LONDON, Ont. — The complainant in the sexual assault trial for five former NHLers told court on Monday that she felt "scared" and "numb" while surrounded by men in a hotel room on the night of the alleged incident in June 2018.
The woman, known as "E.M." in court documents because of a publication ban on identifying her, testified from elsewhere in the courthouse via CCTV while questioned by assistant Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham.
She said that after consensual sex with Michael McLeod, she saw McLeod on his phone. Soon after, she said other men started coming into the room while she was still naked.
E.M. said, "I remember feeling uncomfortable and wasn't sure what was happening."
She said a bedsheet was put onto the floor and she was told to perform sexual acts on three men in the room. At that point, E.M., who testified on Friday that she had consumed 12 alcoholic drinks that night, said she started to disassociate from what was happening.
She said she had a "weird feeling of just separating from my body" and that her mind "floated to the top corner of the room" and she "started watching everything that was happening … didn't feel like I had any control, that I didn't have any choice.
"I shut down and let my body do what it needed to do to be safe. It seemed like the only safe thing to do was give them what they were wanting," she told a packed courtroom.
She said that toward the end of the night, when she tried to leave the room in the Delta Armouries, she felt pressured to stay. "I felt like I had no option. They kept bringing me back," E.M. said, adding she was crying. "I couldn't think straight with the pressure and everyone in the room."
Court was shown two phone videos, one in which E.M. says "it was all consensual." E.M. said she has no memory of recording those videos but after watching the videos, she said McLeod was "trying to get" her to say the events were consensual. She added that, "It's at a point where my mind is disconnected from my body and what I'm actually doing. I'm saying what they're wanting me to say and wanting to hear from me. I don't think it reflected how I was feeling."
A pair of subsequent security-camera videos show E.M. walking out of the lobby of the hotel at 4:46 a.m. before appearing to talk on her phone. She gets into an Uber shortly after.
She testified that the video shows her talking on her phone to her best friend.
"I was really upset with what had happened, and I needed some comfort and for someone to be with me so I wasn't alone at that point," she told the court.
McLeod, 27, has been charged with two counts of sexual assault, including one relating to aiding in the offence. Dillon Dube, 26, Cal Foote, 26, Alex 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 of E.M.'s testimony is expected to begin Monday after the break.
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