RCMP warns CamBay about release of sex offender

The RCMP has issued a public warning about Desmond Kaosoni, a convicted sex offender, who is set to return to his home community next week. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RCMP)

Cambridge Bay RCMP issued a public warning April 20 about the pending release of convicted sex offender Desmond Kaosoni to Cambridge Bay.

“The RCMP are issuing this warning after careful consideration of all related issues including privacy concerns. RCMP believe this warning to be in the interest of the public as Kaosoni is considered a high risk to reoffend. The public is encouraged to take precautionary measures at all times,” says an April 20 news release.

Kaosoni, 27, will be released from Warkworth Institution in Ontario on April 29, after serving the full five years of his sentence.

“It is believed that Kaosoni will return to Cambridge Bay to reside,” the news release says.

The RCMP wants to see a peace bond in place, which would require Koasoni to abide by several conditions. The application for this peace bond was signed in court in Cambridge Bay on April 20.

Kaosoni was convicted of four violent, sexual assaults that took place in Cambridge Bay on Sept. 30, 2004.

He was subsequently convicted on all four counts on May 5, 2005 at the Nunavut Court of Justice and sentenced to five years in jail.

Kaosoni broke into four houses and assaulted four victims on Sept. 1, 2004 in what Cambridge Bay MLA Keith Peterson then called “another rampage.”

Three or four days earlier, Kaosoni had returned to Cambridge Bay from Iqaluit, where he had served a 12-month sentence for several sexual assaults that took place in December, 2003.

A woman who narrowly escaped Kaosoni by running out barefoot into the snow— after he entered her house, pinned her down on her couch with a butcher knife and begged her for sex— told Nunatsiaq News last year that she worried about Kaosoni’s return because “he’s sick.”

After Kaosoni’s second wave of attacks in 2004, the hamlet council discussed asking a judge to ban Kaosoni, but decided that banning Kaosoni from the community would be complicated and would have little effect on future repeat offenders.

Instead, the hamlet agreed to write a letter to Paul Okalik, who was the minister of justice at the time, which Peterson tabled in the legislative assembly.

In that letter, Terry McCallum, then the mayor of Cambridge Bay, said communities should be advised when violent offenders are returning to their communities.