Find the pervert and put him in jail

So the other skate has finally dropped.After years of rampant speculation, Theoren Fleury is about to literally release his demons. In hardcover.

Yes, Fleury finally admits in his new tell-all book, he was molested by the repugnant and predatory head coach Graham James as a junior hockey player.

Sordid details of Playing With Fire, to be released next Wednesday by HarperCollins, reveal -- a long suspected but incredibly kept secret for over two decades -- that Fleury was another of James' prey, along with former NHL and Manitoba Moose player Sheldon Kennedy.

"Graham was always working me," Fleury writes in an excerpt of the book, which was released by Canwest New Service Thursday. "He knew I was shit-scared of him, that I couldn't understand why he was doing what he was doing to me. Lots of times, after molesting me, he would call me up and say, 'Let's go get a milkshake.' We would sit in his car and he would talk for hours about why he was the way he was."

Fleury played under James for the Moose Jaw Warriors, and before that the Winnipeg Warriors, of the Western Hockey League and -- according to the excerpt -- Kennedy says he suspected Fleury was also being abused by the coach "right from the start."

In the wake of Kennedy's original accusations against James in the mid-1990s the disgraced coach was later sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail.

"The direct result of my being abused was that I became a f--ing raging, alcoholic lunatic," Fleury wrote in a separate excerpt provided to Maclean's magazine. "(James) destroyed my belief system. The most influential adult in my life at the time was telling me that what I thought was wrong was right.

"I no longer had faith in myself or my own judgment. And when you come down to it, that's all a person has. Once it's gone, how do you get it back?"

Also in the book are details almost identical to those Fleury revealed to the Free Press in 2005 -- how during his stint with the New York Rangers, when he hit rock bottom, he drank with winos over barrels along the Hudson River. How he frequented crack houses with "freaks, transvestites, strippers and all kinds of shady people."

So the now world knows what Fleury knew all along; a past he tried to drink away, drug away and rage away. Indeed, perhaps the most amazing aspect of Theo Fleury's life is this: How the hell did he even survive, much less win an Olympic gold medal, a Stanley Cup and then become the second highest-scoring player in the history of the Calgary Flames (behind Jarome Iginla)?

Naturally, there are cynics out there who have portrayed Fleury's recent comeback attempt as nothing more than a thinly veiled stage to pimp the upcoming release of his autobiography.

So what if it was? And besides, in what could have been an utter and embarrassing disaster, Fleury finished the pre-season as one of the Flames leading scorers. It may have meant nothing to the average hockey fan, but it meant everything to Fleury that he believed he left the game on his own terms. Not as some coked-up drunk betrayed by his own past.

That is not a little thing. To Fleury, in many ways, it would likely mean as much as that Olympic gold medal, or that Stanley Cup.

Same goes with the book, on the shelves next week. Guaranteed there will be those who view such a tell-all as a well-orchestrated cash grab for a man with reported financial issues.

First of all, so the hell what? Let the judgmental observations begin with those who've walked in similar tragic shoes. Secondly, if Fleury's long-held revelations help one iota in his recovery -- it's his life, his secrets -- then so be it.

Because confronting or publicizing the darkest corners of your soul do not, as history records, guarantee some magical antidote to the pain. Nothing is erased, only shared.

Just ask Kennedy, who even after his torturous confession in the mid-'90s, still battled his own nightmares. Now, ironically, both Kennedy and Fleury attend the same AA meetings in Calgary.

Here's a suggestion. Instead of questioning the victim's motives for whatever they've done, now or in the past, how about this alternative: Where is Graham James and why shouldn't he be re-arrested and tried based on Fleury's fresh allegations?

James' last known whereabouts, incredibly, were reports in 2001 that he was coaching young hockey players in Spain. The trail has since gone cold.

What happens to Fleury now, after the book tour and television appearances are over, remains to be seen. One only hopes he's found some peace.

Graham James? He should be found, period. Given the latest it appears there are still accusations to be answered for.

The nightmares shouldn't only haunt the victims.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 10, 2009 D1