Victims find solace as former basketball coach Dwayne Yuen sentenced

After spending nearly two decades sexually abusing girls in his care, former Punahou and youth basketball coach Dwayne Yuen will be behind bars until 2059.

Yuen pled guilty in 2024 to 12 counts of sex trafficking, producing and possessing child pornography and sexual coercion of minors. On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Seabright sentenced him on six of those charges to 405 months in prison, a term about 33.75 years in length.

“I realize this might be a life sentence,” Seabright said. “But it’s the right one.”

Seabright was uncompromising in his description of Yuen, calling him “a predator with a whistle” and casting doubt on any possibility of the man having the capacity to change his ways.

“I don’t think there’s been any defendant before me who I trust less [than you],” Seabright told Yuen, adding that he believes that if Yuen were set free today, he would attempt to prey on girls and young women again tomorrow.

Seabright’s contemptuous verdict came after several emotional firsthand accounts of Yuen’s abuse. Three of his victims — at least ten victims were anonymously identified in court documents — submitted letters to the court that were read aloud by prosecuting attorney Rebecca Perlmutter.

A fourth victim, former Punahou and University of Hawai‘i women's basketball standout Shawna-Lei Kuehu, spoke in person. Although she chose to stay anonymous in the courtroom, she spoke to a crowd of local media following the sentencing.

“This man is a f***ing monster,” she told Seabright. “A monster who preys on the innocence of a child.”

Kuehu described how she initially met Yuen on a high school campus tour and how the coach inveigled his way into her family’s trust in order to target her. She said he gained her trust, gave her rides home and to school, plied her with gifts and became friendly with her family before subjecting her to abuse.

“He learned all the things that mattered to me, then held them hostage,” she said.

Kuehu went into graphic detail about Yuen’s sexual abuses and said that he ensured her silence through threats and blackmail.

Even when victims had escaped Yuen’s physical abuse, he continued to torment them with hundreds of texts and phone calls a day, many explicitly sexual in nature, constantly switching numbers and messaging services to circumvent blocks. Victims wrote about being monitored, with associates of Yuen keeping tabs on them, and Yuen himself spoofing numbers of victims’ close friends and family.

Other victims wrote about how Yuen’s abuse has continued to traumatize them for years afterward. One wrote that she couldn’t play basketball in college without needing to vomit beforehand, and another that she can no longer view any men who coach women’s basketball without suspicion.

“The charm, the gifts, the attention, the promises,” Perlmutter read from one letter. “It was not about affection, it was about power. The power to prey on the vulnerable.”

The testifiers all recommended strong sentences, and Perlmutter requested that Seabright go above and beyond the recommendations of a pre-sentencing report that advised between 27 and 33 years in prison. Perlmutter advocated for a 40-year sentence, saying that Yuen’s 20-year pattern of repeated abuse makes clear his high risk for recidivism if set free.

As evidence of his character, Perlmutter quoted Yuen’s own words to one of his victims in 2006: “You really think you can keep me from getting what I want?”

On the other hand, Yuen’s attorney Alen Kaneshiro requested a 15-year sentence, saying that a psychological evaluation of Yuen had indicated that he has an unknown neurological disorder that has left him with reduced emotional maturity.

Kaneshiro said Yuen on some level “conceived of himself and his players as peers,” and that he “texted [his victims] as a scorned teenage boy would.”

Kaneshiro also asked Seabright to consider Yuen’s non-abusive acts. For example, he said Yuen was an elementary school teacher, with apparently no reports of abuse.

But Kaneshiro also argued that another reason for leniency was Yuen’s willingness to “volunteer so much time coaching youth basketball,” an argument which drew hisses and murmurs from the gallery.

Yuen himself addressed the court and said he takes full responsibility for his actions.

“I was entrusted with a position of responsibility,” Yuen said. “I misused my position and people were hurt.”

Seabright later said he found Yuen’s statement “shallow” and “not truly remorseful.”

The judge also scoffed at Yuen’s defense that he has been in therapy between 2006 and 2021.

“It obviously didn’t work,” Seabright said. “I think it says a lot about your future dangerousness. I don’t think you can help yourself.”

Ultimately, Seabright said that while criminal sentences should take into account rehabilitation, another goal of sentencing is simple incapacitation: preventing a criminal from committing crimes again.

While Seabright saved his harshest words for Yuen, he noted that the system failed his victims, too. Punahou fired Yuen for sexual misconduct in 2004, and two Punahou girls’ basketball team members obtained restraining orders against him in 2006, but the state Department of Education still hired him in 2007.

Following the sentencing, the victims who chose to attend in person gathered together and debriefed, taking turns hugging each other. Some were in tears.

"The years that we've been silenced and then with the years that he got with sentencing, yeah," said Kuehu when asked if she was satisfied with the length of Yuen's incarceration.

Although she was initially apprehensive about speaking in person on Thursday, Kuehu ultimately felt empowerment while delivering her words.

"I hesitated. I was very anxious about it, but when I got up there and finally found my voice and with the strong women and men that were behind this case, it was empowering," she said. "As I went through it, I definitely felt and found the strength to be able to continue.

"We're gonna go ahead and continue our lives and continue to empower youth and continue to protect those innocent, making sure we continue to be the change that we want to see."

The healing process has not been a linear one for victims like Keuhu, but she says Thursday's sentencing was "definitely a win in that healing process."

"But we just got to take it day by day," she said, "and this is a part of that healing process, and hopefully we can close the chapter and continue on and continue to be strong and go on with our lives from now, knowing that this chapter is closing, that it's behind us."