Article content material
It was her ultimate day on the stand, the tip of an extended, gruelling week for an Ottawa girl who claims Hedley frontman Jacob Hoggard raped her repeatedly, choked her and slapped her after they met in a downtown Toronto resort room in 2016.
Commercial 2
Article content material
And it was the tip of defence makes an attempt to insinuate all the pieces that occurred that day had been a part of an agreed-upon hook-up after she and Hoggard matched on Tinder a couple of weeks earlier.
Her Ottawa roommates and a buddy would testify that she was crying and distraught after she returned from the Nov. 22, 2016 encounter. Two of them described how she was in apparent ache and had hassle strolling and sitting down after they noticed her the subsequent day and he or she advised them she’d been violently raped by Hoggard.
However his lawyer prompt it was all consensual.
“I need to ask you now concerning the textual content messages that you simply exchanged earlier than you met Mr. Hoggard,” defence lawyer Megan Savard stated as she neared the tip of her cross-examination. “You deliberate collectively to have intercourse there?”
Commercial 3
Article content material
“Appropriate,” replied the lady as she wiped her swollen, teary eyes.
“In your thoughts, this was going to be one thing like a one-night stand? You didn’t consider it as the start of a romantic relationship?”
To every query, she replied, “Appropriate.”
“In your textual content messages, you mentioned what was going to occur while you noticed one another. You spoke about some sexual stuff you have been going to do on the resort? ” the lawyer requested.
“Appropriate.”
“And I recommend you spoke about them utilizing what I’ll name coarse language as a substitute of romantic language,” Savard continued. “It was virtually this purely sexual transactional dialog?”
“Appropriate,” she replied.
“And also you talked about these explicitly, have you learnt what I imply by that? And also you spoke about it typically, each day main as much as the resort go to.”
Commercial 4
Article content material
Once more, she agreed.
“The subject of what you have been going to do on the resort was the principle matter of dialog? You solely mentioned sexual emotions for one another, not every other type of emotions and in your thoughts, this was an off-the-cuff, sexual relationship you have been embarking on?”
She agreed and agreed and agreed. And also you need to scream, “So what?”
However by now, the witness appeared numb to all of it — it was apparent she simply wished this to be over.
Hoggard, 37, has pleaded not responsible to sexual interference in relation to a teenaged fan when she was 15 and of sexual assault inflicting bodily hurt when she was 16 in addition to not responsible to sexual assault inflicting bodily hurt a couple of months later of the Ottawa girl, who was in her early 20s.
Each girls testified Hoggard violently raped them, ignoring their cries to cease. And each have been accused by the defence of fabricating the allegations as revenge towards a star who had simply used them for intercourse.
Commercial 5
Article content material
Whereas below cross examination, the second complainant was consistently accused of mendacity — to police about what actually occurred, to Hoggard about needing vaginal stitches and consulting a lawyer, and to the CBC, when she gave an nameless interview in 2018.
Savard had confronted her with one in every of two totally different clips and prompt she’d lied when she advised the TV reporter the assault was particularly painful as a result of she was recovering from surgical procedure “in a giant approach” — one thing she’d by no means advised anybody else. On the stand, the complainant appeared mystified — whereas she agreed that it was her, she denied saying something about surgical procedure to anybody.
That’s as a result of she hadn’t.
She and the jury have been advised Friday that the silhouetted particular person in that CBC clip, their voice altered, wasn’t even her.
“It shouldn’t have been performed at our trial in any respect. The speaker will not be (the complainant),” Justice Gillian Roberts suggested jurors at the beginning of the day.
“It was performed to (the complainant) by mistake. Defence counsel didn’t understand she was making a mistake till later that night time and when she did, she corrected it,” she stated. “I need to guarantee you that we defined the error to (the complainant) and we additionally assured her that we’d be explaining the error to you.”
Small consolation that will need to have been. However at the very least her testimony is completed.
The trial continues Monday.
mmandel@postmedia.com
