The news that a disgraced former Winnipeg high school football coach admitted guilt to multiple counts of sexual assault is a positive step for many in the city’s amateur sports community.
Kelsey McKay, who taught phys ed and coached football at both Churchill High School and Vincent Massey Collegiate for around two decades, appeared in court Thursday and pleaded guilty to nine counts of sexual assault and two counts of luring.
That’s far fewer charges than the 30 he originally faced — which included sexual exploitation and harassment — but the rest have been stayed.
Lawyer and former Winnipegger Greg Gilhooly — himself a survivor of sexual abuse as a teen in the 1980s, by his then-hockey coach Graham James — said there are good and bad aspects to McKay’s pleading out.
“It’s wonderful that there’s no trial … to get a conviction and this guy into jail,” Gilhooly, author of the book I Am Nobody: Confronting the Sexually Abusive Coach Who Stole My Life, told 680 CJOB’s The News on Thursday, “and there’s no question, he’s going to end up behind bars.
“But is he admitting and accepting a plea to save people the pain of a trial, or is he really covering his own behind? Because what is going to happen is there’s not going to be extensive digging into exactly what it is that he did.
“He didn’t actually have to withstand direct questioning — it’s an agreed statement of facts, it’s a negotiated presentation of whatever reality both sides are going to accept. It’s wonderful that there’s a guaranteed conviction. It’s sad that a psychotic sexual abuser isn’t being put to the test of having to face the evidence.”
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Gilhooly said the way predators get away, often for decades, with abusing their young victims is that they’re often skilled manipulators.
“What these offenders are, they’re very good at figuring out how to access younger people. (As a teen) I thought I knew everything and yet I knew nothing.
“I was very susceptible to someone from outside my family stepping in and making me feel important and as if I really did have a place in the world out there … and that if only I followed his instruction and his guidance, I would have access to more in my sport and I would become the person who I wanted to become.
“There’s that dangling of a carrot of belonging and success that is such a powerful tool to wield over a young person as a teen…. It can just lead to very bad places if very bad people are doing that.”
Winnipeg Rifles football coach Geordie Wilson said he considers the former players who came forward and reported McKay to be heroes.
“You think about it, when you’re a young person — and I’ve talked to some family members of some victims — you have these dreams, you want to be a football star or a hockey star or whatever sport it is you’re in … and then something like that happens. There’s no way on earth you could have surmised something like that would happen,” Wilson told 680 CJOB’s Connecting Winnipeg.
“It’s horrific. My heart just breaks for them, but for them to come forward to say this happened, they are heroes.
“They’ve stopped him from being a predator on other kids, and that’s important.”
Wilson said parents should trust their gut when it comes to potentially dangerous situations, and that there’s no good reason for a teenager to visit a teacher or coach’s home, especially alone.
“If you’re parents and your kid is going over to some teacher’s or coach’s home, you have to question why,” he said.
“That just doesn’t happen, and it shouldn’t happen. As an adult, why do you want to hang out with a 15-year-old? I like working with them and coaching them and stuff like that, but I don’t want to hang out with them.”
A sentencing date for McKay has yet to be set.
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