B00ADOAFYO EBOK

by Culp, Leesa

  “Graham James … has been coaching in Spain for several months. He was the assistant coach for the Spanish national team that recently placed second at the World C hockey championship in Majadahonda, Spain. The youngest player on the Spanish team just turned nineteen. Mr. James, forty-nine, also works as an instructor for coaches in the Spanish hockey system, where sources say he has no contact with players under the age of eighteen.

  “Efforts to contact Mr. James were unsuccessful.”

  There was something of a firestorm at the time, especially considering that Hockey Canada had suspended James from coaching for life, but it died down within days, and James disappeared from the public eye.

  That lasted until October 2009, when Playing with Fire, the biography of former NHL star Theoren Fleury, landed on bookshelves. Fleury had played for James-coached teams in Winnipeg and Moose Jaw. There long had been rumblings that perhaps Fleury had been one of James’s victims.

  In 1984–85, Fleury and Kennedy had been teammates with the Moose Jaw Warriors, who were coached by James.

  “Theoren had to go to Graham’s Wednesdays — Mondays and Wednesdays, I think,” Kennedy says, “and I had to go Tuesdays and Thursdays. And we’d pass each other in the hallway sometimes.”

  In his book, Fleury claimed James had sexually assaulted him on numerous occasions, starting at the age of fourteen. In January 2010, Fleury filed an official complaint with the Winnipeg Police Service, prompting an investigation into James’s activities.

  James, however, was nowhere to be found until May 2010, when reporters from CBC News and the Globe and Mail found him living in Guadalajara, Mexico. James, who had lost considerable weight and barely resembled the five-foot-eleven, 235-pound Broncos coach, told CBC’s Bob McKeown, “I’m impressed that you found me … not that I’ve been hiding.”

  Asked to comment on Fleury’s allegations, James replied, “Not a chance.”

  Unbeknownst to many people, James had applied to the National Parole Board for a pardon. It was granted on January 8, 2007, thus freeing him to leave his native Canada for Mexico.

  The Canadian Press broke the story of James’s pardon after being tipped off by Greg Gilhooly, a corporate lawyer who, it turns out, was another James accuser but at that point was protected by a publication ban.

  That news was greeted with a national furor, which resulted in the federal government acting to tighten rules regarding the granting of pardons.

  Eventually, James, sixty years of age at the time of publication, was hit with nine new charges involving three victims, one of whom was Fleury. One of the others, as came to light later, was Gilhooly.

  James left Mexico in October 2010, after Winnipeg police issued an arrest warrant. He arrived at Pearson International Airport in Toronto and surrendered to police. In time, he was released on bail with conditions from the Headingley Correctional Centre, which is located just west of Winnipeg off the Trans-Canada Highway, and returned to Montreal. Among the conditions: a $10,000 cash bond, no unsupervised contact with anyone under eighteen years of age, no contact with alleged victims, and weekly check-ins with police. He also had to surrender his passport.

  On December 7, 2011, appearing in a Winnipeg courtroom via video link from Montreal, James pleaded guilty to three of the nine sexual assault charges that had involved three players from 1970 to 1994. He entered guilty pleas to charges involving two of the players: Fleury and another ex-player whose name had been protected by a publication ban, but who turned out to be Todd Holt, another former WHL player who is a cousin to Fleury. Holt, a five-foot-seven, 160-pounder, had played in Swift Current for five seasons, from 1989 to 1994.

  As part of the plea bargain, the allegations made by Gilhooly were stayed. At that point, Gilhooly stepped forward to tell his story, and the publication ban that had protected him was lifted.

  On March 20, 2012, James was sentenced to two years in prison and was led in handcuffs from a Winnipeg courtroom to begin serving his sentence.

  In sentencing James, Manitoba provincial court Judge Catherine Carlson noted that “there is no sentence this court can impose that will give back to Mr. Holt and Mr. Fleury that which was taken from them by Mr. James. The court expects there is no sentence it can impose that the victims, and indeed many members of the public, will find satisfactory.”

  She was correct.

  “This sentence today is nothing short of a national travesty because we know that childhood abuse has reached epidemic proportions in our country,” said Holt, reading from a statement in Cochrane, Alberta. “Graham James is laughing all the way back to the life he has always led, knowing that justice for him is but a blip on the radar.”

  The Crown had been asking for a sentence of six years; the defence asked for a conditional sentence as long as eighteen months but without jail time.

  Kennedy was in the Winnipeg courtroom during the sentencing. Later, speaking outside the courthouse, he told reporters, “It’s been a lifetime of working and rehabilitating with counsellors and two-hour sessions a week just to stay on track myself after the damage that Graham has inflicted, so to sit in there and hear that Graham James is rehabilitated really drives me nuts.

  “Obviously, it’s not a sentence we all want to see. At least he’s going back to jail.”

  In handing down the sentence, Judge Carlson noted James had shown remorse and had apologized to his victims. She also pointed out that he chose to return voluntarily to Canada from Mexico, that he hadn’t been in legal trouble since 1997, and that he chose to plead guilty.

  “The two-year sentence is a penitentiary sentence,” she said. “It acknowledges the seriousness of Mr. James’s offences. It means sending back to jail someone who has not reoffended in the last fifteen years and has done all society has required of him during that time.”

  When the Crown announced in April that it would appeal the sentence, it was believed that James was being held at Stony Mountain Penitentiary in Manitoba. Should James apply for parole, he could be released from prison before Christmas 2012.

  These days, the man who once was considered one of the best young coaches in the game of hockey certainly isn’t remembered for that.

  His brother Rusty summed it up best after Graham’s first conviction in 1998: “I’ve been really upset, disappointed, and angry at this. I always thought he brought a lot of good things to the game, but now not a lot of that will be remembered.”

  After Graham was sentenced a second time, Rusty spoke publicly for the first time in fifteen years. “Throughout this latest process, I can’t help but think of the Bernie Madoff case,” he told Eric Francis of the Calgary Sun, referring to the infamous American fraudster who ran a massive Ponzi scheme. “Madoff is in jail for 150 years for stealing people’s money. Graham stole much more than that from his victims — their childhoods, their lives, their dreams — and just got a few years.

  “To me, Bernie’s crimes pale in comparison.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Leaving Swift Current

  And just like that, it was over.

  Sheldon Kennedy, Peter Soberlak, and Bob Wilkie were on their way back home.

  The drive from Calgary had gotten them to Swift Current on Friday evening, shortly after the festivities to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the team’s 1989 Memorial Cup victory had started.

  After arriving in Swift Current, the first thing they did was cruise some of their favourite haunts, and then it was over to their hotel. A quick change of clothes and it was on to a local Boston Pizza restaurant, where everyone was gathering as things got started.

  There was, Wilkie admits, some apprehension at this point. “As we pulled into the parking lot of BP, we did a slow drive-by,” Wilkie recalled. “Shelly and Sober both were saying, ‘Fuck this. Let’s get out of here.’ I said we have to go in and Shelly reluctantly parked the truck.

  “The tension was heavy as we strolled through the door, but as we started to recognize faces it lightened up quickly.”
<
br />   And then it was hugs and laughter all around and the stories started flying. Earlier, a replay of the 1989 Memorial Cup championship game in which the Broncos had beaten the host Saskatoon Blades 4–3 in overtime had been playing on the restaurant’s television sets. (Of the players who were on the championship roster, only forwards Kyle Reeves, Brian Sakic, and Trevor Sim didn’t attend the reunion.)

  “We missed the [replay of the] game. We were the last three guys there,” Soberlak said. “But it was great to be there.”

  Soberlak had treated the whole experience as though he were still playing junior hockey. “As usual,” he explained, “any time we went on a road trip, the drive there and back is always the best part. Again, it was the best.”

  Looking back, Soberlak said he wasn’t at all apprehensive before flying from his Kamloops home to Calgary, despite everything that had happened since the 1989 Memorial Cup. He admitted to a great deal of curiosity about what kind of welcome would await them in Swift Current.

  “There wasn’t any apprehension about being with the guys,” Soberlak said. “When you’re that close to someone, it doesn’t matter if it’s twenty or forty years, you never lose that. It took two seconds. As soon as I saw Bob in the airport it was like, boom, yesterday. And the same with Sheldon.

  “You just know someone so well, especially when you spent three years together and go through what we went through.”

  As for travelling back to Swift Current, Soberlak said he “wasn’t apprehensive … it was more curiosity, curiosity as to the response of the community. A little curiosity as to how people would react toward the event.”

  The morning after their arrival, Kennedy, Soberlak, and Wilkie went for another drive. And, lo and behold, there was Joe Sakic out for a run with his two dogs.

  Sakic played two seasons with the Broncos, 1986 to 1988, but was with the NHL’s Quebec Nordiques in 1988–89, when the Broncos won the Memorial Cup. Thus, he wasn’t officially a part of the reunion festivities.

  “Shelly, being the smartass he is, made a comment to Joe about his manly dogs,” Wilkie said, with a laugh. “Who would have guessed in the middle of downtown Swift Current twenty years later we would be standing there as if nothing had changed.… We were standing around shooting the shit like nothing had happened, like we were eighteen again and coming back from summer break.”

  Holding the reunion and celebration with the 1989 Memorial Cup championship team was an idea that began in the Broncos’ office, which at the time was under the charge of general manager and head coach Dean Chynoweth, one of the late Ed Chynoweth’s two sons. Chynoweth and Elden Moberg, then the Broncos’ assistant general manager, developed the idea and got the ball rolling.

  Chynoweth, a rugged defenceman whose NHL career was short-circuited by injuries, left the Broncos’ front office in order to join the New York Islanders as an assistant coach. During his WHL playing career, he had been on back-to-back Memorial Cup winners in Medicine Hat (1987 and 1988) and admits to being profoundly disappointed that “we have never had a reunion.”

  “I shared this with Elden and said these types of teams need to be honoured, not only for the players to get together and see what one another are doing these days, but, more importantly, for the fans, the billets, and the people who had enjoyed these teams.

  “Alumni groups in junior hockey are very tough to get going, and you can imagine how tough it is in Swift with the Graham [James] era.”

  “I give them credit for doing it,” Soberlak said of the reunion. But, in the next breath, he admitted that the spectre of Graham James was hanging over the festivities.

  “But I still have apprehension — yeah, as to how I feel toward everyone involved back there,” Soberlak explained. “Because there are question marks about who knew what and how things were dealt with, so there’s always a part of me …

  “The people and the community there are fantastic, but there are a few people within the hockey circles that, without mentioning names, I wouldn’t, you know, I wouldn’t have a lot of respect for … any respect, to be honest.”

  Asked if some of those people were at the banquet that was the centrepiece of the reunion celebration, Soberlak replied, “For sure. Front and centre.”

  Early on the day of the dinner, Kennedy, who had been a co-captain along with defenceman Dan Lambert on that 1988–89 team, was told that he would be asked to say a few words that evening. That turned out to be something Soberlak will always remember.

  “The highlight for me was seeing Sheldon get up in front of that community and show the courage and the strength he did,” Soberlak said. “He got up there and his speech was about the guys, about our team … and the talent and the togetherness we felt as a team. He had an entertaining speech; it was funny. It blew me away — his courage and strength to do that.”

  By the time he arrived back in Swift Current, Kennedy’s feelings had cooled. He was ready to walk into the banquet facility and look people in the eye.

  “I don’t have any bitterness,” Kennedy said. “The way I look at that situation is that all you have to do is look at that town and look at their faces.… I’m sure glad that I have been able to deal with what I needed to deal with because, umm, there’s a lot of pain left, there’s a lot of pain in that town … a lot of skeletons.

  “I think the biggest thing is that you look at that situation and what we’re trying to do is … that situation didn’t have to happen. People knew what was going on long before Graham got to Swift Current.”

  Leesa Culp also attended the reunion. Culp, who had been in the cab of a big rig that was directly behind the Broncos’ bus, and who watched it crash, also was searching for some kind of closure.

  What had been lost in the blur of time now had become a driving force in her life. As she watched the bus crash, she didn’t realize that it belonged to the Broncos. Twenty years later, however, she felt a need to learn more about the boys — now men — who had been on that bus.

  The Culps sat at a table with Peter Soberlak; Bob Wilkie; Joe and Debbie Sakic; Sheldon Kennedy; Sheldon’s sister, Sherri, and her husband, Slawomir Borowiecki; and Sherri and Sheldon’s mother, Shirley.

  “At the end of the dinner, we just sat around and talked; they were reminiscing about the old days,” Leesa says. “I was able to come to that dinner and sit at that table and find closure for me, too. That was really important. I felt like I could let the whole thing go at that point.”

  Pat Nogier and Leesa Culp at the Wellington West Bronco Golf Classic, July 2007.

  Courtesy of Leesa Culp.

  Culp admits that she was surprised — and thrilled — at the way she was welcomed at the reunion. “The reunion was an amazing thing to witness,” she says. “I wasn’t part of that team; I wasn’t there all those years. But they never once made me feel like a stranger. I don’t know if they felt like I was an intruder of some sort being there, but they never made me feel that way at all.”

  Culp also found it to be an emotional evening. “I got teary-eyed watching that video presentation,” she says of the video that was shown on the televisions in Boston Pizza the previous night and was shown again at the dinner. “I knew what I had gone through … even after all I’d discovered, I still couldn’t imagine they got through what they did, and to get to where they’ve gotten as adults, husbands, and fathers.”

  To this day, the Broncos are a big part of her life. “I always think of the Broncos when I am dealing with something difficult,” she says. “When I’m on one of my daily walks I wear my Broncos’ hat. I also have a necklace given to me by Bill that has a four-leaf clover on it with the numbers of the boys engraved on the petals.”

  Wilkie remembers the ride home as being awfully quiet for the first hour.

  “We each were wrapped up in our own thoughts,” he said. “We had lost our innocence in Swift Current like many other sixteen-to-twenty-year-olds do at that time in their lives. Was ours any harsher? I think so — the accident, the presence of a
child molester, the mental abuse that he gave to all of us.

  “When love and compassion were needed, we got screaming and abuse. The people in charge who had known of his past seemed to overlook it, like it was not important or it would not happen there.”

  Soberlak looks back now and sees that James’s abusing wasn’t just sexual. “In institutions where there is a big element of power … Graham didn’t just abuse Sheldon sexually, he abused his position of power in every way you can imagine, through everybody,” Soberlak said. “Even the people who worked for him and he worked with … that was just his way.

  “A lot of people don’t understand that, but we understand that. Here’s a forty-five-year-old man who’s single and has to have sexual gratification somewhere, unless he’s androgynous.”

  Soberlak was attending the University of British Columbia when Kennedy made headlines by speaking out about what he had gone through at James’s hands. “It all made sense when I picked up the Vancouver Sun,” Soberlak said.

  With Swift Current in his rear-view mirror, Kennedy drove back to Calgary feeling like a free man. “I feel better than I’ve ever felt,” he said, admitting that he has gotten rid of all of the anger that used to flow through his system like blood. He also has rediscovered the game of hockey.

  “I actually go out and have fun playing … I’m having fun playing the game,” Kennedy said. “I wish I could have played feeling this way, instead of … I can’t describe the craziness. I never enjoyed the game from the first time this went on.”

  More than anything else, though, the return to Swift Current helped Kennedy become comfortable in his own skin. It helped reassure him that the new direction he had found in his life was the right one. At that point, he was well on his way to becoming a respected voice on the subject of the sexual abuse of children.

  In the autumn of 2011, Penn State University was hit by just such a scandal. Kennedy, already a familiar face and voice in the Canadian media, was discovered by the media in the United States. He did numerous interviews and made a number of television appearances, including on CNN.