Nunavut court orders repeat sex offender to stay away from CamBay woman

Desmond Kaosoni, the convicted sex offender, in 2010, when RCMP issued a warning about him. He now looks older and does not wear a mustache. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RCMP)

CAMBRIDGE BAY—Desmond Kaosoni, a Cambridge Bay man with a record for multiple violent sexual assaults, was back in court Sept. 19 in his western Nunavut hometown.

A Cambridge Bay woman who narrowly escaped Kaosoni by running out barefoot into the snow in December 2003—after he entered her house, pinned her down on her couch with a butcher knife and begged her for sex—asked for a peace bond so that Kaosoni can’t come near her or her house.

Justice Sue Cooper of the Nunavut court agreed.

Kaosoni will now have to keep away from the woman and not venture closer than 20 metres from her house.

The woman had asked for the peace bond under Sec. 810.1 of the Criminal Code, which says “an information may be laid before a justice by or on behalf of any person who fears on reasonable grounds that another person will cause personal injury to him or her or to his or her spouse or common-law partner or child or will damage his or her property; or will commit an offence.”

Kaosoni, now 33, was released from Warkworth Institution in Ontario in April 2010, after serving the full five years of a prison sentence imposed for convictions on four violent sexual assaults that took place in Cambridge Bay in September 2004.

Shortly before those incidents, Kaosoni had returned to Cambridge Bay from Iqaluit, where he had served a 12-month sentence for other sexual assaults committed in 2003.

In 2004, Cambridge Bay’s hamlet council had even discussed asking a judge to ban Kaosoni from returning to the community, but decided that banning Kaosoni would be too complicated and would have little effect on future repeat offenders.

In April 2010, the RCMP put out a public warning about Kaosoni shortly before his return to Cambridge Bay.

“RCMP believe this warning to be in the interest of the public as Kaosoni is considered a high risk to re-offend. The public is encouraged to take precautionary measures at all times,” said the release.

Later in 2010 Kaosoni was back the North Slave Correctional Centre in Yellowknife following his arrest in Cambridge Bay for breaking the conditions of a peace bond by consuming alcohol.

Now he’s back living in the community of about 1,700, looking older, and without the mustache he wore in 2010 in a photo handed out by the RCMP.