(London) Professional hockey player Alex Formenton, a former member of the Ottawa Senators who currently plays in Switzerland, has been charged by police in London, Ontario, his lawyer announced Sunday.
“London police have charged several players, including Alex Formenton, in connection with an accusation made in 2018,” lawyer Daniel Brown said in an email. Alex will vigorously defend his innocence and asks people not to pass judgment without hearing all the evidence. »
Video footage shows Formenton wearing a gray jacket, dark pants and white shoes as he entered a London police station on Sunday morning with his legal representative. He made no comment.
A follow-up message left for Brown and a message for Formenton’s agent were not immediately returned.
THE Globe and Mailciting two anonymous sources, reported last Wednesday that the charges are linked to an alleged gang sexual assault of a woman in a London, Ontario, hotel room in 2018. None of the allegations have been proven in court .
Formenton is one of five players from Canada’s 2018 World Junior Championship team who recently took an indefinite leave of absence from their professional clubs. These departures came as the Globe and Mail revealed that five members of this team were ordered to surrender to face charges of sexual assault.
Carter Hart of the Philadelphia Flyers, Michael McLeod and Cal Foote, both of the New Jersey Devils, and Dillon Dubé of the Calgary Flames also left their respective teams in recent days.
PHOTO DERIK HAMILTON, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Carter Hart
The Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General said late Wednesday that no charges relating to the 2018 incident had been filed in court, and The Canadian Press has no information linking the players’ leave to the investigation.
Formenton would be the only player to have surrendered.
“We will provide any updates at our press conference scheduled for February 5, 2024,” London police spokesperson Matthew Dawson said in an email on Sunday.
Formenton, who was drafted 47e overall in 2017 by the Senators, scored 18 goals and 32 points in 2021-22, a career high. He failed to agree on a new contract as a restricted free agent and signed in Switzerland.
His Swiss club, HC Ambri-Piotta, cited personal reasons for his departure and said he had been allowed to return to Canada.
The Flyers cited personal reasons for Hart’s departure. The Flames cited Dube’s mental health, while the Devils did not give a reason why McLeod and Foote were allowed to leave.
Recall of facts
The alleged incident allegedly occurred following a Hockey Canada gala in June 2018, where players were honored for winning that year’s world junior tournament.
A woman identified as EM in court documents filed a $3.55 million lawsuit in the spring of 2022, which was quickly settled out of court by Hockey Canada before TSN first broke the story.
Subsequent revelations that the national body maintained a fund drawing from minor hockey fees to pay for uninsured liabilities, including sexual assault lawsuits, sparked an unprecedented backlash against the sport’s governing body.
Hockey Canada’s governance and transparency were subsequently called into question, leading to a series of parliamentary hearings.
In June 2022, representatives from Hockey Canada told parliamentarians that the organization had “strongly encouraged” – but not required – the 19 players at the London gala to speak to its own independent investigators.
The fallout was quick to be felt.
The federal government froze its funding, while several corporate sponsors suspended their support. Hockey Canada reopened its independent investigation in July 2022, adding that player participation was now mandatory.
After a series of disastrous appearances on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Hockey Canada President and CEO Scott Smith left the organization in October 2022, the same day the entire board of directors resigned.
London police, for their part, closed an initial investigation in February 2019 without laying charges, but reopened the case in 2022.
A lead investigator wrote in legal documents filed in Ontario courts in December 2022 that there was reason to believe a woman was sexually assaulted by five players on the junior team.
The NHL also launched its own investigation, which deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in June was complete.
With Hockey Canada and London police, that makes three separate investigations into an incident that has cast a shadow over the sport in Canada.
Hockey Canada said in November that the findings of an independent third-party report were being appealed.
All players from the 2018 junior team have been excluded from international competitions.
A Hockey Canada official told a parliamentary committee during one of its hearings in 2022 that the organization has paid $7.6 million in nine settlements related to sexual abuse and assault since 1989, without count the London incident.