Hedley singer Jacob Hoggard was convicted of rape.
That was the jury’s decision. A woman and a teenage girl charged Hoggard with sexual assault causing bodily harm. He also faces charges of inappropriate sexual interference with a minor.
Hoggard was not guilty of raping the teenager, or of having inappropriate sex with him.
On the other hand, he was guilty of raping the woman.
It was half a victory for Jacob Hoggard, who looked puzzled in the courtroom, sitting behind his lawyers. His wife sitting in the audience also looked confused.
The teenager, who was only 15 at the time (he was 16 when he saw the singer again at the hotel in September of the same year, the Editor notes), then denied his advances to her asking not to act like this. in the future .
Jacob Hoggard now faces a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. His judgment hearing will take place at a later date.
The jury did not fully believe despite a reasonable doubt the Crown’s allegations, which accused the singer of luring the two plaintiffs for false reasons to his room in two hotels in the Toronto-area with the intent of breaking them.
The questions he asked the court during his deliberations already suggested that he had doubts about the testimony of the two women at the witness stand at hearings last month.
So she decided that only the second complainant was actually raped.
Stance of Defense
Consent is at the heart of the pleas.
In this trial, the defense always maintained that his client’s relationship with the two plaintiffs was actually consensual, that he did not rape them and that he did not inappropriately touch the teenager after the concert. April 2016 in Toronto.
He said the two women were unreliable and their testimonies at the witness stand were deceptive, inconsistent, irrational and full of inaccuracies in the truth.
He suggests that they invented or magnified their wounds and made up their story to get revenge, because the singer was not interested in them, while they were in love with him.
He said they felt ashamed and rejected, because his client did not want to know about them after they had sex.
The defense clarified that the fact of having unusual intercourse does not make his client a sadistic man or rapist and cannot convict a man in Canada for his seductive behavior towards women or his sexual immorality. .
Crown Position
In their final argument, prosecutors asserted that defendant used the same modus against the two plaintiffs, whom he described as childish and naive.
According to the Crown, there was no chance in the way of selection, manipulation, humiliation and rape of the complainants.
However, he recalled that they had no idea what awaited them, when they happily agreed to meet him at his hotel.
That is why the two women, according to him, had good reason to get angry after use, get angry at the injuries caused to them by the singer and waited 18 months before filing a complaint with the police.
The Crown described Jacob Hoggard as an possessive, violent, and unsympathetic sexual opportunist.
He assured that the two complainants never wanted to re-launch the #MeToo movement to compensate him for his behavior contrary to what the singer’s defense says.
Source: Radio-Canada
