ST. LOUIS — More than a decade of abuse by a former youth hockey coach has left two boys grappling with trauma and families torn apart by betrayal, victims testified in court on Tuesday.
James R. Lambert, of Lake Saint Louis, inspired one boy to dream of playing hockey in the NHL. But beginning when the boy was 6 years old, the training sessions and practices morphed into opportunities for abuse, the victim said in a statement read by prosecutors.
“James turned my dreams into a nightmare,” the statement said.
Lambert was sentenced Tuesday to 75 years in federal prison on five felony charges. He sobbed as he apologized to his victims and their families.
���I deserve every bit of suffering that awaits me,” he said.
Lambert worked as an assistant hockey coach for Lindenwood University and coached with St. Peters Hockey and Chesterfield Hockey Association youth travel clubs before being arrested last year.
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One of his victims came forward last year to report repeated abuse by Lambert between 2007 and 2018. He said he suspected Lambert was abusing another younger boy and wanted to report it.
Investigators found hundreds of images of abuse of the second boy and dozens of images of the first. They also found hundreds of files containing child sexual abuse material he had found online.
Police learned Lambert repeatedly abused the first victim when he took him to other states and even overseas for hockey games and practices. Lambert threatened the boy and coerced him into staying silent.
Between March 2020 and September 2021, Lambert abused his second victim — who was 6 or 7 years old — in the bathroom of the Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights.
“It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the level of evil,” the second victim’s father said Tuesday in court. “Only the sickest, darkest individuals would hurt a child.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson said Lambert abused children for all of his adult life and manipulated them into silence.
He berated the oldest victim and exercised control over his life, all while pretending to care about his future in hockey, the victim wrote in an impact statement.
“That was the tool of his trade,” Anderson said. “It wasn’t about truly trying to build the dreams of a child.”
The first victim’s mother spoke about how her son suffered in the wake of the abuse. He has been suicidal and developed a gambling addiction, she said.
Prosecutors asked for Lambert to be sentenced to 50 years in prison as part of a plea agreement. Anderson said they wanted to spare the victims from having to endure a trial and potential subsequent appeals, and the long term could be a de facto life sentence for a man in his 40s.
Lambert’s attorney, however, asked for a 35-year sentence. He said his client had shown extreme remorse and wanted to participate in treatment while in prison.
Lambert said he understood the depth and scope of his abuse was “staggering” and did not ask for forgiveness in a statement to the judge.
Judge Pitlyk ultimately said the length and brutality of his crimes merited a stiff punishment — more, even, than what prosecutors sought.
“You have acknowledged for yourself the devastation you have wrought,” she said.
Lambert is also facing charges for the same abuse in St. Louis and St. Charles counties. Those cases are still pending.
View life in St. Louis through the Post-Dispatch photographers' lenses. Edited by Jenna Jones.