Crown Reads NHLer’s Past Interview Transcripts In Hockey Canada Sexual Assault Trial
Warning: coverage of the Hockey Canada trial includes graphic details of alleged sexual assault that may be disturbing to readers.
On Friday at the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial, Vegas Golden Knights center and witness Brett Howden and a Crown attorney read transcripts from previous interviews he had with investigators, revealing that Howden said he believed he heard the woman in the hotel room crying.
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Howden, a 2018 world junior teammate of Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Cal Foote – the five men charged with sexual assault in the trial – has been testifying via Zoom since Tuesday. The accused players pleaded not guilty to the charges, and McLeod pleaded not guilty to another charge of being a party to the offense. Howden is not accused of any wrongdoing.
Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham had Howden read excerpts from a July 3, 2018, interview that he did with investigator Danielle Robitaille. In these excerpts, Howden talks about what he observed of the woman’s emotional state in the hotel room on the morning of June 19, 2018.
He said he didn’t see the woman physically crying but that he heard something and that “it sounded like crying.”
Additionally, Howden said in the 2018 interview the woman tried to leave the room at points but was told “oh no, baby don’t leave” by other men in the room.
Hockey Canada logo (Tom Szczerbowski-Imagn Images)
In another excerpt from the July 2018 interview, Howden was asked about when Formenton and the woman allegedly went to the bathroom together to engage in sexual activity. Howden said in the interview that Formenton had spoken to him briefly before going with the woman to the bathroom, asking Howden if it was OK for him to engage in sexual activity with the woman.
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“If she consented, you can if you want, but it’s up to you,” Howden said, according to the interview transcript.
Cunningham also had Howden read excerpts from a 2022 interview with a Hockey Canada investigator. These excerpts focused around Howden’s accounting of the allegation that Dube slapped the woman’s buttocks in the hotel room.
In his 2022 statements, Howden expressed that, although his recollection of the slapping wasn’t perfect, he remembered “just feeling uncomfortable.”
Hockey Canada Sexual Assault Trial: Golden Knights’ Brett Howden Breaks Down In Tears During Defense’s Cross-Examination
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Dube’s alleged slapping also surfaced in a discussion on Thursday. The Crown argued for text messages from Howden discussing the alleged act to be admissible in court. These text messages were from June 26, 2018, and were between Howden and Washington Capitals right winger Taylor Raddysh.
The Crown’s two previous applications to have these messages admissible in court were denied by the presiding judge, Maria Carroccia – the first of which was an application under section 9(2) of the Canada Evidence Act, and the second being an application for “past recollection recorded.”
When providing her ruling Friday morning on the “past recollection recorded” application, Carroccia expressed how the text messages’ accuracy and overall reliability could not be proven.
“This is a text message sent to a friend during a casual conversation. It is not a statement made under oath,” Carroccia said.
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Following the ruling on Friday, the Crown sought to have the text messages included in court through a hearsay application, to have a statement made out of court be deemed truthful and admissible in the proceedings.
The trial is expected to resume on Monday with Carroccia making her ruling on whether the texts will be made admissible under the Crown’s latest application.
