A 52-year-old former girls basketball coach who admitted to raping, sex trafficking and grooming some of his players should spend the next 40 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Dwayne Yuen, a Honolulu man who coached at Punahou and was involved with girls basketball in
Hawaii for 20 years, will be sentenced today before Senior U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright.

“Dwayne Yuen is a 52 year-old predator. He has exploited and tormented children in Hawaii for almost twenty years. From around 2003, Yuen began coaching girls’ basketball in a wide range of settings — both middle school and high school, private and public schools, and private club teams — with youth from Oahu and the Big Island,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca A. Perl­mutter in a sentencing memo filed Aug. 8. “Since that time, his systematic harassment campaigns and abuse of many athletes that he coached were persistent, deeply traumatic, and life changing for his victims. Yuen was relentless despite all obstacles.”

Yuen admitted guilt
Dec. 12 in connection with a dozen federal offenses related to sexually abusing young girls.

Yuen admitted guilt to federal crimes that involved three minor victims, with Yuen pleading guilty to sex trafficking Minor Victim 1 in 2005 and 2006; coercing and enticing Minor Victim 2 to engage in sexual activity in 2006; and producing, receiving and possessing child pornography involving Minor Victim 3 between 2020 and 2023.

Yuen also admitted to harassing victims identified as Victims 4 through 10 through anonymous and obscene communications from 2021 to 2023.

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The victims were players on the basketball teams Yuen coached, with Victims 4 through 9 being around 18 years old at the time of the harassment and Victim 10 being 17 years old.

He also will be sentenced on a Nov. 11 indictment charging him with five counts of harassing telephone communications and one count of making obscene and harassing telephone communications.

Yuen did not stop raping young girls after multiple minor victims obtained restraining orders against him in 2006, according to Perlmutter’s memo.

Five former Punahou
student-athletes sued Yuen, their former coach, in April 2020 accusing him of sexual misconduct and assault. It did little to slow Yuen’s pursuit of young girls to victimize, according to federal prosecutors.

In that civil action,
Shawna-Lei Kuehu, a Punahou School basketball player, sued Yuen and Punahou alleging sexual
assault and abuse.

Kuehu, a 2008 graduate, was among several women who accused Yuen of rape while at Punahou, and alleged the school did nothing to prevent it.

Mixed martial arts champion Ilima-Lei Macfarlane, her sister Mahina Macfarlane Souza and an anonymous 2007 graduate filed civil lawsuits against Yuen in 2020, accusing him and the school of abuse, assault and negligence.

Kuehu’s lawsuit describes Yuen as a predator who assaulted her during her freshman and sophomore years, with the abuse stopping only when her mother secured a restraining order. Punahou took no action, Kuehu alleged.

In 2021 the lawsuit was settled between Punahou and the former students for an undisclosed amount of money.

Yuen “remained undeterred in continuing to
contact and solicit sexual conduct with minors and other former players.”

“Until this prosecution, Yuen behaved as if he was untouchable. His conduct stopped only because he was arrested and detained in February 2023,” wrote Perlmutter.

The crimes committed against Lei Macfarlane were not charged, but she wrote a letter Aug. 8 to Seabright’s court ahead of Yuen’s sentencing. Lei Macfarlane wrote that she would not “recount the details of what Dwayne Yuen did to me and so many others — because this statement is not for him.”

“This statement is for the little girls who grew up and became strong, powerful women. For those who found their voice, who refused to be silenced, and who waited twenty long years for this moment — for justice,” wrote Lei
MacFarlane.

She met Yuen when she was in the sixth grade and he was in his 20s coaching Lei Macfarlane’s old sister.

“Loud. Obnoxious. Charismatic to some, but always calculating. He preyed on the vulnerable — the girls on financial aid, the ones who couldn’t always afford lunch, rides, or shoes. He had a pattern, a blueprint, and he knew exactly what he was doing,” she wrote to Seabright. “Typically, this is the part of a victim impact statement where we’re expected to describe how the defendant’s actions have negatively affected our lives — emotionally, mentally, financially. And yes, there has been pain. There has been deep mistrust in men, in coaches, in institutions that were supposed to protect us. But I will not give Dwayne the power of that focus. Instead, I want to speak about what I’ve built in spite of him.”

Lei Macfarlane dedicated her life to working with survivors, to “empowering women and girls who have also experienced violation, betrayal, and abuse.”