Kennedy shares important message

Sheldon Kennedy told students at a city junior high when he was their age he entered a living hell.

“That's how old I was when I left home,” the former NHL player said, noting that his story of childhood sexual abuse led to him drop out of school and struggle with addiction, depression, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety issues. “I pushed everybody away from me because I didn't want them to really know who I really was and how I really felt.”

The former NHL player was speaking in front of a full assembly of nearly 500 students at Lorne Akins Junior High School. Several hours later he would take his message to the Arden Theatre.

“When I was in school, what we used to learn about was to be careful of the white van that was cruising around because they're gonna get ya. Stranger danger.”

His abuser wasn't a stranger, he added. He was his junior hockey coach Graham James. The abuse went on for five years and Kennedy wasn't the only victim either. Others, including ex-Flame Theoren Fleury, have come forward but an investigation indicated there could be dozens more victims still out there. Years later James would be convicted of sexual assault.

Since he first opened up about his trauma more than 20 years ago, Kennedy has since gone on to become a public speaker and advocate through Respect Group, an organization that trains people to prevent bullying, harassment, and abuse in amateur sport and education systems.

He also leant his support to the founding of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre, one of three such centres in the province including Edmonton's Zebra Child Protection Centre. The Calgary centre houses 120 health, government, law and other professionals who are all involved in dealing with abused children.

In less than five years that it has been in operation, it has already done more than 5,800 investigations of emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect.

“96 per cent of the kids know their abusers,” he continued, speaking from the centre's statistics. “That's important. It makes it even more scary.”

He encouraged them all to be honest and talk to a counselor or a friend or even call the Kids Help Phone if they or someone they know is experiencing abuse. There is a way out, he said.

The assembly was a silent mass of attention while the engaging speaker paced back and forth. Kennedy peppered his talk with humour, taking questions from the teens afterward. In a surprising show of maturity, some of the teens asked some tough questions about the nature of the abuse.

Afterward, principal Graham Jackson and school counselor Allyson Fong explained the value of having such presentations.

“We are seeing more and more kids that are struggling,” Fong said. “Perseverance and resiliency and being able to deal with the struggles of junior high is something that we're always trying to support our kids with.”

“We see it so much, with stress and anxiety and related disorders… and we don't have the tools. It's really tricky. For kids to come forward takes a lot of bravery and a lot of skills,” Jackson added.

Fong ended by suggesting that some students come to her with issues. The school is well-connected to direct teens and even their parents to community resources.

During his Arden presentation, Kennedy elaborated further on his messages of focusing on mental health.

“Not focus a ton on the incident but on the impact. The impact is real,” he repeated, his voice occasionally still straining under the pain of his emotional and psychological injuries.

Even though he only sought help when he was an adult, he said that there were many signs that he was in trouble that his teachers or parents should have picked up on.

“Kids tell in different ways,” he continued, remarking about his downward spiral of failing school, trouble with the law, acting out, and self-harming behaviours that didn't draw the attention that they should have. “I'd show up at school with cuts up and down my arms and I'd look at all these adults around the situation and nobody asked me what was going on.”

“I don't think this stuff's rocket science. It's about standing up for one another.”

At the end of his talk, Jasmine Fulks and Petal Murti, psychologists with River's Edge Counselling Centre, participated in a panel discussion with Kennedy.

“A lot of the things that Sheldon talks about in his story are things that I see, unfortunately, every day in the work that I do,” Fulks said.

“I've worked with addictions for a long time, thousands of clients that I've worked with addictions and rarely have I ever worked with somebody that did not have a mental health issue or, more frequently, a childhood adverse experience.”

Those childhood adverse experiences, she noted, were often cases of sexual abuse such as Kennedy endured.