Читать книгу I Am Nobody. Confronting the Sexually Abusive Coach Who Stole My Life онлайн

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I may have pretended otherwise, but when I was a young, awkward, giant misfit of a kid I had never wanted to be special or different. Being successful didn’t make up for being different and alone. I craved the acceptance that I wasn’t getting at home, the normalcy that I wasn’t getting at school, and the understanding that I wasn’t getting from friends outside of hockey.

Still, no matter how tough things may have been for me on the inside, I always had hockey, my safe place, the place I belonged.

That is who I was when I met Graham James.

TWO

THE PREDATOR

IN THE 1970S, everyone in the Winnipeg hockey community knew Graham James. He was an innovative minor hockey coach focusing on talent and speed, not size and brute force. He produced winning age-group (under sixteen) hockey teams while serving as a successful scout for major junior hockey teams in the Western Hockey League, one rung below the NHL. And he was based in St. James, the western part of Winnipeg, where I grew up.

Graham seemed to live and breathe hockey.