RECAP | NHL player testifies about group chat learning of investigation into world junior teammates

Hi readers.

We’re wrapping up our live coverage of today’s events as the jury has been sent home for the day.

Thanks for reading, and for your comments and questions.

Scroll down to get caught up on what happened today.

We’ll be back in the morning with more updates for you.

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Before the break, Raddysh testified that after he got the call from the Hockey Canada executive about an investigation, he phoned his dad.

“Then I messaged Michael McLeod and Brett Howden,” he says.

That ended his testimony for today.

The judge told the jury Raddysh has “a commitment” so couldn’t go past 4 p.m. He’ll return tomorrow at 10 a.m.

The jury has also been sent home until the morning.

WARNING: This post contains graphic language.

Raddysh keeps saying “I don’t recall” to questions from the Crown.

He does remember his roommate, Howden, coming back to their shared hotel room at some point and waking him up, but Raddysh doesn’t know if this happened multiple times.

We again see the texts in the group chat from that night, when McLeod invites his teammates to come to his room if they want to “be in a 3-way quick” at 2:10 a.m. and Hart replying, “I’m in” at 2:19 a.m. The group chat was formed “sometime” during the tournament, Raddysh says.

At 2:15, McLeod texts Raddysh separately and asks if he wants to come to his room for a “gummer.” That’s a term for oral sex, Raddysh explained to the jury.

Raddysh doesn’t reply and says he doesn’t remember when he saw the text message or whether he saw it that night.

McLeod is entered in Raddysh’s phone as “Mikey McLeod.” The other texts in the group chat are straightforward. At 3:19 a.m., someone texts, “Robby you have my charger?”

The next text exchange we see between Raddysh and McLeod is on June 26, 2018.

“Yo,” texts Raddysh.

“Yo,” McLeod texts back.

“Bully just called me,” Raddysh texted. “Said there’s an investigation.”

Bully is Shawn Bullock, a Hockey Canada executive, Raddysh tells the jury. The investigation is about “that night in London.”

We are now on the afternoon break.

Raddysh says McLeod and Boris Katchouk came to his door and told him to come hang out. He went next door with them, to McLeod’s room.

Raddysh keeps saying he doesn’t remember anything.

He does recall McLeod and Katchouk were in the room and there was a woman there, but he doesn’t remember whether the woman was dressed or not. He remembers she was maybe on the bed.

“Sitting here, I’m not 100 per cent sure,” Raddysh says to many of the questions asked.

He refers to transcripts from previous interviews he’s given to investigators, but says he has no recollection of how long he was in the room or what was said. He figures he was in there for “a very short time.”

Taylor Raddysh, a former member of the 2018 world junior team, is testifying via video link from Arlington, Va.

(Raddysh, who currently is a forward with the NHL’s Washington Capitals, is a witness at the trial and doesn’t face any charges).

Raddysh says the junior team got along “fairly well” and he was excited to be part of it.

“As a kid, you really want to be part of that team.”

The captain was Dillon Dubé, Raddysh says when replying to questions from the Crown.

The team captain is a leader, someone who “leads by example and tries to get the group together” on and off the ice.

Raddysh says he remembers being at the ring ceremony (for the 2018 championship) in London on June 18, 2018, and his roommate at the Delta was Brett Howden.

Raddysh went to Jack’s with the team after the ring ceremony, but he doesn’t have “any recollection” of what happened that night, including what time he arrived or went home. He wasn’t drinking heavily, he says.

He says he went back to his hotel room and FaceTimed his girlfriend. No one else was in the room at the time.

(The Capitals continue their NHL playoffs tonight at home against the Montreal Canadiens).

The judge reminds jurors that the footage of E.M. kissing McLeod and having “physical interactions” at Jack’s bar are not the subject of the charges.

The law restricts how prior sexual conduct can be used by a jury, Carroccia tells them.

Jurors can use it to help assess E.M.’s state of mind as the evening progressed, and her level of intoxication and her credibility, but they can’t use it to determine whether the men are guilty or not guilty.

“You can’t think that because of the sexual nature of what happened at Jack’s that she is more likely to have consented to the sexual activity or that E.M. is less worthy of belief,” Carroccia says.

Inferences like that are based on myths that can’t be considered by the jury.

We’re back from the break and now Dubé’s lawyer, Lisa Carnelos, is cross-examining the detective.

Carnelos confirms with Waque that the players were in London on June 18, 2018, to celebrate their world junior hockey win, and that included a gala and a golf tournament. Waque confirms a sledge hockey team was also part of the gala and golf tournament.

One person in a wheelchair is seen coming back to the Delta with Comtois and others, but he has not been identified yet, Carnelos points out.

The Crown does a quick re-examination of Waque, who says that as an investigator, she doesn’t always know exactly what other officers are working on.

Det. Lindsay Ryan is the lead investigator, also known as the investigating officer, and she determines who does what during the investigation.

Waque’s testimony is done.

Thanks for the feedback and questions we’re getting from some of you about our coverage.

Court stories can be confusing, especially in sexual assault trials involving a jury. There are rules about what can and can’t be reported under automatic publication bans to protect the identities of the complainant and other witnesses. Some information can only be published after the jury is in its deliberations.

We received a question about whether the public will have access to the complete text messages/group chat between the players in this case.

As I write this, the jury and media have not seen the texts, so we cannot report on them yet — we just know they exist.

As the Crown lays out its case, it is submitting videos and other evidence as court exhibits.

Once the jury sees them, they should be available for the media to access, but sometimes the court waits until cross-examination is done, sometimes we get it the same day, sometimes it can come days later. It really varies.

And just because we have it, doesn’t mean we can immediately publish it. We have to ensure faces of people protected by publication bans are blurred out, so we don’t share information like personal phone numbers, etc.

We are asking several times a day for the exhibits being presented in court, and as soon as we have access and have done our due diligence, including ensuring we aren’t reporting on anything under the publication bans, we will share them.

This trial centres on the issue of consent, as the Crown’s opening statements stressed.

Earlier today, the jury saw a video of the complainant, known as E.M. under a publication ban, asking if she’s “OK with all this stuff,” and her responding, “Yeah, I’m OK.”

In the second video, at 4:26 a.m., E.M., wearing no clothing, is shown holding a towel in front of her chest.

She says, “It was all consensual. Are you recording me? K, good,” E.M. says. “You are so paranoid. Holy. I enjoyed it. It was fine. I’m so sober — that’s why I can’t do this right now.”

I spoke to Kaitlynn Mendes, who’s not involved with this trial, about consent videos. She’s a sociology professor and holds the Canada Research Chair in Inequality and Equity at Western University in London. She’s also an expert in technology-facilitated sexual violence.

Mendes says consent videos aren’t new — they’re meant to pre-empt accusations that a sexual encounter was not consensual.

She says they became a “thing” during the #MeToo movement, which gained international prominence in 2017, focused on addressing sexual harassment and abuse, particularly in the workplace.

Mendes says there’s controversy over consent videos because “consent is something that can only really happen in the moment … consent has to be ongoing. It's something that can be withdrawn at any point.”

So, for example, if someone has consented to having sex with one person and a second person enters the room or they want to change acts, the participants need to get consent, in the moment, for everything happening, adds Mendes.

“That’s really the only case in which these videos I think could really stand up,” she says, acknowledging the act of recording a video in that moment is also complicated.

Mendes hasn’t seen the consent videos in the world junior hockey case, but has some questions about the context in which they were recorded, including: Who was in the room? Was there coercion or threats? Was the complainant sober and able to consent?

“We don't know whether it was like, ‘Hey, you need to record this video before you're allowed to leave.’ Are there other people standing around intimidating you? … Do they feel as though they're being coerced into saying that, yes, this was consensual?”

Court is taking a lunch recess now.

We’ll have more live updates starting around 2:15 p.m. ET, but in the meantime, we’ll be posting some context for you.

And a reminder that we are happy to answer any questions you may have. Feel free to reach out to us.