Child sexual abuse: Canada vs the U.S.

By Vanessa Brown

Graham James, who was convicted for 350 charges of child sexual abuse in the '90s, was granted bail last week and released from jail on unrelated child sexual assault charges. James is a former Winnipeg minor hockey league coach now infamous for molesting ex-NHLers Sheldon Kennedy and Theo Fleury in the 1970s and '80s.

He initially served two-and-a-half years (from 1997 to 2001) for sexually assaulting Kennedy and an unnamed minor hockey league player. James was arrested in October on an additional nine counts of sexual assault. According to the Globe and Mail, Fleury said that Canadians "pride ourselves on being one of the safest countries in the world and a decision like the one that was made today doesn't really say a lot, make a statement that we're protecting our children, because we're not."


Canadian sexual abuse experts agree with Fleury. Judy Steed, a Toronto journalist and author of Our Little Secret: Confronting Child Sexual Abuse in Canada, said that the punishment for pedophiles in our country is "ridiculously light."

Under the Criminal Code of Canada, pedophiles are punished, in part, as follows:

• Invitation to sexual touching, section 151: Every person who, for a sexual purpose, invites, counsels or incites a person under the age of 16 years to touch, directly or indirectly, with a part of the body or with an object, the body of any person, including the body of the person who so invites, counsels or incites and the body of the person under the age of 16 years, (a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years and to a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of forty-five days; or (b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding eighteen months and to a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of fourteen days.

In contrast, the statute of limitations in Minnesota (the state directly south of James's Manitoba) states that persons found guilty of soliciting a child to engage in sexual conduct "may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than three years, or to payment of a fine of not more than $5,000, or both."

Steed and Fleury have a point here. I'll admit I don't know how James would have been punished had he committed 350 acts of child sexual abuse in Minnesota. But he served under three years for it in Canada.