Closing arguments begin in ex-Hedley singer Jacob Hoggard’s sexual assault trial

(Editor’s Note: Some of the details in this report are graphic and may be disturbing to some readers)

Defence lawyers for Canadian musician Jacob Hoggard suggested a woman accusing him of sexual assault concocted an “extravagant false story” about the nature of the encounter to gain sympathy and hide her infidelity.

In her closing arguments Thursday, defence lawyer Megan Savard told jurors that Hoggard did not rape the complainant or touch her without her consent, but rather had a consensual one-night stand with her after a concert and bonfire after-party in Kirkland Lake, Ont., about eight years ago.

Savard argued the complainant’s account of what happened that night was unreliable and “riddled with inconsistencies,” and that the woman had “a motive to lie from the outset.”

The complainant made a “foolish, spontaneous decision” to have a one-night stand with a celebrity but couldn’t tell those around her without losing their support and compromising her then-two-year relationship, the defence lawyer said.

The complainant “may well have suffered embarrassment or heartbreak,” Savard said. “She may have felt silly after realizing she was not, in fact, special to Mr. Hoggard the way she described, when she realized she’d cheated on her boyfriend for nothing.”

Over the years, “the pressure to take a private lie public becomes too great,” and the woman filed a report with police, the lawyer suggested.

Both Hoggard and his accuser took the stand in the trial, offering starkly different accounts of a June 2016 encounter in Kirkland Lake, Ont.

The Crown is set to make its closing submissions Thursday afternoon.

The Crown and defence agree that a sexual encounter took place in the Hedley singer’s hotel room following the band’s concert and a bonfire after-party, but prosecutors are seeking to prove it wasn’t consensual. 

The complainant, who was 19 at the time, said Hoggard raped, choked, hit and urinated on her, and called her names like “dirty little piggy.”  She recalled being terrified by Hoggard during the encounter, and said she repeatedly tried to get away from him and told him to stop.

The woman, whose identity is protected under a standard publication ban, was the Crown’s only witness.

Hoggard said they flirted all night, then had a consensual one-night stand.

He denied that the woman struggled, that he hit or choked her, that he pinned her down, or that she ever said she was uncomfortable. He also denied calling her a “dirty little pig,” as she had described in court, and said she agreed to urinate on him during consensual oral sex.

Savard argued the complainant testified confidently about details that were contradicted by other evidence, such as transportation to the bonfire and the clothes Hoggard wore at the after-party.

The defence lawyer also told the jury that while her client has admitted to some conduct that they may find “unusual or unpleasant,” including having casual sex with a much younger woman, as well as sexual interests they may find “odd or distasteful,” they cannot convict him on those grounds.

“In Canada, we do not convict people because we don’t like their sexual behavior. We do not use the criminal law to police people’s sexual preferences or to protect against sexual disappointment,” she said.