Ex-high school coach pleads guilty to sexually assaulting teens Instructor portrayed himself as ‘lonely old man’ to victims By: Katie May Posted: 1:27 PM CDT Thursday, Jul. 13, 2023 Last Modified: 7:56 PM CDT Thursday, Jul. 13, 2023 Updates

A prominent former high school football coach pleaded guilty to nine counts of sexual assault in a Winnipeg courtroom Thursday, as disturbing details of his pattern of abuse were revealed publicly for the first time.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/07/2023 (1191 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kelsey Albert Dana McKay, 52, admitted to sexually assaulting and communicating inappropriately with nine male teenagers.

“For decades, McKay was regarded as someone with significant influence in the football community and as someone who possessed more power than the administration within the schools that he worked,” said Crown attorney Katie Dojack as she read an agreed statement of facts into the court record.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES
Kelsey Albert Dana McKay entered his guilty pleas in provincial court Thursday morning in Winnipeg. — JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES

Kelsey Albert Dana McKay entered his guilty pleas in provincial court Thursday morning in Winnipeg.

McKay had faced 30 charges related to sexual assault and grooming students, but a bulk of the charges were stayed by the Crown. He will be entered into Manitoba’s child abuse registry and will be listed on the national sex offender registry for 20 years. He will be sentenced at a later date.

McKay was present in court, represented by lawyer Josh Weinstein, when provincial court Judge Malcolm McDonald accepted his guilty pleas.

The statement of facts shows a pattern of behaviour that McKay had kept up for more than a decade as a gym teacher and football coach. He had worked for three decades at Churchill High School and Vincent Massey Collegiate and the athletes he coached were predominantly between 15 to 18, court was told.

The offences he admitted to happened 10 to 20 years ago, when McKay was in his 30s and 40s.

In many cases, the teenagers he targeted were both his students and athletes on his teams. McKay often formed close relationships with the boys’ families and had gained their trust to the point that, on several occasions over the years, complaints about his inappropriate behaviour with players were ignored or dismissed. By the time the sexual assaults happened, many of the boys were already used to experiencing verbal and emotional abuse from McKay as part of his “old school” coaching style, according to the agreed statement of facts.

Several of the victims reported they had frozen in place and were unable to say no while McKay was sexually assaulting them.

He was only charged in April 2022, although many in the school football community had heard allegations about him long before criminal charges were filed.

In 2016, three sets of parents complained to Vincent Massey High School and the Pembina Trails School division administration about McKay’s excessive text messaging and “unprofessional and inappropriate” behaviour with their sons, who attended the school and played football under McKay’s leadership.

“McKay never denied any of the allegations or offered an explanation for his behaviour,” Dojack said, reading from the statement of facts.

Despite the complaints, he didn’t stop.

The school ordered McKay to stop texting individual students and meeting with them one on one — but he ignored officials.

The school also ordered him to complete counselling, review school division policies related to communicating with students, and complete, for the third time, the Respect in Sport program designed to reduce the risk of sexual abuse against children.

He was known to give special attention to students who had difficult home lives or absent parents. His office became “the place” for players to hang out, and his invitations for players to go to his house to watch football were well-known. He had team hot tub parties at his home and insisted on watching pornography with some of the students. His behaviour went unchecked for years.

It escalated to McKay giving one-on-one sexual massages to teens at his home, along with a variety of other sexual assault behaviour, including squeezing players’ buttocks and tapping their genitals at school and in public. Several of the victims reported he nicknamed their genitals and would frequently refer to them in sexualized text messages or verbally, sometimes while others were present. He would ask victims to kiss him on the cheek.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES
Kelsey McKay will be entered on Manitoba’s child abuse registry and will be listed on the national sex offender registry for 20 years. He will be sentenced at a later date. — JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES

Kelsey McKay will be entered on Manitoba’s child abuse registry and will be listed on the national sex offender registry for 20 years. He will be sentenced at a later date.

McKay admitted to being persistent in recruiting young boys for football — he met some of his victims when they were as young as 12 — and would continue texting them after they had graduated from high school.

In the cases that he admitted to, McKay portrayed himself to the boys as “a lonely old man,” told them he was bisexual or gay, and asked them not to tell anyone before eventually grooming and assaulting them, sometimes after years of acting as their coach and an important and trusted male figure in their lives.

Investigators were only able to access text messages from McKay’s phone dating back to 2018, as well as older Facebook messages. In some of the messages, McKay made reference to the victims’ body parts (“What’s up, Cute Butt? Ha”) or said he loved them. In one incident, McKay apologized to a victim after a game and told the Grade 10 student McKay’s judgment day would come “on my deathbed.”

After the charges were laid, McKay was placed on unpaid leave from Vincent Massey and Pembina Trails barred him from the property.

The charges were laid after victims came forward to police. The first victim to come forward contacted police on April 5, 2022.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca