(Toronto) The Ottawa woman who was sexually assaulted by Canadian musician Jacob Hoggard nearly six years ago says the singer was never the same after that day.
Updated yesterday at 1:17 p.m.
During her testimony at a Toronto courthouse on Thursday morning, the woman said the event that took place in 2016 robbed her of her confidence, her dreams and her ambitions, while preventing her from living his twenties like other young people.
Emotionally, she said she instead spent those years crying every night praying she wasn’t going to wake up the next day — which still happens to her on some days, even six years later.
The woman, whose identity cannot be released, took the helm during the Hedley frontman’s first day of sentencing. The Crown will seek a prison sentence of six to seven years.
A jury found the singer guilty of sexual assault causing bodily harm in a 2016 incident in a Toronto hotel room.
Jurors, however, found him not guilty of the same offense against another fan, who was then a teenager.
Hoggard, 38, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual assault causing bodily harm — one for each complainant — and one count of sexual interference, a charge that refers to the sexual touching of a person under the age of 16.
During the trial, Crown prosecutors alleged that Jacob Hoggard raped the two complainants, violently, in separate incidents in the fall of 2016. They also alleged that he groped the teenager after a concert from Hedley in April 2016, when she was 15.
The defense argued that the touching never happened and that Hoggard had consensual sex with each of the complainants.
In addition to the criminal trial, the Ottawa woman also filed a civil lawsuit against the singer, in which she takes up substantially the same arguments as in the first file.
In a statement filed earlier this week, the woman alleges that as a result of the singer’s actions, she suffered physical, mental and emotional suffering “that will continue forever”.
She also claims that she had to undergo medical treatment and suffered financial losses, including personal expenses and loss of income.
The defense has yet to respond to these civil allegations.