WARNING: This article contains graphic content and may affect those who have experienced or know someone who has been affected by sexual violence.
Prosecutors in Jacob Hoggard’s sexual assault trial on Wednesday suggested the Hedley frontman lied about his encounters with a teenage fan and a young woman, citing several other instances where he lied to get out of “difficult situations” to come out.
Over more than a day of testimony, Hoggard, 37, admitted that he had lied to the younger applicant in the weeks and months before they met at a hotel, telling her he loved her and the idea of marriage and of a future together so that he could have sex with her.
Hoggard also agreed that he had lied to the second applicant – an Ottawa woman in her early 20s at the time – when he said he cared for her and was there for her when she spoke to her over the phone a few days after they met asked for an apology. In fact, he didn’t particularly enjoy her company and blocked her number after that call, he said.
He lied to the applicants to get them to leave his hotel room after each encounter, he told the court. And he has lied to his partners, including his now-wife, to hide his infidelity over more than a decade of touring with Hedley, deleting messages, sexual photos and videos and saving female numbers on his phone under male names, he said.
In her cross-examination on Wednesday, QC Kelly Slate suggested Hoggard’s account of consensual sex with the complainants was just another lie.
Hoggard and his wife, Rebekah Asselstine, arrive at the Ontario Supreme Court in Toronto on Wednesday. (Esteban Cuevas/CBC)
“I’m just telling the truth now,” he replied.
Hoggard, born and raised in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual assault causing physical harm and one count of sexual assault, a charge relating to sexually touching a person under the age of 16 relates.
Prosecutors allege he repeatedly raped two women, one of whom was 16 at the time, in two separate incidents in the fall of 2016.
Didn’t agree
The applicants have testified that during the encounters, which took place in Toronto-area hotel rooms, they cried and said no.
The younger complainant, who first met Hoggard because she was a longtime Hedley fan, testified that he raped her vaginally and orally in September 2016 and attempted to do the same anally as well. She told the court she tried to fend him off at various points but was overpowered.
The second applicant met Hoggard through the dating app Tinder while the band was in Ottawa. She testified that she agreed to meet him in Toronto in November 2016 to have sex, but disagreed with what happened at the hotel and told the court that she was anally, vaginally and orally raped.
Both recalled Hoggard spitting in their mouths, hitting them and calling them “slut” and “whore”. The first applicant alleged that he also pressed her face into the pillows, which made it difficult for her to breathe.
The second applicant said Hoggard choked her so violently that she feared for her life. Once, she claimed, he dragged her by the legs into the bathroom and asked her to urinate on him, which she refused.
Hoggard is also accused of groping the teenage complainant after a Hedley show in April 2016 when she was 15.
As of Tuesday, the singer categorically denied raping the complainants, saying both encounters were consensual and “passionate”.
Hoggard further denied that either complainant cried or said no, and claimed that he relied on verbal and non-verbal cues to gauge approval of each of them.
He acknowledged that some of the acts described by the applicants may have taken place, noting that his sexual preferences included spitting, slapping, verbal abuse and urination. But he said restricting breathing and causing pain aren’t things he enjoys.
Limousine driver testifies
Hoggard also said he has no detailed recollections of the encounters, but he has no doubt they were consensual.
Prosecutors suggested on Wednesday that Hoggard, who had grown accustomed to stardom since Hedley’s rise to success in 2004, wasn’t used to people saying no to him.
“You didn’t care, you still got what you wanted,” Slate said in her cross-examination Wednesday.
“That’s not true,” Hoggard said.
The defense, meanwhile, asked Hoggard how he could be sure the encounters were consensual given his limited memory. The singer said he recalled one positive experience and that communicating with sexual partners was his practice.
“I know I treat people like that,” he said.
The court also heard on Wednesday from a limousine driver who drove the younger applicant to and from Hoggard’s hotel.
Steven Wigoda said the teenager was “very calm” on the drive back to her home north of Toronto, but otherwise seemed normal.
He also denied stopping at a rest stop on the way there, as the applicant alleged, and said he would have noted it in his logbook if he had.
The Crown and Defense are expected to make their final motions on Friday and jury deliberations could begin as early as Monday.
Support is available for anyone who has been sexually abused. You can access hotlines and local support services through this Government of Canada website or the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. If you are in imminent danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.
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