Content advisory: This article includes graphic language and details of alleged sexual assault

When Michael McLeod met with a London police officer in November 2018 to discuss an alleged sexual assault five months earlier, he did not suggest that the complainant had asked him to invite other Team Canada players back to participate in group sex, an assertion that has been a key pillar of McLeod’s defence during this trial, his lawyer has conceded.

David Humphrey, in making his closing submission in the high-profile sexual assault trial in London on Monday, told Justice Maria Carroccia that McLeod was not yet facing criminal charges at the time he met with London Police Service sergeant Stephen Newton.

“I acknowledge that he did not tell Detective Newton in his interview that [E.M.] had expressly asked him to invite players to the room, and that he sent text invitations in response to her request,” Humphrey said. “He may not have prepared for his interview as thoroughly, for example, as an accused who’s told he’s a suspect and told there are grounds to lay a charge and he’s in real or present danger.”

McLeod, Carter Hart, Dillon Dube, Alex Formenton, and Callan Foote are charged with sexually assaulting a woman in McLeod’s hotel room in the early morning hours of June 19, 2018, following a Hockey Canada ring ceremony to celebrate their 2018 world junior championship months earlier. The woman is referred to as E.M. in court documents and her identity is protected by a publication ban. McLeod faces a second charge of being a party to the act.

The players have all pleaded not guilty. Their lawyers have alleged that everything that happened in McLeod’s hotel room was consensual.

While London police closed their initial investigation in February 2019 without laying charges, the case was reopened in July 2022, and the five defendants were charged in January 2024.

The trial has heard that after E.M. and McLeod engaged in consensual sex, McLeod sent his teammates a text at 2:10 a.m. that said, “Whose up for a 3 way quick. 209-mikey.”

“I’m in,” Hart answered at 2:19 a.m.

E.M. testified during the trial that as many as 11 players were in the room over the course of the evening and that some players spat on her and slapped her. At one point, one of the players suggested she put golf balls in her vagina and asked aloud if she “could take” an entire golf club inside of her, E.M. testified. She has said she went into an autonomous state and did whatever she had to do to get out of the room safely.

During his interview with Newton, which took place in the presence of Humphrey at his Toronto law office, McLeod never mentioned his group text message and never made the allegation that E.M. had asked to have group sex. (London police did not obtain........

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