WINNIPEG – Is disgraced former hockey coach Graham James a quiet, harmless rehabilitated sex offender or a calculating deviant whose predatory behaviour is likely to re-emerge?
Psychiatric reports and reference letters filed by the Crown and defence paint starkly different pictures of the man whose fate now rests in the hands of a judge and who was described by his own lawyer as the most hated individual in Canada.
James is “consistently decent and kind with our mutual friends and my family, including my children,” wrote a co-worker in a reference letter filed by defence lawyer Evan Roitenberg.
James never swears in front of women and never “drank a sip of alcohol” in the time the co-worker has known him.
The identity of the five people who wrote reference letters for James cannot be revealed under a court order.
The letters all bear a similar description – a man reserved and polite almost to a fault. A man reformed.
The letters are now being considered by Manitoba Judge Catherine Carlson. She is to sentence James on March 20 for repeated sexual assaults on Theo Fleury and Todd Holt when the men were junior players in the Western Hockey League in the 1980s and ’90s.
James pleaded guilty, and his lawyer is seeking a conditional sentence with no jail time. James has been vilified in the media and has been the target of hatred, Roitenberg told the court.
The Crown has asked for a prison term of six years.
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The sentencing date will come almost 15 years after James was sent to prison for repeated sexual assaults on two other players, including former NHLer Sheldon Kennedy. He served 18 months of a 3 1/2-year sentence.
A woman who says she has known James for years wrote a reference letter that said he should be spared.
“I have never at any time seen him behave inappropriately. In fact, I have seen quite the opposite. He has always behaved in a modest and reserved manner,” she wrote.
“In my opinion, Graham is a much-changed person (from) the man he was in his 30s.”
A man who has known James for several years wrote that James helped him through personal and medical troubles.
“He’s a humble person – respectful, intelligent – someone who cares about others.”
The Crown, however, has put forward a very different description. A report prepared by a Toronto psychiatrist says James is likely to reoffend.
“Mr. James will always pose a risk to adolescent boys because of his deeply engrained erotic preference,” the Crown’s psychiatrist wrote. His report points to the fact that James was sexually aroused by adolescent feet, groomed his young victims over years and has historically defended his actions.
James said “that he was not a pedophile and compared himself to historical figures that had male lovers. He believed that these figures were accepted by society and he was not,” the report reads.
“I am unaware if Mr. Jones, post-release, has lived in an age-appropriate relationship. If he has done so, for at least two years, his (risk) score would be 5, and this still falls within the moderate-high risk category.”
James’s victims have also warned that he is not a changed man. Outside court last week, Kennedy called James a master manipulator and liar. Kennedy and Fleury, who went on to be a star in the NHL, have pointed to studies that show high recidivism rates among sex offenders who target children.
Fleury urged the court not to go easy on James.
“This court must know that pedophiles like Graham James do not ever change. They are devoid of anything good and their moral compass does not exist,” Fleury wrote in a victim impact statement posted on his website.
“Do not show leniency to Graham James. He certainly never did to me or any of his other prey. He had many opportunities to stop, to get help, to change, and he never took them. In fact, he kept going.”
The defence team’s psychiatrist, however, says James, 59, has changed his ways, in part by redirecting his desires to youthful-looking adults instead of children.
“Experience with the law and therapy helped him to accept accountability and responsibility and do away with his distorted thinking about these relationships,” the defence psychiatrist wrote in his assessment.
“The subject is situated in the risk category that predicts a probability of recidivism of 15 per cent over seven years, which is one of the low-risk categories.”
Like the people who wrote reference letters for James, the defence psychiatrist portrayed James as quiet and withdrawn.
“On the clinical scales, one discovers a rather asocial man who has a propensity to isolate himself and prefers to be alone.
“He seems to be indifferent and remote, rarely responsive to the actions or feelings of others, chooses solitary activities, possesses minimal ‘human’ interest, fades into the background.”
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