London, Ont. \u2013 Five former members of Canada\u2019s 2018 world junior hockey team were acquitted of all charges Thursday in a closely watched sexual assault trial.<\/p>\n
Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart, Dillon Dube, and Callan Foote had each been charged with sexual assault in connection with an incident in a London, Ont., hotel in June 2018 following a Hockey Canada gala event. McLeod also faced a second charge of being a party to the offence.<\/p>\n
A woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban and who has been referred to as E.M. in court, alleged that after she willingly accompanied McLeod to the hotel after a night of dancing and drinking at a downtown London bar, McLeod invited his teammates to his room and then joined other players in repeatedly sexually assaulting her for hours.<\/p>\n
Justice Maria Carroccia of the Ontario Court of Justice read her decision from the bench Thursday, nearly six weeks after the trial came to a close.<\/p>\n
Carroccia said she \u201cdid not find the evidence of E.M. to be credible or reliable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The players’ criminal trial began in late April in London and was marked by repeated delays, a mistrial, and the dismissal of a second jury.<\/p>\n
More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London, Ont. \u2013 Five former members of Canada\u2019s 2018 world junior hockey team were acquitted of all charges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-19343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}