Were these made after the investigation came to light? If so, regardless of guilt/innocence, that's likely something someone being investigated for rape would want to happen.
If the texts were made before the investigation, I'd say that is something someone that, at the very least, knows the woman was upset afterwards would say.
Quote:
E.M. left the hotel room and called a friend, crying, before going home and crying in the shower, Donkers said. Police were contacted, and the jury was told they would see texts among the players trying to co-ordinate their stories for investigators as well as texts asking E.M. to "make this go away," the lawyer added.
I haven’t seen the timeline explicitly detailed (still to come), but I understand police we contacted the next day about it, and this quote seems to string the text messages into the same timeframe. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7520593
Last edited by Scroopy Noopers; 05-02-2025 at 01:22 PM.
Were these made after the investigation came to light? If so, regardless of guilt/innocence, that's likely something someone being investigated for rape would want to happen.
If the texts were made before the investigation, I'd say that is something someone that, at the very least, knows the woman was upset afterwards would say.
The text messages started before the investigation (McLeod inviting people to his room).
It seems like you're trying to suggest the victim has nothing to be upset about.
There is wrongdoing on someone's part either way, otherwise there would be no investigation and certainly not a trial. Either the 5 defendants sexually assaulted her or she's falsely accusing them.
The statistics show that false accusations are rare.
Whether it can be proven in a court of law beyond reasonable doubt is where it will get hung up, and I'm not getting my hopes up for justice for the victim.
We are getting only snippets of the facts, and I don't see how anybody can look at them and not realize that she never truly consented to the latter part of the evening (whether too drunk or felt coerced with 10 men vs. 1 woman).
I get that the defendants deserve their day in court and why things have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
But as a female observer - she was sexually assaulted.
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The text messages started before the investigation (McLeod inviting people to his room).
It seems like you're trying to suggest the victim has nothing to be upset about.
There is wrongdoing on someone's part either way, otherwise there would be no investigation and certainly not a trial. Either the 5 defendants sexually assaulted her or she's falsely accusing them.
The statistics show that false accusations are rare.
Whether it can be proven in a court of law beyond reasonable doubt is where it will get hung up, and I'm not getting my hopes up for justice for the victim.
We are getting only snippets of the facts, and I don't see how anybody can look at them and not realize that she never truly consented to the latter part of the evening (whether too drunk or felt coerced with 10 men vs. 1 woman).
I get that the defendants deserve their day in court and why things have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
But as a female observer - she was sexually assaulted.
Canadian writer Emma Healey wrote about her experience in a way that really humanizes these types of abuse. While not the same, it is similar.
TW
NSFW!
Quote:
In the summer between my first and second years of university, I started corresponding with a writer whose work I liked. He was a prominent figure in the city’s literary community and a professor at my school. He had read my poems, admired them, and wanted to work on some projects together. I was thrilled. I had only started writing poetry that year, and the idea that this man considered me a peer was beyond exciting. We talked on and off through the summer; I sent him some new poems. He was teaching a class that semester, and I tried to sign up, but it was full. He said he’d see what he could do.
The night before school started, around 10pm, he sent me a Facebook message asking if I wanted to come and meet him and his friends at a bar down the street. I remember my roommate, who was also my best friend, coming into my room while I was getting dressed and narrowing her eyes. “What kind of professor asks his students out for drinks?” she asked.
I remember shrugging. “I don’t know. He wants to be my friend. He doesn’t think of me as a student.” I was 19. He was 34.
There are a few more things I remember about that evening. I remember how nervous I was, how he laughed and joked with me to put me at ease. I remember his friends rolling their eyes at each other as he bought me another beer. I remember him saying, “I’m sorry, you don’t have to drink that, I’m not trying to get you drunk,” as the waitress put a shot down in front of me. I remember closing that bar, and then the bar upstairs. At some point his friends disappeared. At some point we were on the sidewalk. At some point we were back in my apartment. I remember him saying, “you can’t be in my class, you can’t be in my class,” over and over again.
When we woke up a few hours later, I felt like I’d swallowed a bag of fine gravel. I watched him put his clothes back on. I asked if he could stay. I was still drunk. “This is so ####ed up,” he said, laughing. “I have to go teach.” He left. I told my roommate what had happened and she asked if we’d had sex. “I don’t think so?” I said. She shook her head, slowly.
I decided I was going to make a point. I put clothes and makeup on, and I went to school.
He blanched when I walked into the classroom. He was wearing the same outfit he’d left my house in; he looked as ####ty as I felt. Class began and we went around the room, introducing ourselves and talking about our favorite writers. When my turn came, he couldn’t look at me. I felt a flush of something like pride.
We dated through the school year — though if you count the time after our breakup that we spent in close contact, talking and arguing and occasionally hooking up, the whole thing lasted much longer. While the relationship itself was consensual, much of what happened within its borders was not.
A running theme was how he wanted to tell people we were together, to make me his “real girlfriend.” I resisted, even though we weren’t doing the best job of keeping it a secret in the first place. I already knew what my friends thought of my decision to be with him; I already saw the knowing looks people gave each other when we left the bar together at the end of the night. I had heard rumors about his other relationships and I didn’t want to be another one; I didn’t want to be marked forever as the naïve young student who had dated a professor, this professor. So I didn’t talk to anyone about it. Except for him.
The shame and isolation I felt grew proportionally with my investment in our relationship; the deeper things got, the more sure I was that everyone thought I was making a bad choice. When his friends or my friends or his students or my professors looked at me, I imagined their judgment moving through me like an x-ray. I felt sure they knew that a large portion of our sex happened when I was blackout drunk, that I followed him to the bar almost every night even though I rarely wanted to be there, that I thought I was in love, that I was. I felt gullible and stubborn and self-sure and shaky and guilty all at once, but above all, I knew that I had made the choices that got me here. If anything bad happened to me, I told myself over and over, I had no one to blame but myself.
* * *
Two years to the day after that first night at the bar, I ran into him on a night out with my friends. This wasn’t unusual; we had friends in common, we frequented the same places. But my life was different now. I had a new boyfriend, a new apartment, a new sense of self-confidence. My friends had all heard me talk about our relationship; they had all told me it wasn’t my fault, that they didn’t blame me, and I believed them. I’d stopped wincing when people talked about him — when they told me what a great teacher he was, or when they joked about his tendency to go out with students. I was over it. I felt safe around him — not because he was safe, but because I knew better now. There was distance between us. I had perspective.
He bought me a beer and we started talking. He apologized for a few things. It got later, and people started leaving. A close friend of mine tapped me on the shoulder on his way out and asked if I was okay. I waved him off. I was fine.
I remember drinking. I remember closing the bar. I remember him saying that I was too drunk to get home by myself. I remember agreeing. When he asked if I wanted to stay at his place, I laughed. I let him walk me home. I remember walking up the stairs to my apartment; I remember him going to the fridge and pulling out a beer. I remember him kissing me. I remember saying, “I have a boyfriend. You should go.” I remember his hands around my wrists. I remember him saying, “You’re not telling me you don’t want to.” I remember being on my bed. His hands. The panic that ran through my body. I remember pushing him away. I remember making him leave, but I don’t remember how.
I fell asleep in my clothes.
It took me weeks to tell anyone what had happened that night. It took me months to tell anyone that the next morning, in a fog, I’d let him pick me up in his car and take me out for lunch. I felt like these were the details that proved what I’d always known — that the whole thing was my fault in the first place. What kind of a victim lets her attacker buy her a veggie burger?
* * *
An abusive relationship is a closed loop. So is a professional network. So is the patriarchy.
The experience I had in Banff — of telling one story and hearing a flood of them in return — was a microcosm of what happened to me after I started opening up to my close friends about what happened that night with the professor.
I heard stories from other students, other friends, people in the same literary community as me. A few of them were about this person, but most were about other men across the country in the same loose network — writers, editors, teachers. I heard about rapes and assaults. I heard about violations of trust and instances of gaslighting. I heard about men who had threatened women with legal action to stop them from talking about what had happened between them.
Without exception, every single one of these men is still working — writing, publishing, editing, teaching — today.
These men do not work, or live, or act in a vacuum. Unless they are masterminds or psychopaths (and they cannot all be), their behavior, or aspects of it, is often visible. These men are everywhere. They write and they edit and they teach. They have small magazines and small presses and small reading series. They have publishers and editors, they have podcasts and publicists sending them books to review. The influence they wield may seem insignificant to those in their community who have moved beyond their reach, but for those who haven’t, it is more than enough to frighten or threaten or silence. Their power comes from institutional support, whether implied or explicit, and it comes from systems that rely on the victims of harassment to be the ones who take down their abusers by speaking out in public.
These men have friends. They have readers. They have peers. They have permission.
Every time we treat issues of abuse as black-and-white — every time we ask a woman why she didn’t just leave the apartment or the relationship, why she didn’t just call the police, how she didn’t see it coming; every time we tell her not to feed the trolls or that she has no real proof or ask why she’d allow herself to be bullied by someone so insignificant in the first place — every time we do these things, no matter what our intentions, we are complicit in the systems that allow predatory individuals to thrive in small communities. Abusers whose power and influence seem relatively minor are often the most dangerous kind, since the people around them who can afford to ignore their behavior will do so until something drastic forces them to act, while those who have something to lose at their hands will continue to stay silent. A man who’s “no big deal” can still ruin your reputation. A man who’s “no threat” can still leave marks. A man who “doesn’t matter” can still set fire to your life and then walk away whistling.
^ as a human man who played hockey his entire life, I would have called the cops if I saw that. At that age.
I dunno how many people would have. It's like that social phenomenon where 10 people witness a crime in the alley and no one calls 911 assuming that if something was wrong, one of the other bystanders would have jumped in already.
That intimidation of 10 men vs 1 girl is crazy. The intimidation of 9 peers and 1 female vs 1 player who isn't sure what's going on...thats hard to fully grasp either.
You get to that room late for pizza and you're not sure what's going on. You maybe ask a teammate youre close with that got their earlier. They say, "I'm not sure bro. Got here like 20 mins before you. Mikey says she's cool with this. She seems to be okay with it. I'm just having pizza". And then under the pressure, you just defer to the idea that it must be consensual, even though you don't partake.
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Before she had left home on June 18, 2018 to meet up with co-workers, she had two coolers.
Once at Jack’s Bar on Richmond Row on the fateful night that’s landed five members of Canada’s gold-winning 2018 world junior hockey team in court, she said she had least eight Jagerbombs shots – shots of Jagermeister liqueur and Red Bull energy drink – plus a shot of vodka or tequila, a vodka soda and a beer.
And so, the complainant, then 20 and now 27, whose identity is protect by court order, said Friday at the Superior Court jury trial that she was intoxicated, “blurry” and “mentally all over the place” when she said she found herself surrounded on the dance floor by young men on the team who were taking turns getting close to her.
Quote:
She was shown various videos at Jack’s Bar by Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham in which she ordered drinks, drank them and danced with her friends. She said she met one of the men on the dance floor who introduced her to “Mikey.”
Her testimony continues Monday.
Last edited by Scroopy Noopers; 05-02-2025 at 06:44 PM.
The text messages started before the investigation (McLeod inviting people to his room).
It seems like you're trying to suggest the victim has nothing to be upset about.
There is wrongdoing on someone's part either way, otherwise there would be no investigation and certainly not a trial. Either the 5 defendants sexually assaulted her or she's falsely accusing them.
The statistics show that false accusations are rare.
Whether it can be proven in a court of law beyond reasonable doubt is where it will get hung up, and I'm not getting my hopes up for justice for the victim.
We are getting only snippets of the facts, and I don't see how anybody can look at them and not realize that she never truly consented to the latter part of the evening (whether too drunk or felt coerced with 10 men vs. 1 woman).
I get that the defendants deserve their day in court and why things have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
But as a female observer - she was sexually assaulted.
I could see false accusations if she was out for money. But she already got paid. So no way is she looking for more I would think. Especially with what she would have to go through.
I could see false accusations if she was out for money. But she already got paid. So no way is she looking for more I would think. Especially with what she would have to go through.
The civil case for money is done, she would have signed a release.
The issue is entirely about consent. And there will be potentially 8 weeks of testimony regarding that issue.
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The civil case for money is done, she would have signed a release.
The issue is entirely about consent. And there will be potentially 8 weeks of testimony regarding that issue.
It sounds like McLeod was the one proposing all of the acts to the guys. No wonder he had two charges. Going guy to guy. Consent via proxy certainly isn’t consent.
She also tried to duck him at the bar but he was waiting outside the bathroom for her.
The civil case for money is done, she would have signed a release.
The issue is entirely about consent. And there will be potentially 8 weeks of testimony regarding that issue.
And I would add that the question of consent may be different for each act and each accused. There is a real possibility that it won’t be all 5 judged guilty or all 5 judged not guilty.
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The text messages started before the investigation (McLeod inviting people to his room).
It seems like you're trying to suggest the victim has nothing to be upset about.
There is wrongdoing on someone's part either way, otherwise there would be no investigation and certainly not a trial. Either the 5 defendants sexually assaulted her or she's falsely accusing them.
The statistics show that false accusations are rare.
Whether it can be proven in a court of law beyond reasonable doubt is where it will get hung up, and I'm not getting my hopes up for justice for the victim.
We are getting only snippets of the facts, and I don't see how anybody can look at them and not realize that she never truly consented to the latter part of the evening (whether too drunk or felt coerced with 10 men vs. 1 woman).
I get that the defendants deserve their day in court and why things have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
But as a female observer - she was sexually assaulted.
An important point. To a 'how do i prove consent after the fact' question the answer is: when it's consensual there is no need to prove it later, because there is no allegation of otherwise.
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And I would add that the question of consent may be different for each act and each accused. There is a real possibility that it won’t be all 5 judged guilty or all 5 judged not guilty.
I was just thinking that. It's entirely possible that McLeod as the ringleader will be judged more harshly.
I could see false accusations if she was out for money. But she already got paid. So no way is she looking for more I would think. Especially with what she would have to go through.
The repercussions of being outed for making false accusations at this point wouldn't be worth it. If the accusations were false, she would have stepped back from cooperating after getting the settlement.
She has absolutely nothing to gain at this point except seeing that justice is served and everything to lose if that were the case.
It will be up to the courts to decide on the issue of consent and the other nuances of the case, but I don't see any rational reason why people wouldn't believe her sincerity.
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I'm not anywhere near having knowledge of the law and what makes the law tick in the world but I do have a question about a potential counter suit on the victim if the 5 are found not guilty in any fashion though this trial. Can that happen? Would it happen?
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I'm not anywhere near having knowledge of the law and what makes the law tick in the world but I do have a question about a potential counter suit on the victim if the 5 are found not guilty in any fashion though this trial. Can that happen? Would it happen?
I think there would have to be some kind of smoking gun evidence indicating that there was malicious intent or a conspiracy, keeping in mind that "not guilty" doesn't mean innocent either. Like some kind of paper trail or witnesses to verify it. The London police also stated that the accuser never stopped cooperating or pursuing the charges, even after she was paid for the NDA.
Which is why it would be dumb to continue cooperating with the criminal case if there was any chance the accusations were false since there is nothing the gain at this point.
(I am not a lawyer)
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Last edited by FlamesAddiction; 05-03-2025 at 01:45 PM.
I'm not anywhere near having knowledge of the law and what makes the law tick in the world but I do have a question about a potential counter suit on the victim if the 5 are found not guilty in any fashion though this trial. Can that happen? Would it happen?
Simple answer: no.
The only potential claim would really be defamation.
And again overly simplified, anyone bringing this claim would have to prove what she said was false. That would be virtually impossible.
Simple answer: no.
The only potential claim would really be defamation.
And again overly simplified, anyone bringing this claim would have to prove what she said was false. That would be virtually impossible.
If a piece of evidence came out that showed she was extorting these guys or just totally making it up, there are a number of ways you could bring civil actions. These have already lost tens of millions of dollars collectively. For example: defamation, fraud, malicious prosecution, etc....
You'd need some pretty clear evidence though. For example, a text chain between her and friends where she outlines her plan. Something a lot more substantial than just a non guilty finding where the purported victim's credibility is attacked.
Edit: in any event she probably doesn't have the money to pay, so might not even be worth pursuing it, unless you can tie in some deep pockets somehow.
If they are found guilty, can she go after them individually for damages, or would/could the agreement with Hockey Canada preclude that? Or is it just legally impossible or difficult?
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The "if they were your daughter" is the wrong standard.
There is nothing legally wrong with the acts themselves, as long as all parties involved were consenting. I think that's the point. People get into all sorts of freaky stuff that others don't understand and certainly wouldn't want to hear their daughters partaking in.
But that's not the issue.
The issue is simply of consent and whether it was provided.
Yes - that is the legal standard. There are a lot of legal standards for which the bar is FAR lower than what we might call a "human standard".
There is no legal standard for being nasty to people on a forum (like CP eg) but there IS a human standard...and eventually Mods get fed up with people who are unpleasant...and ban them. MMF and Moon would probably have comments here. THAT is the human standard being applied.
There is a difference. A group of young men "playing" with a lone female....I'm not sure that meets a human standard for anyone (including if she were your daughter). Why? Because the exact thing that appears to have occurred COULD occur as a result...and especially when drunk, consent is dubious. Given that she went to the Police the next day is telling.
Personally I don't care what people do, if consenting and actually ABLE TO PROVIDE CLEAR CONSENT. Drunk...? Hmmm. Lower resistance operational.
This will be an interesting test in jurisprudence.
