ON THE RIDE from Russell to Winnipeg, I sat in the back seat. My dad was driving and my mom was beside him. They were almost giddy. My dad always had a nice voice and was singing to the radio, and she was humming along. I had rarely seen them like this—happy. Their boy had made it. My dad was no longer a worthless drunk and my mom drugged out and helpless. They were Wally and Donna Fleury, and they had parented a winner.
I was so conflicted. On one hand, I was fuckin’ terrified knowing what Graham wanted. On the other, my parents were finally happy because of me. I had to make a choice. I chose to protect them and my secret.
At 14, I figured I could get through it myself. I remember that, when my parents left that day, I stood on the driveway watching them drive off and I thought, “What the fuck did I just do?” I planned to wrap myself up in a blanket at bedtime again. I still had some fight left in me.
I was billeted with a woman named Mrs. Bennett, but Graham insisted I sleep over at his house at least twice a week. The physical stuff was one thing, but the mental manipulation, that was the worst. The days I had go over to Graham’s filled me with dread. From the moment I woke up I would start making up excuses, which never worked. I could say, “My dad died.” “So what? You’re comin’ over and you’re not getting a paycheque if you don’t.” I couldn’t rub two nickels together, for fuck sakes. And I couldn’t ask my parents for money, because they had none. I relied on Graham for everything. And that’s the way he wanted it. I could not shake him with a sledgehammer. Then he would pull the “poor me” stuff. “You don’t like me. You think I haven’t done anything for you.” Whatever. I fought him off for a long, long time. I continued with the blanket trick so he would have no access. I would get absolutely no sleep. None. I was on guard. I’m a pretty determined guy—I can hang on for a long time.
He’d wait until the middle of the night, and then he’d crawl around the room in the dark on his hands and knees. He had the blinds ducttaped to the windows so no light could get in. It was the same every time. He would start massaging my feet and I wouldn’t move, pretending to be asleep. He would try to come up higher, but with that blanket wrapped so tight, he couldn’t get at me. The whole charade was taking a toll. I would drag myself to school the next day and fall asleep in class.
Graham convinced me that, if not for him and his help, I would not be going to the NHL. As far as I was concerned, the reason for my whole existence was to make it to The Show. It was all I had. My only worth to anyone was my ability to play hockey. What was the point of living if I had no value? He was in my ear that whole year. He told me I had to listen to him, do as he said because he was my only chance to make it. No one else had been beating the door down to draft me. I hadn’t grown much, and although I ate nonstop I put on maybe fifteen pounds, tops. A guy my size in the WHL was unheard of.
It took a full year, but finally, in the spring of 1983, on the night we heard that Winnipeg had sold the team to Moose Jaw and we would be moving there, he just broke me down. I was exhausted. He had put himself in a position of full power and control. In 2005, I read an article in The New York Times that described how military doctors at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba advised interrogators on how to break prisoners down by increasing their stress levels and exploiting their fears. Boy, did I relate to that.
At least twice a week that first year, Graham would bother me and I’d fend him off. But that night in 1983, I left the blanket on the bed. I was 14. Kids are funny. Each time I stayed over, I hoped that maybe he would leave me alone. I mean, he would act perfectly normal all evening. We’d watch a movie and he would make popcorn. We’d talk hockey and strategy. He would give no indication about what he was planning to do. No sidelong looks, no touching, nothing.
The first few times he got at me weren’t so bad because I was gone. I would open my eyes and he would be standing over me, cleaning himself up. I knew something had happened, but I was not sure what. The mind can do some amazing things. Even years later in therapy, when telling the counsellor about it, I would check out—leave my body. She’d have to literally shake me to bring me back. But I wasn’t always able to do that. He started a routine whenever I was over—masturbate on my feet, then give a blowjob, then let me sleep.
I thought about telling, but who could I turn to? Who would believe me over him? And what would happen if I did tell? I turned it over in my mind, trying to find a way out, but every option had major consequences. Would the consequences go against me or him? I didn’t know. I wasn’t stupid, I could see how it would play. I would have been stigmatized forever as the kid who was molested by his coach. The Victim. Would minor hockey have said, “Wow, we better watch out for Theoren and protect him because he told the truth”? No. It would have been, James was a pervert and Fleury “let him” molest him. Or I would be the equally pervy kid who had a “relationship” with his coach. Would I have been invited to the Hockey Canada camp that led to Piestany, which led to the NHL? Get real.
If I could go back in time, knowing I would never make it in hockey because I told, would I? Fuckin’ A, I would. But at my age, with my background, in my position, driving to the NHL, I didn’t say anything and it was a very big price to pay. And every person I ever loved, they paid too. It fucked up my sexual identity big time. I thought maybe I was fuckin’ gay, I didn’t know. I mean, I know now how it works with boys. It doesn’t matter if it’s an elephant, if something touches your penis, you will get aroused. When I found that out, I felt relieved and the world started to make a little more sense. To this day, I still have a real tough time with blowjobs, and women have to have nice feet. I dated a beautiful girl once, but she had the nastiest feet ever. I had to break up with her ‘cause I couldn’t fuckin’ deal with it.
Graham was always working me. He used professional language and methods to get me to co-operate. 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 and how what he was doing was not sexual. I was helping him by donating my sperm because he couldn’t manufacture enough. He said that when I ejaculated, it stimulated his glands and helped him become fertile. All kinds of weird fuckin’ stuff. “It is a purely medical need,” he would say. “This has nothing to do with sex.” And I would be so confused. It’s not like I believed him, but I thought maybe he believed it. You know that picture The Scream, by Edvard Munch? It is a picture of me. I would leave those conversations with Graham just beside myself. Fuck! It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up. Why is he telling me this? What does he really mean? It was torture, absolute torture. I was tied up, maybe not with rope, but it was the same thing. He was my coach. He was helping me. He knew so much about hockey. He controlled my fuckin’ destiny.
In truth, he was holding me back. I was having a hard time concentrating on playing hockey while having to deal with that dirtbag. I let him do what he needed to do to get it over with so I could get some fuckin’ sleep. I needed to function the next day. A few times he tried to go further, but I said no. He must have had an insatiable drive. Think about it: I wasn’t the only guy he was doing this to. He had no conscience. The direct result of my being abused was that I became a fucking raging, alcoholic lunatic. He destroyed my belief system. I didn’t trust what I was thinking or feeling. My parents had not instilled a strong sense of right and wrong in me, but I had developed one thanks to my Russell coaches and the Peltz family. Graham stole that from me. 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?
I’m writing about this for one reason: I want any kid that has been—or is being—abused to tell. Bring what someone is doing to you into the light, because it happens every single day.
Graham was on me once or twice a week for the next two years. An absolute nightmare, every single day of my life. It made the dreams I had in elementary school about the world ending seem like a cakewalk. I worried constantly. What should I do? How the fuck do I get out of this situation? What if somebody finds out? Will I go to hell for this?
So when I was 16 years old and I took that first sip of alcohol, it was like—snap!—medicine. I was like, “Oh this is gooood stuff.”
It is not like I had a slow descent into alcoholism. I was an alcoholic as soon as I tried it, just like some people try crack for the first time and they are instantly addicted. I had been weighed down by all the shit that was happening to me, and suddenly none of it mattered. I was able to have fun. From that day on, drinking became something I could not live without, like oxygen or hockey.