LONDON — A hockey player set up a woman by inviting his teammates to his London, Ont., hotel room with an offer of group sexual activity without her knowledge or consent, prosecutors argued Wednesday as they began making their final pitch to the judge presiding over five players' sexual assault trial.
Some of the men who came to Michael McLeod's room in the early hours of June 19, 2018, after he sent a text to a team group chat offering a "three-way quick," were hoping and expecting the woman would engage in sexual acts with them before they even laid eyes on her or knew her name, Crown lawyer Meaghan Cunningham argued.
"This is the context in which everything else takes place that night," Cunningham argued.
"This is the critical lens through which you have to view the rest of the evidence," and it paints the testimony of all other witnesses "in a very different light," she said.
Cunningham urged Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia to reject the defence's "speculative theory" that it was the woman's idea to invite the others, noting the absence of any evidence to support it as well as the woman's repeated assertion that she was shocked when men came into the room.
She also urged the judge to reject the evidence of some witnesses that the woman was the "sexual aggressor" that night.
Defence lawyers made their closing submissions over several days this week, repeatedly challenging the complainant’s credibility and reliability as a witness and arguing she actively participated in and at times initiated the sexual activity.
The trial — which began in late April and heard from nine witnesses, including the complainant and one of the accused — largely turns on the issue of consent.
Prosecutors argued Wednesday the woman did not voluntarily agree to the sexual acts that took place in the hotel room, nor did the players take reasonable steps to confirm her consent.
Much of the testimony from the men in the room amounts to "nothing more than a series of beliefs and assumptions that are rooted in myths and stereotypes, and rooted in misunderstandings about what consent is in law and how it can be communicated," Cunningham argued.
"It was, at the very least, reckless for these men to engage in spontaneous group sexual activity with a stranger, in the absence of any sincere discussion with her about her desires and her limits," she argued.
McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault, while McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to an additional charge of being a party to the offence of sexual assault.
McLeod, Hart and Dube are accused of obtaining oral sex from the woman without her consent, and Dube is also accused of slapping her buttocks while she was engaged in a sexual act with someone else.
Formenton is alleged to have had vaginal sex with the complainant inside the hotel room's bathroom without her consent, and Foote is accused of doing the splits over her face and "grazing" his genitals on it without her consent.
Most of the 2018 world junior team was in London that June for a series of events marking their gold-medal performance earlier in the year. After an open-bar gala hosted by Hockey Canada on June 18, many ended up at Jack's, a downtown bar where the complainant was drinking and dancing with co-workers, court has heard.
The woman, then 20, was introduced to McLeod by one of his teammates and eventually they left together to go to his hotel room, where they had sex, court has heard. That encounter is not part of the trial, which centres on what happened afterward.
McLeod sent a text to a team group chat shortly after 2 a.m. asking if anyone wanted a "three-way quick," and Hart replied he was "in," according to screenshots shown in court.
Minutes later, McLeod sent a text to a teammate, Taylor Raddysh, telling him to come to the room if he wanted a "gummer," a slang word for oral sex, court heard. It did not appear Raddysh replied.
McLeod also went into the hallway and intercepted another teammate, Boris Katchouk, then left Katchouk in the room to go knock on Raddysh's room, eventually returning with him as well, court heard.
Katchouk testified McLeod offered him a "gummer" from the woman, which he laughed off because he had a girlfriend. He couldn't remember any reaction from the woman, or any interaction with her except for when she asked for a bite of his pizza.
Both Katchouk and Raddysh said the woman was on the bed, with the covers pulled up to about her shoulders.
The two teammates left, and over the next while, several more came into the room, court heard.
McLeod did not mention the texts to police in a 2018 interview even when asked about messages that night, saying he had told "a few guys" that he was ordering food and had a woman in his room, court has heard. He told the detective in charge of the case at the time that he didn't know "how guys kept showing up."
The player lied knowing he had invited his teammates over for sexual activity, Cunningham said, calling it a "pivotal moment" in the interview.
He also didn't tell police that the woman asked him to invite the others, the prosecutor said, adding "there is no logical or plausible reason" for him to omit that if it was true.
Cunningham argued McLeod had not yet come up with that idea and was instead crafting a narrative in which he and his friends were surprised when the woman started offering them sex that night.
If the woman had asked McLeod to invite his friends for group sex, it doesn't make sense that she remained largely silent and under the covers when Katchouk and Raddysh were present, Cunningham further argued.
The complainant was "doing nothing either verbally or through her actions to communicate that she was at all interested in engaging in sexual activity with them," Cunningham said.
"But the evidence does establish that someone was offering sex to Mr. McLeod's teammates in room 209 — and it wasn't (the woman)."
The two teammates' account is in "stark contrast" to how the other men in the room who testified at trial described her, Cunningham said.
Tyler Steenbergen and Brett Howden, who were called as Crown witnesses, testified that the woman quickly asked the group whether anyone would have sex with her. Hart, the only accused player to take the stand in his own defence, also recalled the woman making similar comments.
Cunningham said it was "significant" that Katchouk and Raddysh were the only ones among those in the room who were not part of a group chat created a week later, in which the players discussed how to respond to a Hockey Canada investigation into the encounter.
"Their description of (her) behavior is completely at odds with the testimony of all of the people who were part of that group chat," she said.
The complainant said she had no memory of saying such things, but that it was possible given her level of intoxication.
The arrival of unknown men scared the woman, who was naked and drunk at the time, she told the court over more than a week on the stand. She felt she had no choice but to go along with what they wanted, and engaged in sexual acts while on "autopilot," she said.
Under cross-examination, the woman said she took on a "porn star persona" as a coping mechanism because she believed it would bring the situation to an end more quickly, as she felt the men expected a "porn scene."
In their submissions, lawyers for McLeod, Hart, Formenton and Dube argued their clients engaged in consensual sexual activity with the complainant.
Foote's lawyer, meanwhile, argued Wednesday her client did not touch the woman sexually — or at all.
Julianna Greenspan pointed to Hart's testimony that he saw Foote, fully clothed in a shirt and shorts, do the splits over the complainant's torso without coming into contact with her body, "all in the full context of smiles and laughs, not just by those directly around, but also (the complainant) herself."
The judge should be left with a reasonable doubt that "whatever allegedly took place was a non-threatening and momentary interaction in jest," and "qualitatively distinct" from the sexual conduct admitted by the other accused players, Greenspan argued.
Carroccia is expected to deliver her ruling on July 24.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2025.
Paola Loriggio, The Canadian Press
