Haunted by a coach's abuse, a victim calls for better safeguards 30 years on

It had been almost a decade since he'd sexually abused her as a teenager. But there he was, out of the blue, reaching out and wanting to meet.

The Halifax woman, by this time was in medical school, wondered if after all these years her former paddling coach at Maskwa Aquatic Club would finally admit what he'd done was wrong and apologize.

Instead, she said Donald Paul Hendserson wanted assurances she would never tell anyone.

For two more decades, she didn't. Not even her husband. It would be many more years before she would gain the courage to finally share her story with police.

Now, 30 years after she was abused, she is speaking out with the hope that more light will be shed on abuse in sport and that athletic organizations will put more safeguards in place.

As many sports groups try to tackle the issue of abuse, she and others say that for years, power imbalances between coaches and athletes have been allowed to go unchecked.

"You look up to your coach so much, so you might feel flattered. They're in a position of authority over you, so I think it's a much more vulnerable situation," said the women, who cannot be identified due to a court-ordered publication ban.

While the woman was initially hesitant to speak to police about her experience, she ultimately decided to do so in 2018 because she said she heard Henderson was coaching hockey teams that involved children.

"I can't let him have access to young girls anymore," she said in an interview. "I did it for that reason."

On Jan. 8, Henderson, 54, was sentenced to 90 days in jail, to be served intermittently, after pleading guilty to one charge of sexual touching for incidents involving the woman between Dec. 31, 1988, and Dec. 31, 1990.

The victim was 14 years old when Henderson became her coach at Maskwa, a canoe and kayak club on Kearney Lake in suburban Halifax that has over the years produced elite paddlers. He was 10 years older than her.

She was just starting out in the sport, and like many young people, she was eager to train hard and maybe some day go to the Olympics. She spent a lot of time at the club and said sometimes Henderson would drive her home after practice.

"There was some alone time, but that was fine, because he was my coach and I trusted him and I looked up to him," she said.

One day, Henderson invited her to his family's cottage at Martinique Beach on Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore.

The woman said she believed other people would be there for a party and to do some surfing. When they arrived and were alone, she said she wasn't upset or worried because she trusted her coach.

"But I guess things evolved that day and we had intercourse," she said. "At that point, I hadn't really had any real boyfriends, I was very inexperienced. So that was something that I certainly didn't plan and would never think would happen. But it did."

Over the next year, it continued.

"Looking back on it, pretty much every time we would meet it was for sex. There was no kind of relationship," she said.

The woman said it became a constant stress in her life at the time, and she worried someone would find out. Toward the end of the ordeal, she began to feel taken advantage of and embarrassed.

It changed her relationship with her teammates. She was labelled a slut. She eventually stopped going along with Henderson and switched paddling clubs. Henderson himself stopped coaching at Maskwa in 1997.

But what had happened would stick with her for the next 30 years.

"I always thought you couldn't trust men, they really just want sex. They really don't care about you. I had that wrong idea that developed from that time," she said.

The woman said she experienced shame, guilt, feeling "dirty" and felt she was guarding a secret for years.

But protecting that secret changed when she saw that the Atlantic Division of Canoe Kayak Canada had launched a complaints process in the winter of 2018.

On its website, it lays out prohibited conduct for coaches, officials, volunteers and administrators, including sexual relations, criminal convictions and driving while impaired. There is also a form for individuals to report a concern that allows people to remain anonymous.

More safeguards coming

About a year and a half ago, Canoe Kayak Canada, the governing body for paddling in the country, implemented at the national level a safe sport officer — an independent group to evaluate complaints.

But Ian Mortimer, the director of development at Canoe Kayak Canada, said more changes are coming next month that will streamline the complaints process from different branches across the country.

"We need to ensure that when athletes walk into a canoe club, they know that it's going to be an environment where they're safe," he said.

So far, Mortimer said the system has been working: people are coming forward, although he wouldn't offer details.

But the organization wants to make sure that complaints will go directly to an independent person, who will then review and respond accordingly without any conflict of interest. That new streamlining comes into effect March 1.

Along with the reporting, Canoe Kayak Canada is also rolling out mandated training and making sure that coaches who are already in the system have gone through appropriate training.

"The beauty of sport is we have role models and leaders and we build meaningful relationships to develop athletes," Mortimer said.

"But what comes with that is a great deal of responsibility to ensure that those power relationships, those positions of trust, are used responsibly and that no one is taking advantage of that position inappropriately."

The woman said she's glad to see that some sports groups are creating formal complaints processes. But she hopes people will speak up even if those don't exist.

While she did not file a complaint through Canoe Kayak Canada, it did prompt her to think more about her experience. She was also seeing more news stories about victims of abuse in sport and hearing things that sounded similar to her own.

Then, she was contacted by Halifax Regional Police, after another woman told police that she had also suffered at the hands of Henderson.

Police have said they received multiple complaints in the spring and summer of 2018, although spokesperson Const. John MacLeod would not specify the number or how many individuals.

'His name is out there'

Henderson is now married and has teenage daughters. At his sentencing hearing earlier this year, a psychologist's report stated he had told the psychologist he would not allow someone in their 20s to date his children.

The report also said that while Henderson now understands what he did was illegal, he struggles with the extent to which he did something wrong.

His victim said she hopes Henderson will one day realize that what he did was indeed wrong.

"His name is out there. It's on the record. So for me, that's enough. I know for some people that wouldn't be enough, but for me that's all I needed," she said.

Henderson still faces a sexual assault charge related to another woman, who was also a teen at the time of the alleged incident between Dec. 31, 1987, and Jan. 1, 1989. He has pleaded not guilty and will appear in Nova Scotia Supreme Court on Thursday.

Charges involving a third woman were dropped earlier this year.

The victim in the case where Henderson has been sentenced said she has heard from other women in the paddling world since the charges were first laid.

Some just reached out in solidarity, something she wasn't expecting.

"It feels very good," she said. "To hear people say they're glad that I've come forward and said something, it means a lot to me."