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The way Jacob Hoggard tells it, it was a Hallmark romantic hookup that began with the former Hedley singer playing his acoustic guitar and serenading her in his room at the Comfort Inn in Kirkland Lake.
His hearts and flowers account couldn’t be more jarringly different than the violent alleged rape and choking that the young woman had tearfully described to the jury last week.
Hoggard, 40, took the stand in his own defence at his trial in the Haileybury courtroom in northeastern Ontario. Dressed in a black suit and thin black tie, with his wife of six years sitting in the gallery, he recalled his years of being a Canadian pop star, with seven albums, lots of cash and concert tours that took the band on June 24, 2016 to the hockey arena in Kirkland Lake.
He looked almost nostalgic when questioned about the height of his career — before the band broke up in 2018, when the women hung around, recognizing him on the street, asking for his autograph. Now, he told the jury, he’s the married father of a “little boy” and a carpenter in Burnaby who lives “hand to mouth.”
Eight years ago, he was touring to promote their album Hello and he’d recently broken up with his girlfriend — who he would later marry in 2018 — and was looking for the comfort and companionship of a one-night stand. The 19-year-old he spotted at the afterparty was attractive, he said, and as night turned to morning, he testified that he flirted with her, gave her his jacket and they exchanged phone numbers.
He testified that when he texted her a “sexual” invitation to come back to his hotel, he said she accepted and they walked back, kissing and holding hands.
She testified that she thought they were going to his room for some “casual conversation;” Hoggard said he was clear they were going to have sex.
She testified he stripped her naked and made her pose with a guitar and then demanded to know her age on video. He testified that they took off each other’s clothes, he likely asked her age, but there was no photo or recording.
She testified that he tried to rape her anally and then raped her vaginally, all while she told him no. She told the jury he called her “dirty little pig” and choked her to the point of almost losing consciousness. She testified that he slapped her hard and urinated on her.
Asked by his lawyer Megan Savard if the sex was consensual, Hoggard vehemently repeated the same phrase numerous times: “Of course it was.”
Presented with the complainant’s allegations, Hoggard scoffed at each one: the sex was “pleasurable,” she was into it “as much as I was,” she was “moaning and saying yes and a lot of kissing while she was on top of me.” There was no choking, there was no name-calling, the only urinating was her willingly urinating on him, he said in court.
And how did he know she was having such a good time? He said he kept asking “if she was OK.”
Under cross examination, Crown attorney Peter Keen asked why he’d have to keep “checking in on her” if it was consensual. “I’m gonna suggest to you that the reason you had to ask her if she was OK at intervals is because you could see she was upset and crying,” the prosecutor suggested.
“She was not upset and crying,” Hoggard disagreed. “That’s my way of communicating with a sexual partner.”
She testified that after Hoggard allegedly raped her, he told her not to worry about sexually transmitted diseases because he “likes them young” and his girlfriend Beck would never find out about them.
He said that conversation never happened: he’d never talk about Rebekah Asselstine by name and they were actually split at the time. Instead, by Hoggard’s account, he said he and the complainant were enjoying a postcoital cuddle and talking about the career of a pop star and how it wasn’t as glamourous as it looked.
She testified that he instructed her not to leave until at least half an hour after he’d left the hotel room. He testified he’d never tell her when to leave.
He did agree with one thing she said: he didn’t wear a condom.
She says. He says. Who will they believe?
Hoggard’s cross examination continues Wednesday.