MANDEL: Gruelling cross-examination ends for Hoggard accuser

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She seemed to wither and shrink before our eyes.

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The young woman who has accused Jacob Hoggard of raping her eight years ago repeatedly collapsed into tears or had to take breaks as the singer’s defence lawyer methodically eviscerated her account of the encounter in his Kirkland Lake hotel room.

It’s just her soft-spoken word – a word so easily challenged after all these years.

Defence lawyer Megan Savard accused the woman of lying from start to finish – that this was just a romantic “sleepover” and not a sexual assault.

“You’ve been tinkering with the story to make it more believable. You’ve been dropping the parts of your story that you think make you look bad,” she charged in the Haileybury courtroom. “You care more about the jury believing you than telling the truth.”

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The woman, her identity protected by a publication ban, testified Hoggard raped, choked, slapped and urinated on her in his hotel room after she attended Hedley’s concert and a bonfire after-party in Kirkland Lake on June 24, 2016.

Unemployed, she now lives in another province and depends on social assistance.

Savard suggested she knows she could get “quite a bit of money from him” if she sues Hoggard – insinuating that’s the reason she’s come forward.

Hoggard, 40, has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault.

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Savard went over the complainant’s story, which she told the jury earlier this week – that after he undressed her against her will shortly after going to his room to listen to music and talk, he raped her and hit her so hard that he left a red mark on her buttocks.

The defence lawyer said her account was “completely false” and it was “physically impossible” to be struck on the bottom when she was later lying on her back.

“The reality is, you have no memory of the sex on the bed, and you’re making it up as you go along,” Savard said.

An accusation the woman called “false.”

Hoggard’s lawyer suggested the former Hedley singer serenaded her in his hotel room and she helped him take off her clothes so they could engage in consensual sex.

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“You don’t want to admit to the jury that you were in this romantic situation while you had a boyfriend …”

“No,” she wept. “Nothing of it was romantic or anything that I wanted. I didn’t ask for this to happen to me.”

Savard claimed it was physically impossible for her to have been choked of oxygen for four minutes as she’d described. She also questioned why she didn’t take photos of the bruises on her neck and legs and why no one noticed them.

“I’m gong to suggest the marks on your neck are hickeys,” she said.

The woman vehemently disagreed.

The defence lawyer wanted to know why she told the CBC she’d sought medical attention but told police in 2022 that she didn’t. The woman said she went sometime after the incident, not right after.

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If she did, Savard demanded, why not consent to the release of her medical records?

“I’d suggest you’d say no, because there are none,” the lawyer said.

The complainant admitted speaking with the CBC after charges were laid against Hoggard in 2022, but she denied researching “the case” online.

As she was elaborating on her interaction with the CBC, Savard interrupted and asked to speak to the judge in the absence of the jury.

When court resumed, Justice Robin Tremblay issued a warning to the jury that information the witness learned through the CBC was “not a piece of evidence for you to consider in making your decision in this case. It’s not admissible evidence. Therefore I’m instructing you to completely disregard it.”

Savard finally completed her cross-examination.

“I’m going to suggest that was an unusual night for you; you made a number of unusual choices,” Savard said. “One of those unusual choices was to take the opportunity to have a one-night stand with a famous musician.”

“No,” she disagreed.

“You packaged all this together: details from the internet, assumptions you made, guesses you’re making, into a false story for the jury. That’s what you’re doing today.”

“False,” she repeated one final time, before limping away.

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