By Jean Matheson
Correspondent
After a tearful teenage girl testified about sexual trysts with her basketball coach in his Delavan apartment, she heard the judge sentence the man to 10 years in prison.
Shane S. McKinley, 28, had pleaded guilty in March to repeated sexual assault of a child, an offense carrying a possible 25 years in prison.
The girl testified at the May 9 sentencing hearing before Walworth County Circuit Judge John Race that she had just turned 15 when the affair with McKinley began in late 2010. She said she met McKinley when he became her basketball coach at Williams Bay High School and that during the next nine months she had sexual intercourse with him more than 20 times at his apartment in Delavan.
“I really thought we could live this fantasy life that he said we could,” the girl, now 17, said. But after word leaked out among her friends that the “secret boyfriend” she talked about was McKinley, authorities were alerted.
People began calling her names, she said, and she dropped out of school.
“Now I’m scarred by all this,” she told the judge.
The girl’s mother, sobbing and visibly shaking, addressed McKinley in the courtroom.
“Men don’t have sex with girls,” she said. “You’ve stolen so much from her. You need to pay a huge penalty.”
The girl’s father testified he had sat many nights outside her bedroom door so she “couldn’t go out and commit suicide.”
The courtroom was packed with friends and family of the girl and supporters and family of McKinley, who was fired from his part-time coaching job and now lists an address in Georgetown, Texas, where his parents live. He was taken into custody at the end of the sentencing. Race also ordered him to spend five years on extended supervision when he is released from prison.
Defense attorney James Koepke said his client was immature and exercised poor judgment, but had not forced the girl to have sex. He said McKinley could receive treatment while serving on probation.
Koepke cited testimony by a forensic psychologist who interviewed McKinley and concluded he was a man attracted to adolescent girls but was not “sexually deviant” and had a “low to moderately low” risk of reoffending.
Deputy District Attorney Joshua Grube, however, said McKinley had used manipulation in efforts to seduce at least two other girls.
“Who needs force when you’re the cool coach?” he asked.
“This is a parent’s worst nightmare,” Grube told the judge. “It might be years before we know the final impact of all this,” he said, calling for a “lengthy prison term.”
Five counts of possessing child pornography against McKinley were dismissed as part of a plea agreement. Delavan police said they found naked photographs of the girl in McKinley’s apartment that he had taken with his cell phone.
