‘Pretty protective’ mother horrified to have unwittingly trusted convicted child sex offender who changed his name

Lisa is the first to admit she’s “a pretty protective” parent, a byproduct of decades working in social services with vulnerable, at-risk youth.

She vets her children’s friends’ parents, doesn’t allow her kids to go on sleepovers and closely monitors their electronic devices.

But now she’s living every parent’s worst nightmare: a man she came to trust and allowed to spend time with her preteen son is a convicted child sex offender — a fact hidden from her because he had changed his name.

“I’ve done so much training to identify grooming behaviour and predatory behaviour and the signs of abuse in children and vulnerable people and I had more access and tools than most to do searches on people and I feel like a complete failure,” said Lisa, not her real name, her voice catching as she tried to hold back tears.

She said the man and her son connected through a local sports community about five years ago when the boy was 12. The man frequently helped Lisa with home repairs, becoming so trusted she provided him a key to her house.

That man Lisa knew as Ryan Knight was arrested in July and charged with one count each of making and possessing child pornography, sexual interference and aggravated sexual assault for offences alleged to have occurred between Aug. 1, 2024, and March 1, 2025.

Knight, 44, was born Ryan Gabourie and under that name was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2005 for sexually molesting five young boys after he entered their homes through unlocked windows and doors.

Gabourie served his entire sentence in custody and another three years after he repeatedly breached conditions of his release, including contacting a known sex offender.

“I’ve done so much training to identify grooming behaviour and predatory behaviour and the signs of abuse in children and vulnerable people… I feel like a complete failure.”

A probation officer’s report prepared in January 2014 quoted Gabourie as saying: “The only friends I have are sex offenders.”

A review of the January 2024 edition of the Manitoba Gazette, the province’s official vehicle for publishing name changes and other public notices, confirms Gabourie changed his name to Ryan James Knight in 2021.

News of Knight’s arrest comes more than a year after Bill 23, the province’s Change of Name Amendment Act (2) received royal assent. The amendment, which would prevent convicted sex offenders from changing their names, has yet to go into effect.

“Our department is working hard to develop the regulations required to proclaim the amendments passed through Bill 23… and put the changes into effect,” Public Service Deliveries Minister Mintu Sandhu said in an email Tuesday. “Once consultations are complete, we intend to have a spring 2026 proclamation.”

Lisa said she was horrified that Gabourie/Knight, who was deemed a high risk to reoffend and was the subject of a community notification upon his release from custody in 2014, could be allowed to change his name.

“As a member of our community who is tasked with protecting not only my own children but other children and vulnerable people in the community, it’s just horrifying to me, because it feels so preventable.”

She said other parents in the sport community told her Knight was a “decent guy… a reliable guy,” so when he approached her in 2021 about letting her son work with him on construction jobs, she thought it would be a “good opportunity.”

“That’s how he came into our lives,” she said.

Lisa said “alarm bells” went off about a year later when, on more than one occasion, her son was out late with Knight and she could not track her son’s location on his cellphone. On one occasion, the boy told Lisa they had stopped at Knight’s home after work to have dinner and watched Game of Thrones. On another, Knight and the boy went to see a movie, telling Lisa it would be for the early show. Instead, the two went to a late show, after which the boy called Lisa to say Knight wanted to know if he could sleep over.

“I said absolutely not,” Lisa said. “Ryan dropped him off that evening and I said: ‘That’s not appropriate, Ryan.’”

Knight apologized, saying he grew up in care, would never hurt anyone and sometimes didn’t read social cues appropriately, Lisa said.

“I figured OK, he’s pretty adamant about it,” she said. “I said: ‘I don’t really know who you are,’ and he showed me his driver’s licence. At this time, he thought I was a social worker and he said ‘you can look me up.’”

“As a member of our community who is tasked with protecting not only my own children but other children… it’s just horrifying to me, because it feels so preventable.”

Lisa said she checked court records for Knight’s name and found nothing that alarmed her.

Lisa said Knight pushed her to relax parental controls on her son’s phone and allow him to use Snapchat, arguing doing so would make it easier for him to contact the boy when needed.

“I did eventually give in,” she said. “He’s a good kid and he was behaving. I thought ‘OK, maybe I am being too crazy here.’”

In the winter of 2023, following an overnight sporting trip out of town, Lisa’s son’s personality changed dramatically, she said.

“He really became quite depressed and angry,” said Lisa, who at the time attributed the changes in her son to her separation from his father.

In 2024, her son quit the sport and stopped showing up for work with Knight.

“That’s when I really pressed him to talk to me and he wouldn’t talk to me at all,” Lisa said. “I started having suspicions that maybe something had happened to him. He said even if something did, he wouldn’t (talk to me).”

Lisa said Knight “flipped out” when he learned last year that she had been dating a police officer and she started distancing herself from him.

Lisa said she learned from another sport parent last month Knight had been arrested in July for sex crimes against children. She said she and her son have both been interviewed by police. Her son has not claimed to have been abused by Knight.

Criminals who sexually abuse children are in a different category than other offenders seeking to legally change their name, said Monique St. Germain, general counsel for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

“Certainly there will be those who, from a basic criminal justice perspective, will say: ‘Well, once somebody has paid their debt to society and done their time, then they are entitled to move on with their life,’” St. Germain said.

“We can see that in certain kinds of circumstances and certain kinds of offences… but there is a different threshold when we are talking about children and things that we must do to protect them.”

There is only so much a parent can do to protect their children from someone intent to do them harm, St. Germain said.

“Not a lot of people are reading the Manitoba Gazette on the weekend,” she said. “You’re not going to find information if you don’t know that’s where you need to look.

“From a parental point of view listen to your gut, if something doesn’t feel right. At the same time we don’t want to turn into a society where we are suspicious of everybody.”

“From a parental point of view listen to your gut, if something doesn’t feel right. At the same time we don’t want to turn into a society where we are suspicious of everybody.”

A Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson confirmed Knight’s arrest, but provided no details of the allegations against him.

“As (with) any incident involving the sexual abuse of children, the privacy of the survivors is of utmost importance when dealing with the release of information,” Const. Claude Chancy said in an email message Tuesday.

“Although not under our purview, it does appear that by our records that Knight changed his name from Gabourie in 2021,” Chancy said. “This is a multifaceted ongoing investigation and we are anticipating issuing a news release in the near future regarding his latest arrest.”

Knight remains in custody. The allegations against him have not been proven in court and he is considered innocent.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

— With files from Carol Sanders