsuit with a female complainant. That May report triggered a period of intense scrutiny that eventually led to the entire board and leadership team of Hockey Canada to resign.
London Police initially closed their investigation in 2019 without charges, but reopened it years later in 2022. A police application for a search warrant filed in 2022 said there were grounds to believe a woman was sexually assaulted by five players on the junior team.
In court proceedings the alleged victim, whose identity is protected by a publication ban and has been referred to as E.M., was 20 years old at the time of the incident. Each defendant has his own legal teams, which will be able to cross-examine the woman.
In the initial lawsuit claim, E.M. said that eight players assaulted her over several hours in a London hotel room. She said she met the group of players at a local bar the night of the alleged incident and had willingly left with one player. She said she engaged in consensual sex with that player, but that he invited several of his teammates into the hotel room without her knowledge or consent.
According to media reports, E.M.’s lawsuit claimed that she did not consent to the sexual contact that followed. According to her initial claim, the woman said she spent part of the night crying in the bathroom and despite wanting to leave, was coaxed by multiple players to remain in the hotel room. She noted that several of them had golf clubs in the room and that she felt physically intimidated and unable to leave.
When news of the incident broke in 2022, McLeod and Foote were playing for the New Jersey Devils, Hart was playing for the Philadelphia Flyers, Dube was in his fifth full season with the Calgary Flames, and Formenton was playing professional hockey in Switzerland.
In August 2024, Dube, who played youth hockey in Airdrie as a member of the U15 AAA Airdrie Xtreme, signed a one-year deal with the Dinamo Minsk in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). Dube, along with McLeod had both been playing in Europe as they awaited the beginning of the trial.
--With reports from Howard May/ Cochrane Eagle and the Canadian Press.
