LONDON, Ont. — The complainant in the trial of five former NHLers accused of sexual assault in June 2018 was challenged on Monday by the defence as to why she didn’t tell her best friend in text messages about the severity of the alleged incident until days later.
The woman, known as “E.M.” in court documents because of a publication ban on her name, answered from elsewhere in the courthouse via CCTV to continued questioning by lawyer Lisa Carnelos, who represents Dillon Dube. It was E.M.’s sixth day of cross-examination.
During cross-examination, E.M. said she called her best friend after leaving the Delta Armouries hotel in the early hours of June 19, 2018, crying.
Carnelos questioned why she had a seemingly normal text exchange later that morning with a co-worker who was the bar with E.M. but didn’t follow up to a text from her best friend until later, and then when she did, didn’t express anything had happened.
“I think I was just being overdramatic earlier (over the phone) but I’m good,” E.M. responded in a text when her best friend asked how she was.
Carnelos again asked why E.M. didn’t tell her best friend about what had happened in the hotel room.
“I was in between ignoring it and pretending it didn’t happen. I’d never gone through something like that before,” she responded.
“I did feel embarrassment and shame. They were making fun of me all night. They were laughing at me. It was embarrassing. … They kept me there. They kept laughing at me.”
A few days later, on June 22, 2018, E.M. texted her best friend to say she went to London police and the hospital, to which her friend responded with an expletive.
“She’s shocked because I had downplayed what happened,” E.M. said in court.
She later added in her text to her best friend, “The group of guys are all high-up hockey players. Go figure. LMAO.”
Carnelos questioned E.M. about using the abbreviation for “laughing my ass off” in such a serious situation.
“I was in disbelief that not only did this horrible situation happen, but now it’s even more complicated because they’re high-up hockey players,” E.M. said.
Earlier in the day, Daniel Brown, who represents Alex Formenton, completed his cross-examination of E.M. by suggesting she was the one who “pulled” Formenton into the washroom to have sex. E.M. said she was going to use the bathroom and that someone followed her in.
Brown also suggested that E.M. felt “scorned” because no one walked her out of the room or arranged for a ride home at the end of the night.
“I’d never had an encounter that ends in that way,” she said in court. “I wasn’t scorned about it. I felt disrespected the whole night, so I’m not sure why I thought the end would be any different.”
When she went to London police to first report the incident, she told detective Stephen Newton she had concerns about videos of what had happened.
“I didn’t know what they would do with the videos,” E.M. said. “I was already in such a horrible situation, I would not have wanted to see that. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want people recording what was happening to me.”
Michael McLeod, 27, has been charged with two counts of sexual assault, including one relating to aiding in the offence. Dube, 26, Cal Foote, 26, Formenton, 25, and Carter Hart, 26, have each been charged with one count of sexual assault. All have pleaded not guilty to their charges.
Cross-examination is expected to continue by Juliana Greenspan, who’s the lawyer for Foote, on Tuesday at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Once cross-examination has been completed, the Crown will get a chance for redirect, which means it will get a chance to clarify anything E.M. said during cross-examination.
