Complainant's testimony continues at Gee-Gees sexual assault trial
The complainant in the sexual assault trial of two former members of the University of Ottawa hockey team was questioned extensively Friday about what she could and couldn't remember about the night she said the two men assaulted her.
The woman told court on Thursday she was having consensual sex with a member of the Gee-Gees hockey team she met on Tinder — when it was interrupted and two men forced themselves on her.
Former Gee-Gees hockey players Guillaume Donovan and David Foucher are facing sexual assault charges in connection with an incident at a hotel in Thunder Bay, Ont. in 2014.
In February 2014, the University of Ottawa hockey team was in Thunder Bay for a game against the Lakehead Thunderwolves.
The complainant's identity is protected by a publication ban that also prevents CBC from reporting certain other details of the trial.
Red hair like Gee-Gees captain
Friday's testimony began with, Crown lawyer Marc Huneault completing his questioning.
He asked the complainant if she remembered anything else about the men who she said assaulted her.
She said it was difficult to identify the men because the room was dark. She said one man had a voice she recognized from earlier in the night when the Gee-Gee player she met on Tinder introduced her to the captain of the team.
The crown presented her with a statement she gave to police in 2014. The woman said she remembered one of the men had red hair that was the same as the Gee-Gees captain's.
The first witness, a teammate of both accused, identified Foucher as the captain of the team at the time of the alleged incident.
4 men naked in the room
Christian Deslauriers, the lawyer representing Donovan, tried to dig into details of the night in question.
The complainant said she couldn't remember exactly what she drank that night, whether there were other people's clothes in the hotel room or a precise timeline.
"I never checked the time that night," she said.
Deslauriers asked the woman to draw a diagram of the hotel room, as well as the bed and how she was lying on it.
She said there were four men naked at the room at one point during the incident — the player she had met on Tinder and had consensual sex with, a man in the corner who was touching himself and the two men who forced themselves on her.
The defence also ran through the ups and downs of her relationship with the friend who picked her up at the hotel on the night of the alleged incident and first went to police. The complainant said she was angry with her at the time, but they have since reconciled.
"I was just thankful she went forward," she said.
Question of reactivating app returns
The trial has only heard from two witnesses in its first week and there is more cross-examination ahead for the complainant.
The Crown's first witness, the player who met the complainant over Tinder who was also Donovan's roommate, appeared over four days. There were procedural delays, including the introduction of new evidence in the form of text message records that were recovered in the course of cross-examination.
On Friday, Justice Chantal Brochu expressed some frustration at those delays when the defence once again tried to bring an argument to get access to the complainant's Tinder messages with the first witnesses.
They had raised similar arguments during the first witness' testimony.
Brochu said it was the second time the issue had been raised in a five day trial that had already seen almost four years of delays. She said the defence should have brought the issue about in pre-trial through a formal request.
The issue was not resolved after Friday's lunch break, but the defence said they were dropping the issue.
CBC Ottawa's Matthew Kupfer is in Thunder Bay covering the trial. Follow his live tweets here.
