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It was an incredibly surprising sentence.
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After six days of deliberation, a jury of 10 men and two women found Hedley frontman Jacob Hoghard guilty of sexual assault, causing bodily harm in the brutal rape of an Ottawa student in 2016, but not raping a 16-year-old fan in love. or to touch her sexually when she was only 15.
It is a pity that he does not go to prison immediately – Supreme Court Judge Gillian Roberts was not ready to cancel his bail, as requested by the Crown.
Hogard looked overwhelmed. The former pop star, who once kept the world at his feet, slumped back in his chair, staring in shock at the bar of lawyers as his lawyer, Megan Savard, whispered in his ear, no doubt assuring him it wasn’t over.
The Ontario Court of Appeals is just meters away.
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The Crown is likely to appeal as well. Of the two applicants, the 16-year-old seemed most convinced that sex was against her will. Those of us who have been following the trial since it began in early May have suggested that if there is anything, Hoghard will be convicted with her.
The longer the jury was absent, it seemed that Hogard could be acquitted of all charges.
The jurors were apparently suspended on the issue of consent and repeatedly returned to Roberts to inquire about the law surrounding it – and they were particularly interested in how it relates to the Ottawa woman he met on Tinder and persuaded him to meet at the Thompson Hotel.
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They seemed to have problems lying to Hogard during a lengthy phone call – secretly recorded by Hogard – after their meeting, when she told him she needed stitches and consulted a lawyer. She said she was trying to provoke him to apologize so he could leave the nightmare behind.
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However, his lawyer called on the jury to find that she did not trust and could not be trusted.
The jury room was so problematic that jurors twice told the judge they could not decide on all points. Roberts almost let them give up after the second time, but both the Crown and the defense urged her to tell them to keep discussing.
They did so, spending most of the weekend listening to rehearsals of Hoghard and the two applicants.
It seemed like a strong case of Crown – neither of the women knew about the other when they went to the police in 2018 with ominously similar stories of rape and humiliation two years earlier from a famous pop star who seems to have become a different person. “Monster”, “psychopath” from the flirtatious, nice man they met online.
They maintained their claims even when the pandemic was halted and took four years to finally come to court.
When he took up his position, Hoghard insisted that he had never sexually touched the teenager before she was 16, and that his sexual encounters with the two applicants were by mutual consent.
The jury was not told that Hogard was still facing a separate charge of sexual assault with causing bodily harm since June 2016 in Lake Kirkland with similar allegations.
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