But I also sensed that I was no longer running from him and that he could no longer run from the law.
THE STORY OF Graham’s pardon kicked things into motion. While the police investigation continued with heightened energy, media outlets tried to find Graham. Born in Prince Edward Island, raised in Winnipeg, coached across western Canada, jailed and then released, tracked down coaching minor hockey (unbelievable, I know) in Spain, and then rumored to be living in Montreal—nobody really seemed to know where he was.
The CBC and the Globe and Mail, working together, eventually tracked him down in Guadalajara, Mexico, where an investigative journalist from the CBC’s The Fifth Estate discovered him leaving his apartment, apparently for the first time in several days, to go to the laundromat.
Self-described Shakespearean expert and former Man of the Year as selected by The Hockey News? Out, damned laundry spots, out, I say.
The interview, conducted as they catch him on the street, is fascinating. Graham sort of pulls a hat down over his face, looking as if he’s trying to conceal himself. He turns from the camera to hide, but it appears that the natural instincts of a practiced con-artist, a master manipulator, kick in. He continues to engage while trying to remain pleasant. He appears to be known in the community and responds to a local passing by. He doesn’t run, and he doesn’t keep his mouth shut. Being Graham, he cannot help himself, he must engage, he must try to win you over. Being Graham, he tries to be polite and charming.
Well, as polite and charming as a previously convicted serial child sexual predator found carrying his laundry to a laundromat in Guadalajara can be. Guadalajara has been reported as infamous in certain circles for its place in the world of pedophiles and hebephiles. The same has been said about Montreal. It’s likely just a coincidence that Graham was said to be based in Montreal before leaving for Guadalajara and that he again lives in the Montreal area. But if it is a coincidence, it is one that any self-professed Shakespearean expert should be able to appreciate as divine.
That interview captures everything about him. Even when he has absolutely nothing going for him, he’s still trying to win everyone over, still trying to let people know that he’s just a good guy, that he really wishes he could talk, that he’s very sorry the reporters came all that way to see him, but that they should contact his lawyer and he wishes he could talk but he can’t, that he’s very sorry for that, but do have a nice day now.
So says the pleasant man who brandished a weapon in front of young boys to scare them into silence about the sexual abuse he was inflicting on them, the nice man who taped over his windows so that nobody could look in and catch him performing his despicable sex acts on his victims.
Have a nice day.
BY AUGUST 2010, after months of dialogue with the police, and after working hard to prepare myself for the moment, I was finally ready to go to Winnipeg to give an official statement.
At least, I thought I was ready.
The night before my scheduled appointment, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fall asleep. My mind racing, I lay awake in my bed, thinking and worrying, unsure of how I would react, not knowing if I would be able to go through with it. Unable to sleep, yet craving at least a short nap, I left things until the last possible moment before I accepted failure and finally got out of bed, readied myself, and left for the airport to catch the morning flight to Winnipeg. Now grossly overweight, I was a sweaty, disheveled mess of a man, apprehensive and unsure of the day I had ahead of me.
The Winnipeg Police Department is located in a concrete bunker of a building deep within the city’s core. It is not a warm and fuzzy place. The Public Safety Building, as it’s named, has a heavy presence and in no way provides any feeling of safety. Instead, there is an overriding sense of power and control that saps the life from you. When I entered the building, my heart immediately sank as I confronted a very real fear that I would not be able to make it through my interview.
After checking in at the front desk and meeting the detectives who were responsible for the investigation, I was escorted up to an interview room. At least, I think we went up a level or two, as my recollections from that day are anything but clear. I was under so much stress that it was as if I were floating in a bubble, immune to the outside world.
I was left to myself in the interview room while the detectives prepared for what was about to take place. There was a couch for me to sit on along the wall opposite a one-way glass or mirror. I recall the mirror as being somewhat elevated so that people in the adjacent room could see me over the detective who would be interviewing me and who was sitting just below it. There was nothing on the walls and nothing in the room to occupy my attention but for a bottle of water the detectives had given me.
I’m a lawyer, but I’m a corporate lawyer, not a criminal lawyer. My only experience of being in a police station was when I’d toured one as a young kid in the Cubs or Boy Scouts, I can’t remember which. I’d never given a formal statement in anything other than civil litigation proceedings. This was a very new experience. And although I couldn’t see the camera through the one-way mirror, I assumed that everything I did from the moment I entered that room would be recorded. I was also aware that anything that was recorded would at some point be available to Graham and his lawyers. Knowing he would again be watching me made me feel sick.
During my flight to Winnipeg I had made up my mind that I was going to do my absolute best to ensure that at no point would I display any sign of weakness to Graham. I was determined to show him that I was not the victim he had last seen all those years ago, but instead a survivor who was now capable of seeing this process through to the end. I believed in my heart that Graham would still see me as somebody weak and would assume that I would quickly fall by the wayside should he put up any resistance to my efforts to take back some of my power. I wanted to show him he was wrong—but I was neither physically nor mentally at my peak. No matter how hard I tried, he would still immediately be able to see the mess that I was at that time.
In spite of that, I had to try not to let him think that he was still getting the better of me. I had to at least try to show the best me possible that day.
On entering the room, I did the only thing that I could think of to look as blasé as possible while I was waiting for the interview to start. I read the label on the water bottle. And then I read it again. And again. And again. I tried my hardest to appear as if all that was about to happen was not getting to me at all. I tried to appear calm and collected in the face of the camera. I was virtually imploding inside, but I didn’t want him to see that. I didn’t want anybody to know that this ordeal was as traumatic as being abused itself.
I was sweaty. I was disheveled. My hair had not been cut for months. I was wearing whatever limited clothes I had that would fit me in my heavy, bloated state. I was not the athletic and academic star Graham had first encountered all those decades ago. I was a shell of a man who had been broken and who was trying to pick up the pieces while trying to hold onto whatever sense of self I still had, however little that was. And I had nothing to do but read the label on a water bottle.
And even after staring at that water bottle for what seemed an eternity, I couldn’t tell you the color of the label, the brand of water I was drinking, the rough size of the bottle, or whether the water was warm or cold.
Stress does strange things to you.
Detective Ken Ehmann came into the room to start the interview. Having done my best to look as if I were completely calm, I immediately betrayed that false veneer by blurting out a question: “Should I look at you or look at the camera? I mean where should I look?”
Rookie error.
“Ignore the camera,” he told me. “Just look at me.”
I remember very little about the details of that interview except that time seemed to pass far more quickly than I had anticipated and that I answered the questions in a somewhat disassociated state. I sensed that I was trying to distance myself from the realit
y behind the answers to avoid breaking down. The answers were just words that masked all the pain from what I had endured so many years ago, nothing more than words.
I’ve never seen the tape of that interview, and I’ve never wanted to. Not only do I have no desire to see the bloated man I was at that time, but I’m also certain I wouldn’t recognize myself or anything I said that day. To say that I was in a fog would be an understatement. I was there in that room and I was doing my best to convey as much information as possible in response to the questions presented to me, but in no way was I a fully functioning human being.
My recollection is that I was almost able to hold it together. It seemed to me that I was being responsive and coherent in my answers, for the most part, until a single simple question cut me to my soul. Detective Ehmann asked me a question, something simple:
“So, when was the last time he abused you?”
For the first time ever, it dawned on me that while I had always looked back on the abuse as having been something inflicted upon a boy, a young man, I had also been abused after my eighteenth birthday. I had been a man.
I immediately shut down. I was no longer there in the room but deep inside my mind, my memories, my assessment of my own self-worth. I had not once, ever, realized that I had been of legal age, a fully grown mature man of the age of majority, during my abuse. Had I blocked it out? Had I known but just pretended to myself otherwise? Had I just wished it all away?
I didn’t know how to process that realization. For decades I had lived with my abuse, I had recently begun taking positive steps to recover, and there, in the midst of what should have been a bold statement of my newfound strength, everything was starting to fall apart again, right in front of him. A sound inside my head started pulsing through my ears, louder, rushing, roaring, until the question came again, with awful answers.
Who was I?
You were a man.
You weren’t abused.
You were a man who consented.
I barely made it through the rest of the interview. I remember nodding in agreement to some questions, giving answers when asked, and being asked some questions after I thought the interview had ended and then answering them as we were leaving the room. But after that, I really don’t remember thinking anything except that I just wanted to get back on a plane to fly home so that I could crawl into my bed and cry myself to sleep, a sleep where, if I was lucky, I’d be able to lose myself in dreams, but more likely a sleep that would hold the usual nightmares.
I just wanted it all to be over. Everything. Over.
The detectives walked me out of the building and we said our goodbyes. I held it together long enough to walk around the corner out of their sight. Then I fell to the ground, exhausted, tears in my eyes, knowing in my heart that I had failed in my attempt to show no weakness and stand up to Graham. He had beaten me one more time.
THE POLICE WERE interviewing others throughout the summer and into the fall. I was kept abreast of their investigation and told that there were follow-up questions for me. I knew that they were in discussions with the Crown prosecutors and that it seemed certain that Graham would at some point be charged. But victims are nothing more than witnesses in the judicial process. I had no formal place and was not formally involved in anything to do with charging Graham. All I did was tell my story and give my evidence. Beyond that, I was nothing, nobody.
It was a complete surprise to me when, one night in October 2010 when I’d gone back to pick up mail at my ex-wife’s house—my former house and the last residence I had been linked to in publicly available records—I was met with the news that members of the media had been calling there. They had been trying to reach me to get my comments on the news that Graham James had been formally charged for his abuse of Theo Fleury and two other victims whose names were protected by a media publication ban. They knew I was one of those victims.
Victims can have the courts place a ban on the publication of their names. But anybody can go down to the court offices and find out who the victims are. The media are required to protect your anonymity, and they will. But they will also know who you are.
It was a most unfortunate way to find out about what was happening.
GRAHAM, STILL IN Mexico, had been formally charged. He agreed to return voluntarily for his bail hearing. He did everything in his power to present himself as a helpful accused. His lawyers pointed out to the court that he could have resisted and forced the Canadian government to extradite him back to Canada to face the charges. Because of his voluntary return, because he had no record of reoffending since his previous jail term, and because he had fulfilled all the conditions of his earlier release from jail, Graham was granted bail.
Our legal system doled out a gold star to a previously convicted serial child sexual predator who had agreed to come back and show up in court on more charges. Oh, to be back in my first-year criminal law class.
And so the legal game commenced.
The decision to grant bail facilitated all the posturing and positioning that would take place over the next thirteen months. That decision to grant bail seemed to most to be something innocuous. Frustrating, yes, but just a minor blip in the face of a proper and just system that worked for most. Who could object to a system that rewarded an accused for good behavior, that saved the citizenry the time and expense of having to bring him back under duress?
Except we were dealing with a previously convicted child sexual predator.
So what? you might say. Surely our system should not presuppose anything. Surely our system should afford the accused as much justice as it would anybody picked up for the first time. Surely it would be both unwise and improper to keep the accused behind bars pending trial after he had gone to the effort of coming back voluntarily. Further, wouldn’t it be wrong to hold the accused’s past against him, given that he hasn’t reoffended and thus clearly poses no risk to society at large? Surely only a Neanderthal would insist that we put Mr. James back behind bars pending his trial, right?
That’s all well and good in a classroom. And it may even be appropriate in the world in which we live for most charges an accused may face. But by not looking into things a bit more deeply beyond those theoretical presumptions, several important concepts were missed.
First, all we can ever know is whether Graham has or hasn’t been convicted for reoffending, not whether he has or hasn’t ever reoffended in the community. The legal system can’t ever see what happens outside the courtroom.
Second, in letting a previously convicted serial child sexual predator out on bail, the system left itself at the mercy of the accused giving up the only leverage it may have had by having him in jail while he decided what he was and was not willing to plead to.
Absent a confession by the accused, how could anyone ever prove beyond a reasonable doubt a sexual assault that is decades old? There may be little or no physical evidence. Witnesses? People around Graham who may have known of a relationship between the accused and the victims may themselves be victims, and the Crown does not like to compel victims of sexual assault to testify. Further, it’s not as if anybody actually witnessed the assaults. Would the Crown ever take these charges to trial? The Crown knows how difficult it is to prove allegations beyond a reasonable doubt on only “he said, she said” evidence at the best of times. Given no physical evidence, no witnesses, and the extensive time that had passed since the alleged assaults had taken place, “difficult” was now looking highly unlikely.
The only leverage the Crown would ever have had (and it would have been limited leverage at that) would have been if the court had denied Graham bail and had he been placed immediately behind bars pending trial or resolution of the matter. In granting Graham bail, the court left him free to come and go as he pleased until the Crown either accepted or rejected whatever he was and wasn’t willing to plead guilty to. Unless, of course, the Crown decided to call his bluff and take matters to trial—but again, highly unlikely. The Crown didn’t e
ven have this limited leverage.
The prosecution knew this going in. The Crown fought as hard as it could for months. During that period, the three of us whose complaints had led to the charges against Graham were kept abreast of matters in general terms, but not in any specific detail. At one point the Winnipeg police called and asked me to provide pictures of myself from those days, which the Crown would deliver to Graham and his lawyers. I did as requested, but I think it was lost on all involved what was happening. Although the photos might have helped in the proceedings against Graham, I was providing pictures of myself that I knew my abuser and his lawyers would look at, pictures of me as I was back then. I scanned and sent the pictures. And then, in what was becoming a familiar refrain, I bent over and started throwing up into my office wastebasket.
In the end, the Crown realized it could only do so much in the face of Graham’s willingness to plead guilty to only two of three charges. On December 7, 2011, the Crown formally accepted Graham’s guilty plea on the charges in respect of Theo Fleury and the then-still-anonymous Todd Holt, while staying the charges in respect of the third complainant, me. A stay effectively means a halted prosecution, with the Crown agreeing not to move forward absent egregious action by the accused.
The agreement between the Crown and the accused was entered into court. Graham was ordered to attend court in person on February 22, 2012, at which time both the Crown and Graham’s lawyers would make submissions to a judge regarding what each believed would be an appropriate sentence in the circumstances. The judge would hear those submissions and make a decision. Done deal.
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