Trial against former Edmonton athletics coach continues

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Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find disturbing.

A third former athlete has testified in an Edmonton court about an incident in which he was allegedly sexually harassed by his former coach.

The trial of Thomas Kenneth Porter began its third day on Wednesday with testimony from a 62-year-old teacher who claims the former track coach sexually touched him at a party in the late 1970s.

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Porter, 75, faces 14 charges relating to five former athletes. He is alleged to have sexually abused them more than 40 years ago during his time as a coach in Edmonton. Porter has pleaded not guilty.

Two of the men have already testified, including Chris Dallin, who claims Porter performed oral sex on him while he slept before a track and field competition in Saskatoon.

The name of the plaintiff who testified Wednesday is covered by a publication ban. He said he was in his mid-teens when he and several other young athletes attended a party at Porter’s apartment south of the High Level Bridge.

“At one point, Ken offered to give us all… ‘rubs down.’ Basically a massage,” he recalled. “We always got them at the end of training sessions, on our legs.”

Normally he looked forward to the massages. But this time it was different.

The former sprinter claimed that Porter suggested the boys take turns getting massages in a private room. He also suggested they put on thongs he provided them to prevent baby powder from getting on their underwear, the man claimed.

He said this happened after Porter showed the boys porn magazines he had purchased in Europe.

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“It seemed a little strange to me,” said the complainant. But he complied because he thought his coach knew best.

He claims that Porter touched his buttocks sexually several times during the massage. He said he had no doubt that the touching was intentional.

The complainant stated that he spoke to another party guest about the incident on the way home.

Porter also invited him and a friend to see “The Tin Drum,” a 1979 German film that is banned in some countries because of its sexual content involving children, he claimed.

Porter coached sprinters at the Edmonton Olympic Track and Field Club in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He later travelled to Australia, where he held a position at the Commonwealth Games. He now lives in Ottawa, where he managed the Ottawa Lions Track Club until an Athletics Canada investigation led to his dismissal.

Solomon Friedman, Porter’s attorney, spent Wednesday afternoon cross-examining the third plaintiff. Friedman pointed out that in previous statements to investigators, the alleged victim said Porter touched him “almost above” his anal area, rather than touching him directly there.

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The plaintiff accused the attorney of hair-splitting and claimed that Porter had actually touched the body part directly.

Although he does not believe that the experience left him with a lasting trauma like it did with other plaintiffs, the memory of it still lingers.

“When I was contacted (by investigators) and as a father – and I’m a teacher – I thought about the incident again, I was outraged,” he said. “That this happened to me, that someone I trusted could take advantage of me.”

The trial is being conducted without a jury by Judge Nicholas Devlin at the Court of King’s Bench and is scheduled to last until 28 June.

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