I Am Nobody

by Greg Gilhooly

  A second nightmare happens more often than the first. It’s the same theme, different setting. I’m in Baker Rink at Princeton, but I’m wearing all of the proper equipment, I’m ready to play, and I have my varsity jersey on. Except I can’t find my way to the ice surface. Like a band that can’t find the stage, I’m desperately running in my skates and full gear down hallways, up stairs, into dressing room after dressing room, looking for somebody, anybody, to help me find the way to the ice surface. This isn’t the real Baker Rink but an unsolvable puzzle. I join my teammates just as we’re about to go on the ice. The arena is packed. I’m last in line. Then, just as I’m about to step on the ice, Coach Delventhal yells to me, “Where do you think you’re going?” “Higgins said he wanted me to…” “Your jersey, take it off! You will never wear that jersey on this ice surface, ever.”

  At night, when my thoughts are on their own, I am grieving the life I lost. But unfortunately, neither of these nightmares is the nightmare I have most frequently, the nightmare I fear the most. I can describe this third nightmare in one short sentence that sums up all you need to know to understand just how horrific my nights can be.

  Graham repeatedly sexually assaults me.

  I can’t control the nightmares. They can happen frequently, and after so many years of having so many nightmares, eventually my memories are more about my nightmares than about the actual abuse they are based on.

  I spent decades first trying to run from the abuse and then trying to put the abuse into context. To survive, I have done my utmost to try to forget everything about the abuse. Yet, no matter how hard I try to put it behind me, certain things have stayed with me, and even if I could forget everything, my nightmares can always bring it all back in their own peculiar way, whether or not I am prepared for it.

  Therapy helps with the nightmares because it helps me better understand the abuse. I still wake up in a sweat, heart pounding, whenever I have one, but now I can see the nightmare for what it is—simply a part of my past.

  THERAPY DOESN’T ANSWER all of my questions about who I was, who I am, how it happened, and who I can be now. Instead, it gets me to understand that I have to challenge the assumptions built into all of my questions. It gets me to ask different questions. It is an interactive process in which the asking of questions prompts further questions, which themselves prompt reflection and understanding in a way that was previously unthinkable. All of this leads to more questions, and then to still more questions.

  My assumptions, my questions, my perceptions, and my answers often change depending on the day and the mood I am in, and the answers to my questions often prompt more questions and greater understanding. In the beginning, negativity ruled. Over time, I became far more positive.

  Before entering therapy I had been looking back from the perspective of an adult with life experiences. Therapy showed me that I needed to remember that when I was fourteen or fifteen years old I didn’t understand the world the way that I do now. Therapy enabled me to see things from the perspective of who I was back then by getting me to ask different questions than before:

  Did I believe that Graham was more powerful than I was?

  Did I believe that Graham had power over me?

  Did I believe the threats he made about me not being believed?

  Did I believe that I would lose everything I wanted if I didn’t comply?

  Did I think that I could talk to my mom or dad about this?

  Did I know enough about who I was to understand that he was manipulating me when he said that I was homosexual like he was?

  Did I understand that just because I responded physically, that didn’t mean I was gay?

  Did I even really understand what being gay meant back then?

  Did I think I had a choice?

  Did I believe what he was telling me?

  By coming back to these fundamental questions over and over again, I could start to see that it made sense that I could want the support of somebody like him in his position, that he would do whatever he could to get me to think less of my physicality so that he could take advantage of me mentally and control me, that it would become worse for me when I most desperately needed somebody to talk to, to support me, to get me through my darkest moments, that I would see that all I had was him, and that once I realized that, and believed his threats, I would think there was no way out.

  I was increasingly able to put my interaction with Graham into context. Even when I knew that sexual abusers are sociopaths, psychopaths, I had been unable to apply that intellectual knowledge to Graham because of my beliefs about my own weakness, responsibility, and participation in the abuse. Slowly, I managed to shift my focus away from my own participation in the abuse to see Graham more clearly as a typical abuser.

  This was an essential part of my recovery. The more I understood about Graham and how he and his type operate, the easier it became for me to understand my part in what had happened and where responsibility properly rested.

  Sexual abusers possess a chilling skill-set that can lead to horrifying results. Graham is somebody focused on maximizing his own interests, needs, and desires without regard for the welfare of others. In the face of a purported apology by Graham, another of his victims said that it was meaningless, that Graham was incapable of telling the truth, that everything Graham had said to him or stood for since they first met was a lie designed for the sole purpose of facilitating Graham’s sexual desires.

  Graham’s lawyers have had him evaluated by professionals who have taken a different view of him and who see him as rehabilitated. Graham has by all accounts been a model participant in any counseling or therapy program he has gone through. There are, no doubt, doctors and others out there with many degrees hanging in their offices who would testify that Graham is not a psychopath, not a sociopath, and that he poses no risk to society at large.

  With respect, they have no idea who they are dealing with. They have never seen his particular and specific true character, they have never seen him in full attack. While they may be able to place him, in an academic manner, within a class of offenders, they can’t begin to understand exactly how Graham operates, just how easy it is for Graham to manipulate, how Graham knows exactly what to do or say in any situation to get exactly what Graham needs, and how Graham preys upon others. No matter how many degrees in psychiatry or psychology, or how much experience in the field one may have, nothing can ever match direct contact with the sexual predator in action.

  Victims know their predator. I could see Graham for who he truly is, not for what the textbooks say he likely may be.

  Therapy helped me to better understand all of this, to trust my instincts, to believe in my own perceptions and not the thoughts of others further removed from the situation. Still, recovery was difficult, because while my abuser had set the trap and committed the abuse, he had also left me to punish myself. Having punished myself, I now had to accept that I had incorrectly viewed the world and my place in it in order to recover. That’s progress, but it also required a reprogramming of how I think about everything. That required me to forgive myself. And somebody who still sometimes deep down wonders whether he might still be responsible for everything that happened? That’s not somebody fully prepared to forgive himself.

  THE ONGOING LEGAL process didn’t help my recovery.

  It was no surprise when in June 2015, several years after Graham had been sentenced, yet another victim came forward. The victim, still at this time anonymous, had been coached by Graham in Swift Current. Graham’s lawyer and the prosecuting Crown Attorney worked out a recommended sentence of another two years in jail, to be added to the five years he was already serving. Seven years for hundreds of sexual assaults against three acknowledged victims.

  It appears that the Canadian justice system has set the market rate for repeated sexual assaults against a single victim by Graham James at about two years, offering him, in effect, a significant volume discount. This volume discount appears to be unde
rstood by Graham himself. When asked whether he was concerned that more of his victims might come forward, Graham testified to the National Parole Board that while this was a possibility, all of his major, longer-term victims had now come forward and he remained a good candidate for full release.

  First, I don’t believe anything he says. Second, Graham was implying that even if another victim came forward, such a victim would “only” have been sexually assaulted once or twice, or maybe just a little bit more, and relative to his other convictions it would be nothing significant and should therefore be of no concern to the parole board when considering granting him full parole. His response should have surprised nobody, for when you give inadequate sentences in response to hundreds of individual acts of sexual abuse, single acts of sexual abuse become meaningless in the eyes of the abuser.

  Graham served only a portion of those seven years behind bars. He served almost four and a half years in a minimum security retraining center before being granted full parole on September 15, 2016. He is now a free man, subject only to some minor official conditions, including a restraining order in favor of his victims, including me.

  From the National Parole Board decision:

  Your case meets the serious harm criterion. The physical and psychological harm caused to the victims is undeniable. Your file reveals 6 official victims, even though you have already admitted to have had [sic] sexual intercourse with around 20 hockey players you were coaching. You were using manipulation, control, and your position of trust and authority to facilitate the assaults.

  Twenty. It’s not widely known, but in therapy Graham admitted to sexually assaulting approximately twenty boys. In court, he has admitted to sexually abusing only six. But his number is about twenty—and that’s according to him. Who knows what the real number is?

  Yet the National Parole Board noted as follows:

  According to the latest update of your Correctional Plan, you present a low risk for reoffending, and your level of accountability, motivation and potential for social reintegration are all evaluated as high.

  In light of the above, The Board concludes that you have made significant, observable and measurable progress during your period on day parole with respect to the objectives set out in your correctional planning. This process contributes to the reduction of the risk to society that you pose.

  With respect to your release plan, the Board is of the view that it is well structured, responds to your needs, and represents the next logical step in your process of social reintegration.

  Is this justice? Graham spent very little time behind bars in Canadian “correctional facilities,” the official Orwellian term that is used for Canadian jails. I’d like to be able to say that all I had to do was, like Graham, spend a certain number of years working through things, complete the required number of hours of therapy, and then be free to go. But life doesn’t work that way, abuse doesn’t work that way, and recovering from the aftermath of sexual abuse doesn’t work that way. Graham? He got off easy, so to speak.

  Therapy helped me see to see all of this for what it was, to see him for he who he really was, and to remain calm in the face of the way in which he tried to play the crowd at his parole hearings. Graham could say in remorse that he had learned that he never should have been a hockey coach, yet upon his first release from prison he went right back into coaching, in Spain. Graham told the parole board that he was so sorry for what he had done that he was apologizing too much to his victims and had to be told to stop apologizing. He told the parole board that he didn’t see himself as a criminal and had never so much as had a speeding ticket, conveniently forgetting his assault charges and his use of weapons to terrorize victims.

  His entire life was a fraud, nothing more than a series of choices and events designed to feed his desires to obtain whatever he wished, be it power over a victim, control over a victim, sexual release and domination at the expense of a victim, or defeat of a victim.

  Graham is not the university graduate he pretended to be, at least he wasn’t until he completed a degree behind bars. He was no intellectual, and he was no former elite athlete hobbled by the unfortunate luck of physical frailty. He was a short, soft, pudgy, plodding high school graduate with a part-time job teaching, a job that let him hang around kids. He had few friends and lived vicariously through boys and young men while they played hockey. He, their coach or mentor, imagined a bright future for himself as a leader within the game of hockey. Remove hockey from the equation and he was little. Remove boys and young men from the picture and he had nothing to live for.

  Fundamentally, Graham is a pedophile, or more accurately a hebephile, with a foot fetish. He is attracted to feet and sees them as if they are sexual organs. He loves feet, he loves looking at them, touching them, rubbing them pressing himself against them. He loves having his own feet looked at and touched and played with. I had thought that I was in the presence of a very smart, very concerned hockey coach. Instead, I was in the presence of a psychopath with a foot fetish. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for him not to give it all away when he first massaged my feet.

  It wasn’t that everything he said was without merit. It’s that what he was saying was always tailored to his specific audience. He was, and likely still is, a master salesman, one who can both charm and con at the same time while getting people to forget about putting their own interests first and instead buy into his version of things, a version that serves his interests.

  He has always needed as many others as possible to help, knowingly or unknowingly, as part of the fraud. He needed cover, he needed safety, and he needed protection. Those who are not his victims are nothing but pawns he is playing with to help him achieve his ends. He is no doubt smiling when others buy into his explanations, his covers, his rationalizations, his supposed rehabilitation, for in the predator’s world there is him and there are his victims—anyone else is just there to be manipulated to allow him to achieve his ends.

  Whenever he is back in the news the same issues come up and the same questions are asked of our legal system. People are up in arms about inadequate sentencing, nobody understands the process, and Graham, either directly or through his lawyers, is given another chance to try to distance himself from any responsibility for the carnage he left behind. After Graham’s 2015 sentencing, his lawyer noted that Graham wanted to assist the educational system by working within it to help identify pedophiles and hebophiles like him. At his 2016 parole hearing, Graham seemingly showed remorse, yet he couldn’t resist pointing out that he had been instrumental in making Todd Holt, someone he had assaulted well over a hundred times, into one terrific record-breaking junior hockey player.

  I believe that Graham actually craves the attention that his periodically renewed place in the spotlight offers him. I’m sure that having a public profile as a several times convicted serial child sexual abuser brings its own challenges, but Graham had always badly wanted to be a star like the hockey players he coached, who he had “created.” He was very proud of the ones who went on to achieve success in hockey and he believed that their successes were his successes. To this day he points to their successes in an attempt to reduce his overall net negative presence in their lives.

  Because of that, I don’t believe that Graham truly understands who he is or what he has done. And if that is true, it can never be said that Graham has been rehabilitated. And because of that, I fear I may not have heard the last of Graham.

  There are people out there who still support Graham, people who try to find flaws or shortcomings in his victims, who to this day question whether we really are victims, who think that perhaps some of it may not have happened, or, if it did, maybe it wasn’t as bad as we made it out to be, or that we were his friends and it was consensual. Sometimes this information reaches me indirectly, sometimes directly. After I went public, one of his closest friends from junior hockey in Winnipeg contacted me and told me that he thought that all of this had actually worked out well
for me, that I was a celebrity now. Pardon me?

  Other people want to believe that Graham can be rehabilitated, that he has been rehabilitated. They want to believe that Graham can be said to have paid his debt to society and that he now deserves to be treated like the rest of us. I too want to live in a world where that is true. Except, I have seen too much. I know that Graham can never, ever be trusted. “Sexual intercourse” with about twenty boys? He is just wired differently. Nobody wants to say that, but our inability to contemplate that, to accept that possibility, makes us all vulnerable to him.

  I don’t blame anybody for being conned by Graham. Nobody was conned by him more than I was. I get it. I understand how you can come to see the world from his perspective.

  What I do find difficult, and what has interfered with my recovery, has been the crushing disappointment I go through when encountering people who still choose to see things from his perspective after having been awakened to the reality of who he is: judges who issue inadequate sentences, columnists who write legal treatises arguing that the sentences are appropriate, lawyers who support the rights of the convicted while dismissing the rights of a victim, hockey people from his past who cling to old friendships with him, a hockey publication that passes up opportunities to take a stand against him rather than writing about the good he has done while accepting responsibility.

  You haven’t been listening. Can’t you see who he is, what he’s done, what he’s still capable of doing? Don’t you care enough to look more deeply into the facts rather than accept his story, his steps to further con you?