Amid 'national travesty,' Graham James' survivors show courage—and provide hope

Like most of them, this sexual predator didn’t wear a raincoat or have horns sticking out of his head.

Graham James was similar to so many from his tribe: engaging, friendly, a con artist who wheedled himself into the lives of children and earned the trust of their families through a shared love of sports.

The lenient sentence levied upon convicted abuser Graham James, left, strikes a blow against the victims of sexual assault. The words of survivors like Todd Holt, though, imbue them with strength. (AP Photo)

On Tuesday, in a Winnipeg court ruling that sent rolling blocks of disgust and outrage across Canada, the former junior hockey coach was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to hundreds of sexual assaults on retired NHL star Theo Fleury and his cousin, Todd Holt, when they played for James as teenagers.

That’s two years for repeatedly violating their bodies and destroying their dreams, for guaranteeing their adult lives would be rife with nightmares and therapy sessions—and, in Fleury’s case, a decades-long battle with all sorts of addictions, alcoholism and rage.

With reductions for good behavior, James, the predator, could spend all of eight months in jail for the heinous crimes he inflicted on children he coached in the Western Hockey League in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

Jerry Sandusky, the alleged serial rapist and fellow abuser of kids, must wish he could have his case moved from Central Pennsylvania to the lovely neighborhood north of the border. There is much to adore about Canada, but here is one situation that curdles the stomach.

While the Crown argued that James should be imprisoned for six years because he was at a high risk to offend again—he had already been quietly pardoned in 2007 after pleading guilty to sex charges against two other former players—the defense lawyers made it sound as if James were the one to be pitied.

For instance, they contended James deserved a conditional sentence of probation with no jail because he had already served time for abusing players (though not Fleury or Holt). They wanted the public to believe the 59-year-old was rehabilitated, that he had learned to channel his desires toward young-looking adults; that the poor man was so humiliated, he dropped out of public view and then had to wear a red ski mask to conceal much of his face when he arrived at the courthouse; that he had been exiled from the country he loved to Spain and then Mexico after being pardoned following the 18 months he served for pleading guilty to sexually assaulting former NHL player, Sheldon Kennedy, and another unnamed player an estimated 350 times over 10 years.

Rather than fight extradition from Mexico, James, said his lawyer, voluntarily returned home to appear before the court. Yes, a pedophile’s lot in life is such a struggle. As Greg Gilhooly, one of James’ accusers, noted, he and Kennedy have logged more time in therapy sessions than James has behind bars.

Outside the courthouse, Kennedy, one of the brave players to first reveal how James repeatedly molested him, said: “It’s been a lifetime of working and rehabilitating with counselors 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.”

It’s an offensively weak sentence that must make victims wonder if it’s worth coming forward at all.

Just as Sandusky wielded considerable power over his alleged prey, James had immense control over the teens he molested. If they told, James threatened to squash their hockey careers. He trapped his vulnerable victims, degraded and humiliated them.

“What happened to Mr. Fleury and Mr. Holt is every child’s worst nightmare and every parent’s worst nightmare," said Judge Catherine Carlson. “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.”

But, she added, he had expressed remorse and apologized to his victims and been publicly shamed, actions that warranted a reduced sentence. Not that violence is the answer, and not that rehabilitation isn’t possible, but here was a moment when few would have flinched if the con’s face had met with a hockey stick.

James, Fleury reminded the court, never showed a drop of leniency to any of his prey. In a heart-crushing victim-impact statement, Fleury had asked for James to be sentenced to life in jail, calling his molester a “monster” who abused him more than 150 times.

"I was just a kid. A child. I was completely under Graham James's control. And I was scared,” Fleury said. “I did not have the emotional skills, the knowledge or the ability to stop the rapes or change my circumstances."

The enduring trauma and devastation led Fleury from the NHL rinks to the New Mexico desert, where he found himself "with a gun in my mouth and finger on the trigger.” He chose to be a survivor rather than a victim, filed a criminal complaint against the man who coached him with the Moose Jaw Warriors, Swift Current Broncos and Calgary Hitmen junior hockey teams, and now devotes his life to being an advocate for those who have faced their own monsters.

James in December admitted to molesting Fleury between 1983 and 1985 in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. James also pleaded guilty to abusing Holt, Fleury’s cousin, in separate incidents in the 1980s and ‘90s. Shortly after James’ knuckles were tapped Tuesday, Holt called the sentence a “national travesty” and said “James is laughing all the way back to the life he’s always led knowing that justice for him is but a blip on the radar.


But Fleury found hope in his country’s bubbling indignation, calling Canada’s outrage over the serial molester’s light sentence a positive step in the process to expose abusers and the justice system that fails the abused.

“This was never about personal revenge. What does revenge do? Nothing," Fleury said.


Fleury sounded not at all like a man looking for a hockey stick, but one who reluctantly flung open the curtains and saw cockroaches scurrying for cover.

“I get up every morning, my feet hit the floor running, looking for the next opportunity to help the next person get to where I am, where Sheldon is, where Todd is,” Fleury said. “It’s kind of a call to all the victors of child sexual abuse: We’ve been through the war and we’ve come out of it empowered, we’re advocates and we talk about what happened to us very openly.


To victims everywhere—in Central Pennsylvania and far beyond—it’s comforting to know there are some hockey players who courageously stood up, and they’re still standing tall.

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