The Decibel - The five pro hockey players charged with sexual assault

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

Five hockey players from Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team have been charged with sexual assault in connection to an event alleged to have taken place in London, Ont., in 2018. Four of them are current NHL players.A woman identified as E.M. sued Hockey Canada in 2022 in relation to the incident, which was settled for $3.55-million. The Globe then reported that Hockey Canada had maintained a reserve, called the National Equity Fund, to pay out sexual assault claims. It was made up, in part, by players’ registration fees.The Globe’s Robyn Doolittle led the reporting on Unfounded, a series examining how police departments across Canada treat sexual assault claims, and she’s been reporting on the alleged incident as details become public. She explains what happened in 2018 and how it led to this week’s charges.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Before we begin, a warning that today we'll be talking about sexual assault. Please take care. For almost two years, we've been hearing about members of Canada's 2018 World Junior Team who've been accused of attacking a woman in a hotel after a Hockey Canada fundraiser. And this week, we've learned who police believe they are. Professional hockey players Michael McLeod, Dylan Dubé, Carter Hart, Cal Foote, and Alex Formington were charged with sexual assault by the London police. Four of the men are in the NHL.

Michael McLeod and Cal Foote play for the New Jersey Devils, Dylan Dubé with the Calgary Flames, and Carter Hart is a goalie for the Philadelphia Flyers. Alex Formanton plays for a team in Switzerland, but he used to play with the Ottawa Senators. All five men have denied the charges through their lawyers, and the allegations have not been tested in court. This is the latest update in an ongoing story. A story of Hockey Canada's secret settlement

of sexual assault claims, one that's led to parliamentary hearings, and a national reckoning of rape culture in Canada's most iconic sport. So today, I'm speaking with The Globe's Robin Doolittle. She's been breaking news on this file, and she also led The Globe's unfounded investigation, looking into how police services across Canada handle sexual assault allegations. Robin is on the show to tell us what we know about the incident, the charges, and what will happen next. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Robin, thank you for being here. Always.

So we know that this criminal case was at the heart of the Hockey Canada scandal that really erupted in the spring of 2022. And we've been learning kind of pieces of it all along the way. But Robin, can we just go back for a little bit here? Like, let's go back to the allegations that started everything. Where does this story begins on June 18, 2018. And the World Junior Hockey Team, which had won the World Championship several months earlier, was at a fundraising event held by Hockey Canada in London, Ontario. That's sort of halfway between Toronto and Windsor. And the players are being honored for their gold medal win. And afterwards, some of them go out partying in downtown London, and they end up, some of them, at this place called Jack's Bar. And that same night, a woman that we know of as E.M. also went to that bar with a friend. And she started dancing with the players and, you players and drinking. And she, I guess,

connected with this one specific player who in court documents is referred to as player one. And they went back to his hotel room and had consensual sex. This is where kind of things take a turn. And where we know about the events of what happened comes from two documents. One is a lawsuit that EM subsequently filed in 2022, so many years later, as well as a police court application that was filed in December 2022 that the Globe reported on. So all of these allegations have not yet been tested in court. But this is what I can say from within those pages. Okay. EM alleges that after she had consensual sex with player one, he began texting his teammates without her knowledge and

inviting them to the room. And at one point, she says she went to the bathroom. And when she came out, player one was gone, but there were as many as eight players in the room. And she alleges that over the next several hours, she was sexually assaulted, spit on, slapped at points, humiliated and manipulated into various sex acts. She alleges that at one point, there was a conversation about using golf clubs. and convinced her to stay in the room and that she was extremely intoxicated. And it didn't take much convincing and that she was afraid and that these were large players in a small hotel room and she didn't see a clear exit to the room. So at some point she does leave the room and we know that then her mother found her crying in the shower around 5 a.m.

It's her mother that seems to kind of pursue the police side. Her stepfather is involved at some point, but she does speak to a detective quite early on, sits down for a two-hour interview recounting the night. An initial investigation is closed without charges in February 2019. Okay, so she went to the police, the police investigated, closed this investigation then a few months later without charges. Right. And we don't know a ton about that investigation. But what I can tell you from the Globes reporting is that it was not the most thorough of probes.

So one thing that appears to be the case from this court filing is that the police were not aware of a group chat that took place between the players that night. And this is something that they obtained in the second investigation. This is a chat between the hockey players. This is a chat that occurred like a group chat that occurred between the hockey players that night. And, you know, one of the text messages that I believe is captured in this chat is, is player one texting his teammates to come to their room. So that's one example. We also know some of the witnesses were not interviewed properly or fully. So for example, in this court document, police write about a well-dressed gentleman who we know was an executive or senior level person with a sports company that was with the players that night and was, you know, he's at the bar

that night. At the bar, yeah, that he was hanging around with the players and saw EM and player one and the other players hanging out. And, you know, was telling her, like, you better take care of these guys. He was not properly interviewed in the first investigation. So we're just getting a sense of, you know, this is not necessarily the most thorough that it could have been. But the extent to which that investigation may have had issues, we don't really know yet, though. And part of the issue is that London police are one of the police services in the country that created this civilian review committee where they go through cases or high-level sex assault cases to look for investigative deficiencies or signs of rape myths and stereotypes that might influence an investigator. This case is one that typically would have gone to this civilian review board,

but it didn't. It's a really extraordinary situation where police are letting civilian frontline individuals to access to these really sensitive materials, but they have to do it at headquarters. They have to be together in a room and that all got delayed because of COVID. So I think that's something we're going to learn more about in the court case. After everything that happened on the night of June 19th, was there any contact between EM and Player One or any of the players? Yeah. So what was interesting is I believe a day or two after EM had had contact with police, someone within Hockey Canada notified player one that police had been contacted and he found EM on Instagram

and messaged her. You know, this is something that has come out in the police documents since. And so we know that the entirety of that conversation, he says, did you out in the police documents since. And so we know the entirety of that conversation. He says, did you go to the police after Sunday? And numerous texts followed when EM didn't reply. She finally says, I talked to my mom about it and she called, I think, but I told her not to. I don't want anything bad to come of it. So I told her to stop. The player said she said she was just having fun.

He says to her, I understand that you're embarrassed about what happened, but you need to talk to your mother right now and straighten things out with the police before this goes so far. This is a serious matter that she is misrepresenting and could have significant implications for a lot of people, including you. What can you do to make this go away? So these are quotes from those texts, those messages then between E.M. and that player one. Right. And then E.M. eventually says that she was OK with him, but wasn't OK with everyone else. And this kind of proceeds. And this is obviously, you know, I think was one of the stunning revelations that have come out of some of the reporting here. And the Globe actually reported on the contents of this text message exchange before the police reopened their investigation. The other detail here is that there were videos shot in the room that night. There were two videos. One is about six seconds

long and one is about 12 seconds long. And The Globe has actually viewed these videos. Interestingly, the lawyers representing some of the players provided The Globe with access to the videos. And they show EM in the hotel room. And in the first, she's asked, are you okay with this? And she says, I'm okay with this. So that was, I guess, during the events of that night is when that was shot then. Right. And in the second video, which is again, about 12 seconds long and shot later in the evening, like we're talking like 4am. She's kind of talking quickly. And she's saying, you know, you know you're so paranoid holy I enjoyed it it was fine it was all consensual I can't even do this right now and you know to me it was an

interesting moment seeing those videos I've seen one of them my colleagues Joe Friesen and Colin Fries I've seen both of them I think one question that was raised and that actually police investigators also raised when they were interviewing player one is, well, why did you shoot the video? And what we know from the police application is the officer recorded this as saying player one said he was worried something like this in reference to a police investigation would happen. So obviously, Robin, consent is at the center of most sexual assault cases, right? These videos, are these valid evidence of consent here? What I don't think the videos necessarily speak to and what certainly, you know, academics and experts who have studied this can say is whether she's consenting for that night, right? I mean, it's a piece of information, though. But consent has to be voluntary. So she's told police she felt scared and that she had to say that she was going

along with this because she felt intimidated. And it has to be continuous. This is the other thing is she did have consensual sex with one of the players. Consenting at one point doesn't mean you're consenting for the rest of the night. Like you can withdraw consent at any time. So you also can't give consent after the fact. Right. It has to be during something. Yeah. And this is I think like you said, consent is at the root of this.

Consent is at the root of, of course, basically all sexual assault cases. And why it makes it so difficult here to get a conviction is, you know, did these players honestly believe that she was consenting? And that's what's going to come down to it is when they say their version of events, did they realize that she was not into this, right? And that she didn't want this. And what steps did they take to make sure that she was wanted to be an active participant in this? And they're going to have to, you know, explain some of these things. And I think the bottom line here is a lot of people don't have a very good idea of what Canadian consent laws are. You know, when I was growing up, it was always no means no,

right? And so we got in our heads this idea that consent was a verbal thing. But that's not how Canadian law works. You don't have to physically say the words, no, stop. You don't have to fight back. You don't have to scratch or bite or anything for you to say, I'm not into this, or I'm not consenting to this. It's about how does somebody know

that the other person is consenting? Because we know that most of this communication happens through body language. So it's not about no, it's about a hard yes. We'll be back in a minute. Okay, so we've gone through a bunch of the details of, you know, what we know of the situation of that night. You mentioned, of course, that there was this case that was closed in 2019. But then, of course, the London police reopened the case in July 2022. And now it is January 2024. Right, Robin? So just, I guess, help me understand this. Like, why has this taken so long?

Yeah, it's been a long time. And I think a lot of people that I'm talking to were surprised that that charges finally came down because it had been so long. But the thing is, you know, these cases are so difficult. And this case is so high profile that I think what was going on here is the London police really wanted to, you know, have everything sewn up before pulling the trigger on this. And why would that be important, I guess? Yeah. So there's this, you know, court ruling Jordan that you might have read about that we talk a lot about now, where if charges are laid and the case takes way too long to get to court, the case can be thrown out. There's a clock ticking as soon as that charge comes down. So you want to get all your ducks in a row before that happens. So we know police reopened it in July 2022. They already did an investigation and

concluded that no charges are laid. So you're redoing everything and then reconciling your new information with your old information. This is always complicated, right? You have statements from people. Now you have two statements from people. Layer on top of that, we have investigations from Hockey Canada. We have investigations from the NHL, all playing out in tandem here. We know that in the fall of 2022, at least in October, London police filed this court application that I've been talking about, looking for judicial approval of various investigative measures, such as production orders and warrants. One of them, for example, was for access to this text message conversation. One of them was for the, you know, quote,

fruits of the investigation from the Hockey Canada probe, which was conducted by Danielle Robitaille at Heenan Hutchinson. The police wanted access to all of her interviews and her investigative materials. So they file this and then they don't get that information. It's approved, but they don't get that until, you know, the spring, it looks like, of 2023. And so now they're going through all of this new information. And then we know that in the summer of 2023, the crown who had been tapped to take on this case, who's, you know, going through it, is there enough to take it to a trial? The crown leaves their position and they have to bring in a whole new crown and get them up to speed. A new person in the position. Okay.

Right. But now we're in January and the charges are finally coming down. Last week, the Globe reported that the police had ordered these five players to surrender. And of course, just to complicate things more, between those two investigations, there was this lawsuit, of course, right? So that has got to be complicating things as well. But then in April 2022, EM files this $3.5 million lawsuit against Hockey Canada, the CHL, and eight unnamed players on this junior team. And it was settled. And TSN, a month later, broke that story. And that's when everybody found out about this. And that's what started this huge national backlash and reckoning, really, with,

you know, the most prominent sports body in the country. And, you know, it raised a lot of really tough questions about the culture within a beloved Canadian sport. And that's where a lot of our globe reporting comes into play, right? Robin, your work and the work of some of our colleagues. I mean, it was the Globe's reporting that revealed that Hockey Canada used a fund made up at least in part of player registration fees. This is known as the National Equity Fund, right, to settle those sexual assault claims. I mean, that's how a lot of this came to light. Yeah, absolutely. And it was, you know, the London police reopened their case around that time, after the Globes reported on the National Equity Fund, after we reported on the existence of these videos and also this text message exchange, there were parliamentary hearings and high profile exits from Hockey Canada, sponsors left.

Like, I mean, firestorm is a cliche that's overused, but it was a firestorm. And so here we are today. We've got five players charged, Alex Formanton, Michael McLeod, Cal Foote, Carter Hart, and Dylan Dubé. So, Robin, for people who don't know these guys, who are they as hockey players? I mean, they were all members of the junior team that won the world championships in 2018. They were all drafted to the NHL. They all signed multimillion dollar contracts. Alex from Menton used to play with the Ottawa Senators, but he has been playing in Switzerland for the last year because he and the Senators couldn't reach an agreement in December 2022. And have any of them made a statement or said anything in response?

Yes. What was interesting is last week, one by one, they started taking leaves of absence from their team. The first was Dylan Dubé, who the Calgary Flames announced that he was being granted a leave for personal reasons. He needed to attend to his mental health and that he was in the care of professionals. And then throughout the week, we saw other statements from Alex Fermenton's team, also citing personal reasons, Carter Hart's team, and then the New Jersey Devils announced that, you know, McLeod and Foote are also being granted leaves. So it was this weird situation that where we had these five members of the junior team all taking leaves. Everyone knew their names. You know, at the time, the Globe reported that the London police had ordered five players to surrender.

TSN reported that these, in fact, are the five that the Globe had been talking about. And shortly after, lawyers for each of the players began issuing brief statements in their defense, all said that they would be vigorously defending themselves against the charges and that the public should not rush to judgment until all the facts are out in the open and that a court has a chance to evaluate them. And what do we know about the charges? We know that they've been charged with sexual assault. And we're going to learn more in a scheduled police conference in London on Monday. And another thing, I guess, to note here, Robin, is that they were all given over a week to surrender to the police to show up in London at the police station.

Is that, I guess, a normal procedure? Yeah, this is totally normal. This is an investigation that's been going on a very long time. They have cooperated at every stage of the investigation. They, that I know of, at least, don't have any sort of criminal record or there's no concern on that front. So in that situation, it would be extraordinary if the police say like flew to New Jersey and put handcuffs on someone at a rink. You give them the opportunity to surrender themselves to police. And because so many of them are out of the country, it's also not unreasonable to give them a little bit of a timeframe. They also need to have time to, you know, secure a lawyer and start thinking about next steps.

And has EM said anything about the case since the players have come forward through their lawyers? No, we haven't heard anything from EM. I spoke very briefly with EM in the summer of 2022. I spoke to her shortly after The Globe reported on the existence of these videos and this text message exchange. This is obviously like really details that if you're her, you wouldn't necessarily want printed in the national newspaper. And I think what's also important is unlike so many stories like this, EM did not come forward, right? Like she filed this lawsuit and that was kind of the end of it for her. It came out kind of without her saying, I want everybody to write about this.

I want justice. Like that's not what was being difficult to see kind of her story told in bits and pieces without the full context, and that she never wanted the publicity. She just wanted some accountability. So Robin, what's expected to happen next year? Well, I think we're gonna have the press conference in London on Monday. They're going to answer some questions. They might not say much, but even then we'll get some clarity on what's going on here. There's going to be a court date. And this is now in the court system, which, as we know, goes slowly.

But it's very high profile. There's going to be a lot of scrutiny on this, a lot of questions directed at all sorts of institutions. What happens now with Hockey Canada and the NHL's investigations, which both haven't been released publicly? And of course, there's going to be questions at some point about what happened in that initial London police investigation. How is it that one investigation concluded there was not enough evidence and another investigation has had four NHL players, one ex-NHL player charged with sexual assault? So just lastly here, Robin, I mean, looking back at everything, you've been reporting on this for quite a while. I mean, I guess, what do you take away from

covering this story? You know, I've spent a lot of time reporting on sexual violence. And I did a big investigation years ago called Unfounded that looked at the way that police mishandle sexual assault cases. And through that reporting, I learned a lot about things like rape culture and issues around consent and how we talk about consent and how that is impacting our country in a really negative way. And I think when I look at this case, it's just sad from top to bottom. Everything is sad and awful. And something really significant that jumps out is this happened in 2018. This is after Me Too. London was also at the center of the unfounded investigation from the Globe. And this happened in London. And I think, you know, we're going to hear a lot more about what happened in the hotel room that night. Whether it raises to the level of criminality, you know, that's a really high bar for a really good reason. We want to live in a country where it's, you know, really hard to send people to jail. And that this is a culture that existed

before that day, right? And, you know, does it still exist today? I would say yes. And that's where we have to kind of, as a society, as a country, ask some really tough questions and hold ourselves a bit accountable as well, that this stuff needs to be approached differently. We need to actually have these conversations and, you know, talk about sex ed and talk about consent in schools. Robin, thank you so much for your reporting and for being here today. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms.

Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer. And Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.