Next Tuesday in a courtroom in London, Ont., five former members of Canada’s 2018 World Juniors team go on trial, 15 months after they were charged with sexual assault.

Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Cal Foote, and Dillon Dube have all pleaded not guilty. McLeod faces a second sexual assault charge as a party to the offence.

A woman referred to in court documents as E.M. told police in June 2018 that she had been sexually assaulted days earlier in a hotel in London following a Hockey Canada golf and gala event. London police and Hockey Canada investigated the allegation, but both closed their investigations in 2019 without laying any charges.

The public first learned about the case three years later, in May 2022, when TSN reported that E.M. had filed and then quickly settled a $3.5 million lawsuit against Hockey Canada, the Canadian Hockey League, and eight “John Doe” hockey players.

The reporting led to a series of parliamentary hearings in Ottawa, a number of Hockey Canada’s corporate sponsors pausing or ending their relationship with the organization, and the ouster of a number of top Hockey Canada officials after the revelation that the national governing body had used money from minor-hockey registrations to build a secret slush fund that was used to pay off sexual assault allegations.

The case also led to the government creating the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner to receive and investigate allegations of misconduct involving national team-level players, coaches and officials. In April, that office handed off responsibilities for such investigations to the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport. Hockey Canada has also created a new system for investigating allegations of misconduct at other levels of hockey.

In June 2022, London police re-opened its investigation into the allegations involving the World Junior team players. In January of 2024, McLeod, Hart, Formenton, Foote, and Dube were charged.

Here are some facts about Canada’s legal system, the key characters to watch during the trial, and how the case may unfold:

1. How common are cases alleging sexual assault in Canada?

Canadian police received 33,293 reports of alleged sexual assault in 2022, a 38 per cent increase from 2017, according to Statistics Canada. It is estimated that less than one per cent of sexual assaults experienced by women lead to an offender being convicted.

The Canadian Women’s Foundation has reported the odds of sexual assault being reported to police are about 80 per cent lower than for other violent crimes and estimated that six per cent of sexual assaults in Canada are reported to police, making it the most underreported crime measured in the general social survey on victimization.

The foundation also reported that 57 per cent of women do not report allegations because they do not want to deal with police. Other reasons for women not reporting: 43 per cent believe offenders won’t be adequately punished; 34 per cent feel shame and embarrassment; 25 per cent feel........

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