Report: Judge selected for 2018 Hockey Canada sexual assault trial

As reported Monday morning by TSN’s Rick Westhead, a judge has now been selected for the trial of the five 2018 Canadian World Junior Team members charged with sexual assault.

Justice Bruce Thomas has been assigned to the case, Westhead reports. Thomas has been a judge for 25 years and was Regional Senior Judge for Ontario’s Southwest region from 2017 to 2023. Thomas has “overseen some of the area’s highest-profile trials” in recent years, ranging from cases dealing with alleged human trafficking to murder.

A date for the trial, which will likely take place in 2025, may be set as early as Tuesday this week during a hearing in London, Westhead reports.

In June, a criminal lawyer in London with no ties to the case told Westhead it was unlikely a trial begins before late April 2025 – at the absolute earliest – as a result of court backlogs. The trial is expected to take at least two months.

Michael McLeod is charged with two counts of sexual assault, including one for aiding others in committing a sexual assault. Carter Hart, Cal Foote, Dillon Dube and Alex Formenton are each charged with one count of sexual assault.

In June of 2018, the accused were London, Ont., to celebrate their 2018 World Junior gold medal win with their teammates. After the Hockey Canada event, members of the team kept the celebration going, and some attended Jack’s, a bar in downtown London, where they met the victim. In the early morning hours of June 19, she went to the Delta London Armouries Hotel with one of the accused, where the alleged assault took place.

London Police initially investigated the alleged sexual assault from June 2018 to February 2019 and closed the case without charges, “as it was determined by investigators at that time that there were insufficient grounds to lay a charge,” said London Police Chief Thai Truong during a February press conference.

A comprehensive review was initiated in July 2022, however, after the alleged victim filed a civil suit in court, which TSN reported in May 2022 was quietly settled by Hockey Canada for $3.55 million dollars.

The review involved “re-examining additional investigative steps, gathering additional evidence and obtaining new information,” Truong said. As a result, London Police found sufficient evidence to charge five men with sexual assault and confirmed the charges in the Feb. 5 presser.

“For the past months, defense lawyers have been reviewing what Crown attorney Heather Donkers has called ‘substantial’ paper and audio evidence collected by London police in connection with the case,” Westhead reports.

Every one of the accused except Formenton was a 2024 restricted free agent and was not extended a qualifying offer from his team, becoming an unrestricted free agent. McLeod and Dube have since signed in the KHL.