N.W.T. lacks resources to help sex offenders: officials
Last Updated: Friday, July 3, 2009 | 5:24 PM CT
CBC News
The case of a man charged with assaulting a child at the Yellowknife library has highlighted concerns about a lack of resources to monitor and rehabilitate convicted sex offenders in the North.
Bobby Kudlak, 35, is in police custody in connection with the June 16 incident at the Yellowknife Public Library in the city's downtown.
Kudlak was on probation at the time of the assault, having served seven months of an 18-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting a girl at the local Wal-Mart store in June 2008.
Kudlak was also placed on the National Sex Offender Registry as a result of the Wal-Mart incident.
RCMP say the federal registry is little more than a list of addresses, albeit a long list for a city the size of Yellowknife.
'We don't' monitor: RCMP
"We have … many, many of them," said Sgt. Vic Steinhammer of the Yellowknife RCMP, although he didn't give specific numbers.
"We have regular meetings with parole services. We know who is in the community, who they're monitoring and who is coming out of the corrections system," he said.
As for monitoring the activities of those sex offenders, "Our resources are such that we don't," he said.
"It's not like in the lower mainland [where] they have an integrated team that will essentially watch these people."
He was referring to the Integrated Sexual Predator Observation Team (ISPOT) in the lower mainland of British Columbia, which is composed of both municipal police and RCMP officers.
Program not mandatory
There is also little in the way of rehabilitation programs for sexual offenders in the N.W.T. One program exists at the North Slave Correctional Centre in Yellowknife, but participation in it is not mandatory.
That lack of program does not go far enough when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse in Canada's North, said Lydia Bardak of the John Howard Society of the N.W.T.
"It's so pervasive in the North, it doesn't just happen," Bardak said. "It doesn't just come out of nowhere. It comes from men who have been sexually preyed upon as children. Their fathers and grandfathers and uncles taught them that, and so we have to work hard to unteach that."
Bardak said a sex offender treatment program would be "a good start." At the same time, she cited "the total absence of healing programs, trauma treatment programs, long-term after care and support when somebody is released."
Should Kudlak be convicted in the library incident, the Crown says it will review his past convictions and determine whether to make a dangerous offender application.
He is slated to make his first court appearance on July 14.
