In a second video posting made by the citizens who baited Brendan Phelps with the opportunity to have sex with a sixteen year old boy, Phelps admits his actions and says he will seek help so that it will not happen again.
That video has since been removed by the posters for an unexplained reason.
In the video however, the men involved did contact Police, and the confrontation video has been turned over to investigators in Minnesota.
Clearly in the video all parties were in the parking lot of a hotel. The hotel where Phelps had rented a room for the stated purpose of having sex with a minor sixteen years of age.
After yesterdays revelations, the junior hockey coaching circuit is in a state of absolute shock. Emails and phone calls from across North America have been coming in steadily.
Parents have asked why USA Hockey and the NAHL allowed him to coach. The answer to that is simple. You don’t know who a child sexual predator is until their caught, and this has to be the first time Brendan Phelps has been caught or it would have come out in a Safe Sport check.
Now that it has happened, Brendan Phelps can never be allowed to coach again. The Minnesota Wilderness have by all accounts been shocked by these actions, and will surely remove Phelps from their organization.
As of 4:00 pm yesterday, Phelps has been removed from the Wilderness team website.
No one cares if Brendan Phelps is homosexual. What is clear from the video yesterday though is that he used an assumed name to attempt to meet a 16 year old boy. Using an assumed name in itself points to the fact that Phelps either knew he was doing something inappropriate, or that he knew if anyone found out his secret that it could effect his ability to coach.
Being in a position of trust with young men, many of them who need adult guidance concerning on and off ice issues, a level of transparency is required. Particularly in todays sexually charged debate taking place in all sports, when so many coaches are being accused of using their positions to take advantage of athletes sexually.
While an incident like this raises many questions, the one question that should be asked is why didn’t Brendan Phelps just let friends and family know his sexual orientation? Why was he in the closet? Why put himself in a position like this?
How did the people who made this video get so much background information on Phelps? Looking at their other video’s its clear they are not doing this kind of “sting” operation regularly? Did they know something or know about Phelps before? Lots of unanswered questions, and no one is talking.
Legally speaking though, nothing may happen in Minnesota because the age of consent is 16 years of age. Whether that will impact Phelps use of a computer to lure a minor under a false identity is unknown. And it is unknown where Phelps was when making these contacts, so it may be a criminal act if he were in another jurisdiction.
That said, unless charges are brought, it is unlikely that Phelps will be kept out of hockey in the future. TJHN will update this story as it develops.
