New evidence sought on 3rd day of Gee-Gees sexual assault trial

The first witness in the sexual assault trial of two former members of the University of Ottawa hockey team will be returning for a fourth day of testimony after he was asked Wednesday to provide all the records he'd kept of his messages with the complainant.

In previous statements, the witness had said he deleted the text messages, but during cross-examination said he had some screenshots on his laptop in the courthouse. Those screenshots became 68 printed-out pages of messages, which were given to both the crown and defence. 

The new evidence in the four-year-old case comes on the second day of cross-examination of the witness, a fellow teammate of the two men on trial Guillaume Donovan and David Foucher.

The pair are facing sexual assault charges in connection with an incident at a hotel in Thunder Bay, Ont., in 2014.

At the time, the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees were in Thunder Bay to play a game against the Lakehead University Thunderwolves.

Today's request came as the witness was being pressed on how previous versions of his account of the events differed from his testimony in court.

The witness was Donovan's roommate on the Thunder Bay trip. He had arranged to meet the alleged victim and took her back to their hotel room on the night in question.

The victim's identity is protected under a publication ban, which also prevents CBC from naming the witness.

Question of messages

During Tuesday's cross examination, defence lawyers asked whether the witness and the alleged victim remained in touch after the team left Thunder Bay and whether they talked about the incident.

The witness has repeatedly denied that they did.

On Wednesday, Christian Deslauriers, the lawyer for Donovan, read one of the messages to the witness from the complainant, in which she called him "an asshole." 

The witness responded to the text by apologizing, saying he'd been kicked out of the room by a veteran player because he was a rookie — a story, the witness said yesterday, had been a lie.

The witness agreed when Deslauriers suggested he had stopped communicating with the complainant after receiving advice from a lawyer. He had told police they stopped communicating around March 31, 2014.

The witness said he never feared being charged in connection to the incident.

Witness told coach incident was a 'threesome'

The witness had also previously testified that he stopped having sex with the woman when he noticed Donovan was standing next to his bed. 

He said he then left the room, without any of them exchanging words.

Deslauriers said that testimony contradicted what the witness told Gee-Gees coach Real Paiement mere days after the team returned to Ottawa.

He said the witness had told his coach the complainant was "more than willing and enjoying the threesome" involving himself and Donovan.

The witness responded that it wasn't correct for him to have told Paiement that the complainant had agreed to have sex with Donovan.​

The defence also raised a statement the witness made to police in Ottawa that he had thought what happened between Donovan and the complainant was "100 per cent consensual."

Establishing a timeline at the hotel

Wednesday's cross-examination also tried to determine how much the witness could see in his hotel room that night and lay out when, exactly, certain events happened.

The witness said he didn't recall anyone else being in the room for about 30 minutes while he had sex with the woman, but testified that a door to an adjoining room —also occupied by Gee-Gees players — had opened "a few times."

He said he saw a light coming from behind him when the door would open and that he didn't notice Donovan enter the room until his roommate was right beside him.

When Donovan showed up, the witness said he got off the bed, went over to get his boxers and left the room in about 30 seconds — but not before catching a glimpse of Donovan with his penis out and the complainant lying on her side, performing oral sex on him.

"I don't know if it was [in a] hurry. Awkward, maybe, is a better word," the witness told court.

He said he left Donovan with the complainant for little more than three minutes, and was in the washroom for about half that time before he saw Donovan and Foucher emerge from the room with their clothes on.

Follow along with CBC Ottawa's Matthew Kupfer, who is tweeting from the trial in Thunder Bay.