$6-M lawsuit against sex predator dismissed

A Manitoba judge has tossed out a lawsuit against disgraced hockey coach Graham James, finding the evidence doesn’t support the plaintiff’s claim it was the convicted sex predator who abused him in the early 1980s.

The plaintiff, a man now in his early 50s, alleged in his lawsuit filed in Court of King’s Bench in 2023 that James sexually abused him on several occasions in 1983 after meeting him at Strathmillan School, where he was then a 10-year-old elementary student.

He alleged James was working at the school as a substitute teacher and that the school division failed to protect him. The lawsuit, which named James and the St. James Assiniboia School Division as defendants, sought $6.15 million in damages.

The defendants put forward a motion last year seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed with a summary judgment, which allows a judge to make a decision on the merits of civil case without a full trial.

James and the division argued the evidence available — including school division and tax records and a police investigation — suggested James was not teaching at the time the alleged abuse occurred and could not have perpetrated it.

King’s Bench Justice Sarah Inness, in a decision issued this week, sided with James and the defendants and dismissed the civil claim.

“There is no genuine issue for trial on whether the defendant James was the perpetrator of the sexual acts alleged by (the plaintiff),” Inness wrote.

The judge said while she accepts that the plaintiff believes James is the person who abused him, his evidence identifying the former coach was too unreliable to prove the claim.

“(The plaintiff’s) belief that James is the person responsible, even if sincere, is not evidence upon which a finding of liability can reliably rest,” said Inness.

James said in court filings he stopped working as a substitute after the 1982-1983 school year when he was hired as an assistant coach for the Winnipeg Warriors.

James denied abusing the plaintiff and said he never substituted at the elementary the accuser attended. Further, he said, he substituted only for Grades 7 to 12, never for elementary grades.

Inness said that given the central issue in the case was whether James was the perpetrator, it was necessary to note the fact he’s a “notorious child sex offender.”

“It is for that reason that care must be taken in fairly assessing (the plaintiff’s) claims, while guarding against the improper use of bad character propensity reasoning,” said Inness.

Such legal reasoning is using past conduct as evidence to argue one has a inclination to act in a certain way, therefore suggesting they did so in the case at hand.

James, now in his early 70s, 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.

Police estimate the true number of victims is between 25 and 100.

Most of the assaults occurred in Swift Current, Sask., during the eight years James was coach and general manager of its Western Hockey League club.

James’ formative teen years were spent in the St. James area.

He began coaching minor hockey and substitute teaching in the west Winnipeg suburban neighbourhood in the late 1970s, before moving on to the Manitoba Junior Hockey League and, later, the WHL.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca