Graham James accuser asks school division — for third time in 11 years — ‘to step up, do the right thing’ By: Erik Pindera Posted: 6:18 PM CST Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023 Last Modified: 6:33 PM CST Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023 Updates

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This article was published 15/11/2023 (1074 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Greg Gilhooly has written extensively about the abuse he says he suffered at the hands of notorious sex predator Graham James while he played hockey as a teenager in St. James more than 40 years ago.

But Gilhooly says one of those incidents of molestation took place in a school in the St. James-Assiniboia School Division, where James was a substitute teacher.

The 59-year-old Ontario lawyer and author is calling on the institution to atone for its role in the alleged abuse, a day after the Free Press reported a multi-million dollar lawsuit had been filed against James and the school division by another alleged victim.

“I am trying, and will continue to try for as long as I live, to get them to step up and do the right thing,” Gilhooly told the Free Press Wednesday.

“I am not optimistic, because they’ve shown me no reason to be optimistic… the only action I’ve seen from the school board is inaction.”

Gilhooly sent a letter to the school division Wednesday requesting an out-of-court settlement of $125,000 to pay for the therapy he sought and medication that was prescribed, for John Taylor Collegiate’s library to be named in honour of a librarian who comforted him after the incident on school property and an opportunity to speak with administrators and teachers about grooming.

It’s the third letter he has sent the division’s administration and trustees since 2011.

School division spokeswoman Michelle Lancaster would not comment on the lawsuit and Gilhooly’s letters.

James, now 71, was named, along with the division, in the $6.15-million lawsuit filed Nov. 7 in Court of King’s Bench over allegations he abused a boy, then 10, while working as a substitute teacher — despite not actually having the qualifications he claimed — in 1983.

He has been criminally convicted of sexually assaulting five former players, some of whom he abused hundreds of times.

Former high-level hockey players Sheldon Kennedy, Theoren Fleury and Todd Holt have all publicly shared their ordeals; the identities of two others are protected by publication bans.

The notorious, disgraced coach agreed in 2011 to plead guilty to sex abuse charges involving Fleury and Holt — if the Crown did not proceed with a charge alleging the sex abuse of Gilhooly. He was released on day parole in 2016. In 1998, he had pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault and was paroled in 2001.

Gilhooly met James in January 1979, after the then-14 year old’s team lost a championship game.

James, a big name in the minor-hockey community, said he knew of the boy’s hockey abilities and set up a meeting, which was the alleged beginning of an abusive relationship that continued until Gilhooly left Winnipeg to attend university in 1982.

“Whenever he came into the schools, he was like a celebrity,” Gilhooly said. “He was a larger-than-life character in the hockey world; he was seen as this hockey god back then.

“In the middle of it all, he was a substitute teacher… in the middle of all this craziness going on, sure enough, I show up to school one day at John Taylor Collegiate and he’s my substitute teacher in gym class. It was just an awful hour.”

”Whenever he came into the schools, he was like a celebrity…He was a larger-than-life character in the hockey world; he was seen as this hockey god back then.”–Greg Gilhooly

After that class in the spring of 1980, James kissed and molested him in a private hallway off the gymnasium, Gilhooly said, adding that while the incident was not among the worst he experienced at the time, it happened on school property.

And amid the flurry of media attention on James and his victims in the hockey world, the school system got off easy, he said.

“This isn’t a hockey story, it’s a societal story,” he said.

In 2012, shortly after James’s 2011 plea bargain, Gilhooly sent his first letter to the St. James-Assiniboia School Division.

“In its midst there are sexual predators, and I encountered one. This awful hockey guy, who I encountered, was also a teacher in your school system — how did he end up in your school system, how did he get this position of authority, what vetting was done of his credentials, what training did he get, was there oversight?” Gilhooly asked rhetorically.

Instead of receiving an apology and acknowledgment of the trauma he endured, he was treated as a legal threat, he said.

“I ended up getting…. ‘The school board has looked at the case history and they don’t see that they’re liable, you haven’t proved this, Graham didn’t admit to your charges, there are no convictions with respect to Graham (regarding) you, and we don’t see that the school board is in any way responsible or liable whatsoever,’” he said, paraphrasing the letter, of which he no longer has a copy.

He sent a similar letter in fall 2021, after news broke of former professional hockey player Kyle Beach alleging he was sexually assaulted by a Chicago Blackhawks coach, and Gilhooly was asked to comment in the media.

He was again rebuffed by education officials, he said, and considered litigation but decided against it.

“I believe institutions should do the right thing for the right reason, not because they’re ever forced to by a lawyer or the legal process,” he said.

Neither James nor the school division have filed statements of defence in response to the allegations in the lawsuit, which haven’t been proven in court.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca