Cambridge Bay outraged at probation blunders

SARA MINOGUE

For the second time, the hamlet of Cambridge Bay is wondering how their small community of 1,500 people can cope with a repeat offender who has shown little capacity for reform while in prison.

Desmond Kaosoni, 22, is now being held in remand at the Baffin Correctional Centre, awaiting trial on a series of charges related to incidents alleged to have taken place while he was on probation.

Kaosoni is accused of breaking into four houses and assaulting four women on Sept. 1, in what Cambridge Bay MLA Keith Peterson called “another rampage,” the same night that about 200 people were gathered in the community for a Take Back the Night walk to protest violence against women.

Three or four days earlier, Kaosoni had returned to Cambridge Bay from Iqaluit, where he was serving a 12-month sentence for several sexual assaults that took place in the fall of 2003. Neither the RCMP nor Kaosoni’s probation officer were notified.

Kaosoni is now charged with three counts of sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, aggravated sexual assault, breaking and entering, and breach of probation.

Peterson visited one of the victims at the nursing station a few days later, where he found her black and blue.

“The hamlet council was quite upset,” Peterson told Nunatsiaq News. “This is getting out of hand. It just keeps happening again and again.”

The first time Cambridge Bay councillors tried to deal with a violent, repeat offender was in November 2002.

The council sent a letter to Justice Beverly Browne in Iqaluit to ask that she ban David Nakashook from returning to Cambridge Bay when sentencing him on charges related to the assault of a 17-year-old girl in August of 2001. Nakashook had about 15 prior convictions for assault.

The judge refused, saying that banning Nakashook from Cambridge Bay would mean “transferring the problem from one community to another.”

Instead, she instructed Nakashook to carry a copy of the hamlet’s letter with him at all times.

This time, council again discussed asking the judge to ban Kaosoni, in the light of a recent case where the same judge barred Mikidjuk Utye from ever returning to Kimmirut without the permission of the court, after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting seven children in that community.

In the end, council decided that banning Kaosoni would be complicated, and would have little effect on future repeat offenders.

Instead, the hamlet agreed to write a letter to the minister of justice, Paul Okalik, which Peterson tabled in the legislative assembly on Nov. 17.

In that letter, Cambridge Bay Mayor Terry McCallum asks that communities be advised when violent offenders are returning to their communities, and also poses questions about the level of counselling that offenders receive while in prison.

“We’d like to see these individuals get rehabilitated back into society,” McCallum later told Nunatsiaq News. “Obviously something’s not working with the system.

Peterson posed similar questions to Okalik during question period in the legislative assembly.

In response, Okalik said he supported a National Dangerous Offender Registry that would tell communities across Canada when violent offenders are released from jail.

But that comment was somewhat off-topic, as Kaosoni was not serving federal time. He was serving a territorial sentence at the Baffin Correctional Centre, a facility that already has a procedure in place to let communities know when offenders are released, though that procedure failed in this case.

Cambridge Bay’s community corrections officer, Miali Dimitruk, says she was not warned that he was returning, even though that is the usual procedure.

Even if she had been warned, it may not have made much difference. Dimitruk is in charge of 82 people who are on probation.

On top of that, she has to write reports every two months before circuit court, and supervise RCMP officers who are acting as probation officers in Gjoa Haven and Taloyoak.

Cambridge Bay is lucky, though, as one of just eight communities that has a probation officer. Fourteen of Nunavut’s communities have social workers who act as probation officers when necessary, working with the RCMP.

Three communities, including Arctic Bay, Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, have no one to act as probation officers, and rely on probation services from the department of Justice in Pond Inlet.

Peterson is worried that the hamlet lacks the resources to deal with violent criminals, including “nine or 10 of what I would classify as dangerous offenders.”

“The concern we’ve raised is, when you arrest these fellows, do they get some sort of counselling?” Peterson said.

For now, the hamlet is trying its best to offer counselling in the community.

For the past year, the local wellness centre ran week-long workshops for women, men and youth, on suicide prevention, alcohol and drug use, anger management, self esteem, healing and grieving.

“Over the past few months our RCMP have noticed a significant drop in the number of monthly calls for assistance and in part possibly can be attributed to these wellness workshops,” McCallum said in an e-mail sent to his MLA.

In February, the hamlet will host a 28-day “live-in” alcohol and drug program, where residents can deal with their abuse problems in a comprehensive way.

McCallum asked the GN to support this “treatment at home” model.