Jacob Hoggard categorically denies raping his two accusers

Before calling him to the stand, Jacob Hoggard’s defense told the jury that the sexual assaults his client is accused of were in fact consensual and that the Crown has failed to prove his charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

The consent between my client and the two plaintiffs is at the center of this trialexplains from the outset the lawyer of the singer, Megan Savard.

Me Savard specifies that she wanted the singer to testify at his trial to show that the alleged victims were at the time completely consenting.

She adds that he is one of the two witnesses she intends to call to show that her client has not committed any crime.

My other witness is the limo driver who drove one of the two women to the hotel and then back home on September 30, 2016she admits, specifying that the Crown reversed its decision to call this witness during the last hearing on May 16.

Intimate portrait of the singer

Jacob Hoggard therefore explains to the jurors that his job does not give him time to maintain serious relationships with women, but that it is easy for him to meet them.

He freely admits that he is fickle, does not believe in loyalty and favors one-night stands.

Women ran after me even more when my group gained notoriety than when I was in high school.he recalls, adding that he is now a carpenter in British Columbia.

We understand in the short biography presented by Me Savard that he returned to his former loves on construction sites after the dissolution of the Hedley group due to the accusations he faces.

Jacob Hoggard admits he doesn’t drink alcohol on tour because he sometimes talks loudly when he drinks it and[il] prefers to keep a cool head and spare his voice.

He also admits that he likes to see again in the cities where his group performs in concert the women he met on tour in Canada. He also claims that some of them are admirers who attend his concerts and that he sees others on dating sites.

The singer admits that he sometimes sends his partners intimate photos or videos of him masturbating. This is also the case with his two accusers.

I like to flirt and my communications on social media or on the phone are often sexual in nature if I decide to see the same person againhe said.

Meeting with the first complainant

Regarding the first complainant, Jacob Hoggard claims that he never touched the teenager’s buttocks after a concert in April 2016 in Toronto, when she went to see him with friends and her parents.

I know the law, I knew she was 15he continues, saying that their relationship after this concert began to take a sexual tangent until he invited her to Mississauga in September of the same year.

The artist adds that their relationship turned into a romance during the summer and that he actually invited her to his hotel in September 2016 to finally sleep together as they promised.

On the other hand, he categorically rejects the accusations of the Crown according to which he raped and injured her for several hours on the bed of her room at the Sheraton hotel at Pearson airport.

She never cried and she never ordered me to stop, I would have been worried if I had hurt herhe assures.

Mr. Hoggard specifies that this relationship was not serious, but he says he does not know if the teenager thought the same thing at the time.

I usually don’t make any detours when it comes to making them understand that I’m not interested in a long-term relationship.he says.

Meeting with the 2nd complainant

The musician explains that he met the second complainant on the Tinder application in November 2016 and that he paid her a trip to Toronto so that they slept together as they had agreed beforehand.

He adds that she was interested in the same sexual games as him. He swears he never raped her.

He also says on this subject that the second plaintiff was free to leave after he had kissed her forcefully at the hotel, but that she remained in his company.

I never dragged her by her feet and I never called her a dirty sow by imitating the cry of the pighe says.

He points out that violent non-consensual sex does not excite him at all. Inflicting pain on my partner is not one of my sexual preferenceshe points out.

Jacob Hoggard says they then watched a movie and had a meal brought upstairs before she returned to Ottawa.

He admits that he recorded a telephone conversation without his knowledge, when she called him a few days later to complain about his behavior in bed.

She had texted him before the phone call in which she claims she told him he had raped her [ce message a été effacé, NDLR].

I wanted to protect myself from her accusations, but I didn’t understand why she wanted me to apologize to her.he continues.

She had explained to him on the phone that she was going to have to have stitches in her private parts, because she had vaginal lacerations.

It didn’t make sense, since I didn’t hurt her and she never told me she was bleeding when we were in the bedroom.he says.

Methodical cross-examination

Crown prosecutor Kelly Slate made him admit that he had unusual sexual games, such as anal intercourse, slapping, insults and spitting in the face.

I enjoy kissing women hard with my tongue and making them salivate more than spitting in their mouths.he said.

He adds that the slaps on the body are in fact onlya sign of affectation when there is dialogue between two people.

He freely admits that he likes role-playing in bed and that insults belong to his repertoire, as long as it is consensual.

The singer claims he sometimes likes his partners to urinate on each other, but can’t remember if that was the case with Complainant Number 2 as she claims.

Jacob Hoggard, on the other hand, rejects the idea that he takes pleasure in strangling his partners in bed.

He points out that the second complainant was more explicit than the first in her discussions in bed, but that they too had had fun together.

He was also not the only one to use inappropriate language. [La première femme] called me Daddy and asked me if I liked what she did to mehe recalled, admitting that he had omitted this detail during the preliminary investigation in 2009.

Me Slate notes that he no longer remembers very well what happened in the two hotels, in particular about the first alleged victim. The singer admits that it’s been a long time, but he repeats that the two women had fun.

The prosecutor then asks him how can he know if a woman appreciates being made love to her. He answers, for example, that [la première plaignante] never spurned his kisses, that she was hugging him and they were both rolling on the bed.

It is not always necessary to speak aloud, gestures can say much more about pleasure and I fulfilled all his wisheshe said. In no way did she ask me to stop because I was hurting her.

Jacob Hoggard acknowledges that he told the first complainant in messages that he loved her, that he found her very pretty and that he saw a future together, but he admits that these were only beautiful lyrics.

Prosecutor Slate shows him on screen a text message in which the discussion is in very veiled terms about their plan after the concert in April 2016 [on pense qu’il s’agit de leur rencontre sexuelle à venir, NDLR].

He responds to her at one point: You’ll have to wait in two years. The teenager then replies that it is not necessary to wait so long.

The singer, however, denies not having waited until she was 18 before sleeping with her, because he knew that the age of legal consent in the country is 16 years old. 18 is more of a legal drinking age, he says.

He nevertheless assures that it did not bother him when she revealed to him that she was 15 years old after the concert at the Air Canada Center in April 2016 in Toronto.

He points out that he also knew she had a boyfriend at the time, because he had given her the details of another Snapchat account to prevent the man in question from overhearing their conversations.

Cross-examination continues Wednesday.