Hockey Canada trial: Carter Hart saw no ‘disrespect’ by teammates

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Hockey Canada trial: Carter Hart saw no ‘disrespect’ by teammates Carter Hart said he was walking home from one of London’s downtown bars when he saw the group chat text from Michael McLeod asking: “Who wants to be in a 3-way?”

Article content Carter Hart said he was walking home from one of London’s downtown bars when he saw the group chat text from Michael McLeod asking: “Who wants to be in a 3-way?”

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Article content It had been a long, boozy night of partying for the 2018 Canadian world junior hockey champs during Hockey Canada’s celebration held on June 18 and 19, 2018. It was about 2:45 a.m. and he was walking with teammates Alex Formenton and Robert Thomas back to the Delta Armouries hotel.

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Article content “I’m in,” Hart wrote back. He wasn’t kidding. “I was open to sexual encounters as a single guy who was having a good time that weekend. I was open to it,” he said at his Superior Court trial Thursday. “I’m a single guy. I kind of looked at it as an invitation that I assumed he was with a girl (who) wanted to have a threesome with another guy.” A few minutes later, he had a phone conversation with McLeod. “I do remember the gist of the conversation was Mike was with a girl back at the hotel who wanted to have sex with some of the boys – meaning some of my teammates.” Hart told Justice Maria Carroccia that he did have an encounter with a 20-year-old woman in McLeod’s room. “Did you have a sexual contact with the girl?” asked his defence lawyer, Megan Savard. “I did,” Hart replied. “Was is consensual?” Savard asked. “Yes, it was,” he said. Hart, 26, McLeod, 27, Formenton, 25, Dillon Dube, 26, and Cal Foote, 26, members of the championship team, have all pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to a second charge for being a party to an offence.

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Article content With candid testimony, Hart is the first of the five accused to give evidence after Crown attorney Meghan Cunningham officially closed her case Thursday morning at the trial, which has captured public attention and put under the microscope what went inside Room 209 in the early morning of June 19, 2018. McLeod’s lawyer, David Humphrey, told Carroccia that given the Crown’s case, which included the introduction of McLeod’s voluntary police statement in 2018 during the first London police investigation that ended with no charges, he would not be calling evidence on behalf of his client. The complainant, now 27, said she went back to the hotel with McLeod for consensual sex after meeting him at Jack’s bar on Richmond Row, where most of the team ended up after a Hockey Canada gala. Later, she said several men were in the room and she was sexually assaulted.

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Article content But the defence team for the five accused has countered the woman was the aggressor who wanted McLeod to invite them to the room, where she begged and taunted them to have sexual contact with her. She eventually led the way when one of them took her up on her offer. Hart, a goaltender, played six seasons for the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers until he was charged in January 2024 and is now a free agent. He told the court he was just 19 in 2018. The two-day event in London, he added, was not only the first time the team could truly celebrate their gold medals together, but also only the third time in his life he had ever consumed alcohol. He said that on June 18, 2018, at a ring ceremony earlier in the day, he had a couple of flutes of champagne. At the gala, with the open bar, he had four to six vodka sodas. After the gala, the team changed into more comfortable clothes and headed to Richmond Row – first to Joe Kool’s, then Jack’s bar. Hart said he returned to Joe Kool’s later to meet up with Formenton and Thomas, who had been turned away from Jack’s for being underage. They were together when he got McLeod’s message.

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Article content “I was probably pretty drunk,” he said, noting that the next day he woke up “very hung over.” His memory of the night, he said, is in snippets but he had clear recollections of major events in the room. They went to McLeod’s room, where other men were already present. McLeod was on a bed with his shirt off. At that point, he didn’t see the woman. His next memory was of the woman on the floor, on a bedsheet, masturbating and making noises. “It seemed like she was enjoying that players were watching her do that,” Hart said. At that point, he said Sam Steel, Jake Bean, Drake Batherson, Tyler Steenbergen, Formenton, Thomas and Maxime Comtois were standing on the outskirts of the room and no one was near the entrance. “The next thing I remember . . . she had said, ‘Can somebody (have sex) with me.’ “I was pretty excited. I mean, I was 19 years old and there was a naked girl in the room doing these things willingly. It was something I’d never seen before,” Hart said.

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Article content He recalled the men in the room looking at each other “like is this for real? This is kind of crazy.” They pestered each other to volunteer, but most, he said, already had girlfriends. And nobody wanted to have sex in front of the others. But Hart was single and standing closest to her. He said he didn’t want to have sexual intercourse, but asked the woman, “Can I get a blowy?” – meaning oral sex. He said the woman said something like “sure.” He walked toward her and the woman got up on her knees, grabbed his private parts over his khaki jogging shorts, and then pulled them down. She performed oral sex on Hart while he kept his hands on his hips for “30 to 60 seconds.” He said he never touched her body and wasn’t fully aroused. “It was a weird thing that there were other guys in the room looking and I do remember making eye contact with somebody and it was, like, weird.”

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Article content Hart said he backed away. He recalled the woman becoming annoyed that no one else would have sex with her, saying, “What’s wrong with you guys? If no one is going to come [have sex] with me, I am going to leave.” Hart said he was “in a state of shock.” He recalled the woman leading Formenton into the bathroom. He said they were holding hands and he later heard the shower running. Some men left but Dube and Foote had joined them. Foote’s party trick was doing the splits and the court has seen footage from Jack’s bar where he performed the move on the dance floor. Hart said some of the men were saying, “Footer, do the splits,” when the woman was back on the bedsheet at the end of the beds. He said he believed the woman was on her back. Foote was fully clothed, wearing a shirt and shorts. “I just remember seeing him drop down into the splits over top of her and I don’t believe his legs were on top of her body.

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Article content “I remember when he did it, I thought it was pretty funny. I was standing right next to him when it happened and I saw the woman was laughing as well.” Foote popped back out of the move. Hart didn’t believe the act was sexual. His next memory was leaving the room. “Never,” he said, did he see spitting or any other “disrespectful” behaviour toward the woman. “If something like that would have happened I would have stopped it or I would have left.” The next morning, before the golf tournament, some of the men talked about the “weird” events of the night before. The next time it came up was on June 26, 2018, during a group chat with other men who had been in the room. They were told Hockey Canada was starting a code-of-conduct investigation. Hart said he was at a Flyers development camp at the Jersey shore doing Navy SEAL training as part of the regimen. He didn’t see the messages until later in the day, and scrolled through them quickly before writing: “Honestly boys, nobody did anything wrong, like you got consent for anything that she did. She was the one begging for guys to (have sex with) her.”

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Article content Hart asked in the messages what he should tell Hockey Canada. “I knew obviously we had a late night that weekend. We were out partying later and we had a girl back at the hotel with us and Hockey Canada takes those things very seriously,” he said. Hart said he thought the purpose of the text thread was “everybody is just telling the truth, saying there’s nothing to hide.” He hasn’t talked to any teammates about the case since, except for a brief phone call with McLeod the day of the text exchange. In 2022, while playing tennis with a friend, Hart said he received a phone call from his agent telling him he was one of the eight unnamed defendants in the woman’s civil lawsuit that Hockey Canada settled without the players’ knowledge or consent, and police investigations would be re-opened. “I had been asked to even play for Team Canada that year. I had no idea,” he said. The trial continues on Friday with the Crown’s cross-examination of Hart. jsims@postmedia.com

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