‘Chilling Revelations: E.M. Exposes Shocking Truths Behind Hockey Canada’s Dark Secrets’

In a courtroom in London, Ontario, Monday’s testimony peeled back the grim layers of an evening that left one woman grappling with degradation and fear. E.M., at the heart of the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial, recounted harrowing hours inside a hotel room where she says elite hockey players—figures she described as looming over her—subjected her to sustained humiliation and abuse. The disturbing account detailed players pressuring her to endure acts involving golf balls and clubs, while she struggled to regain control of a night spiraling beyond her limits. What stands out isn’t just the physicality of the alleged assault but the chilling dynamic of coercion—coaxing her to stay despite her attempts to leave, layered with jeering and taunts that turned the situation into a twisted “joke” for the men involved. The players—facing serious charges—maintain their innocence, but E.M.’s vivid testimony lays bare not only her trauma but also the power imbalances and manipulation she endured, a narrative that challenges assumptions around consent, control, and accountability.

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LONDON, Ont. — E.M., the woman at the center of the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial, told jurors on Monday about the hours she spent inside a London hotel room in which she said she was “degraded” and “humiliated,” as players spit on her, slapped her, and encouraged her to insert golf balls and golf clubs into her vagina.

She said players put down a bed sheet and were “towering over her” prompting her to feel fearful and like she had didn’t have “any other option” than to perform the sexual acts they were encouraging. She said that she dissociated and felt as if she was watching the events unfold from above. She said she tried to leave the hotel room at multiple points, but each time she was coaxed to stay; one player put his arm around her shoulder and guided her back to the bed sheet, attempting to convince her they were all having fun.

She said she heard one player say not to let her leave the room when she was crying.

In roughly three hours of testimony during the morning session in front of jurors, E.M. described the mood in the room at the time of the events, with players “shouting” and “encouraging” each other and making degrading comments about her and calling out directions for her. She said she felt they were “bullying” her.

“It was all just a joke to them,” she said.

Mike McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Cal Foote are all facing sexual assault charges stemming from the alleged incident. All five players pleaded not guilty to charges when arraigned in Ontario Superior Court.

Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham asked E.M. a litany of questions about the night in question, beginning with what first happened inside the room with McLeod. E.M. said she had sex with McLeod. When she went to the washroom to clean up, McLeod got dressed and she said she observed him walking around the room with his phone.

He left the room, she said, and two other men entered the room, which she said “shocked” her. More men later entered the room. She said she was asked to lie on the hotel room floor, but did not want to do that. They then put down a bed sheet and instructed her to lie on that, she said. From there, they told her to touch herself and to moan.

The men, who were elite hockey players and much bigger than her (she said she was 5-feet-4, 120 pounds in 2018) were gathered around her, and they had golf clubs. Some were sitting on the bed. Others were “standing around towering over and surrounding” her. She described feeling vulnerable, confused and scared.

“I remember them making comments about putting golf balls in my vagina and asking if I could take the whole club and put the whole golf ball in me.”

She described her mind reeling over the requests, finding them “extreme” and “painful” and wondering what else they would ask her to do from there.

“I was already naked and drunk and feeling very vulnerable at this point,” she said. “I didn’t understand why the one man I had left with kind of disappeared and left me in that situation.”

As the men surrounded her, she said, she felt disassociated from the situation, with her mind separating itself from her body and floating to the top corner of the building, where she said she watched everything happen: “It didn’t feel like I had any control.”

E.M. said she performed oral sex on three men while others were yelling commands: “Suck! Suck it!” And telling her to “Spit on it.”

“That’s when I started feeling someone spit on my back as well,” she said.

E.M. said that after performing oral sex on the three men she laid back on the bedsheet. While she was lying down, one of the men, she said, “did the splits” over her:

“He put his penis on my face at that moment,” she said.

Asked what she thought when this happened, E.M. described it as “gross” and “didn’t think it was respectful.”

“It felt degrading,” she said.

E.M., who over the course of her testimony said that she had memory gaps, said that players were encouraging each other to have sex “with this girl” and that when she went into the bathroom, one of the men followed her.

“He put a condom on and he bent me over the bathroom sink,” she said. When she was asked about this interaction, she said she was not really doing anything, but “was just kind of bent over and he was having sex with me.”

She said that after this, she was encouraged to perform oral sex on McLeod on the bed, at which point she said multiple people began slapping her buttocks: “They were taking turns trying to hit as hard as they could. I told them to stop at that point.”

At multiple points, including when she said she was performing oral sex on McLeod, she heard references to phones, with the men telling each other to put their phones away or commands of “no phones.” She said this worried her that they were potentially recording the events.

She said that by the end of the night she was feeling tired, thirsty and physically sick. She felt like she was going to vomit and went to the bathroom to try to put her clothes on.

She said they would notice that she was crying and didn’t want to let her leave while she was distraught.

“Oh, she’s crying,” she heard one person say. “Don’t let her go.”

When asked by Cunningham whether anyone in the room checked in with her as the sexual acts were taking place, E.M. responded it was “only at the end was that brought up.”

She described feeling the need to go along with what the men wanted, which she described as her body’s way of protecting herself from the situation.

Cunningham showed E.M. two videos that have been previously been reported on, that showed her being asked questions by individuals in the room. In the first video, when asked by someone who is not identified or shown: “You’re OK with this?” she said “I’m OK with this.” In the second video, she says, “It was all consensual” and “I am so sober, that’s why I can’t do this right now.”

She said she does not recall making either video but believes they were likely made toward the end of the night. She said she doesn’t seem like herself in the videos, describing herself as a “mess” in the first and noting how quickly she was speaking and her eyes looking “crazy” in the second. She said that she did not recall the taping of those videos, but does recall McLeod “hounding” her at multiple points to say that the interaction was “consensual.” (She identifies the voice in the second video as McLeod).

“It wasn’t a reflection of how I felt,” she said of what she said on both videos.

Later, E.M. testified about the events as she left the hotel shortly before 5 a.m. She was crying uncontrollably and called her best friend for comfort, she said. E.M. continued sobbing at home, in the shower, waking up her father. She said her mom came in to check on her.

She described struggling to process the events and feeling both shame and embarrassment.

“I think I was putting a lot of blame on myself for even having gone to the hotel in the first place,” she said. “I wish I could’ve reacted in a different way.”

Jurors were also shown a series of text messages between her and McLeod in the days after, in which he repeatedly asks her about the police – whether she went to the police, whether she’s going to “make this go away” and whether she was “putting an end to this.”

E.M., who has said in her first two days of testimony that she has difficulty dealing with confrontation, said she was apologetic and repeatedly told him what she thought he wanted to hear so that he’d leave her alone.

She told him she didn’t plan to pursue the matter further, to which he texted in response: “Thank you all the best.”

But E.M. said she did go to the police. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go through with an investigation but “just wanted them to be spoken to.”

“I wanted them to be held accountable in some way,” she said. “I didn’t want to see that happen to anybody else.”

(Courtroom sketch of Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham and E.M., depicted in video conference, from her May 2 testimony. Alexandra Newbould / The Canadian Press via AP)