New charges for convicted sex offender

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This article was published 18/10/2022 (1135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A convicted sex offender who has been in and out of custody the past two-plus decades is facing new charges.

Winnipeg Police Service child abuse investigators were first warned a man had made the acquaintance of two at-risk girls in August, police said Tuesday.

One of the teens reported going to a park in the Centennial neighbourhood, where a man met her and offered her liquor if she kissed him. When she declined, police said, he grabbed her and tried to kiss her. She fled and wasn’t physically hurt.

The Manitoba integrated high-risk sex offender unit, a joint task force of RCMP and city officers, arrested Luigi Deangelis, 56, on Oct. 17.

He was charged with sexual assault, sexual interference and obtaining sexual services from a person under 18. He’s been detained.

Deangelis was convicted in 1996 for stalking and harassing over a dozen young women, as well as taunting 911 operators by telling them he was going to rape someone.

The public was most recently warned about Deangelis in August 2014, when he was released from Headingley Correctional Centre after serving 14 months for breaching the terms of a long-term supervision order.

At the time, city police and the Mounties said all adult women were at risk of sexual violence.

Monique St. Germain, general counsel for the Winnipeg-based Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said public warnings are the justice system’s last resort.

“At the time at which a high-risk sex offender notification is being put out, that’s the stage at which all the other protections have failed or ended,” she said Tuesday.

“The sentence has been imposed, the conditions have been put in place for the person in the community, and there’s really nothing left other than to warn everybody to be careful… By the time we reach that stage, if that’s where we’re at, we’ve not done a great job.”

Once offenders have served time federally, where they may have taken part in rehabilitation programming, and are paroled, the system is limited in the conditions it can impose, St. Germain said.

“That’s in part because the thinking is once someone’s served their sentence, they’ve paid their debt to society and it’s all done. But we have certain people who… might have paid their debt but the risk is still there,” the lawyer said.

“As a society, we need to figure out how to manage that risk in a way that’s better than simply warning people to be careful, because that is not working all of the time.”

Deangelis pleaded guilty in June 1996 to 10 counts of criminal harassment, nine counts of making indecent phone calls, and one count each of committing an indecent act and possessing a prohibited weapon (pepper spray). He was sentenced to two years in jail and three years of probation.

City police had arrested Deangelis in October 1995. His pattern was mostly to follow potential victims home from a public place, then find their phone numbers and call them with threats, the Free Press reported at the time.

In August 1999, Deangelis was arrested for five sex attacks. Winnipeg police faced criticism at the time for failing to release a composite sketch of the suspect while he was at large.

Deangelis was convicted for three counts of sexual assault, breaking and entering, and possessing a weapon in 2003 in connection to the 1999 offences.

He was sentenced to seven years in prison and the courts deemed him a long-term offender. That designation meant he was to be subject to community supervision for eight years following his release.

Deangelis violated conditions of his supervision order in 2009, 2012 and 2013, which, in addition to lengthy jail sentences, extended the supervision order until 2016, court records show.

In 2016, with the long-term supervision order coming to an end, prosecutors filed a motion to have Deangelis sign a section 810 peace bond that would mimic many of the same conditions of the long-term supervision order, including requirements he participate in sex offender treatment and report all intimate relationships to authorities.

Deangelis ultimately agreed to an eight-month peace bond, beginning April 6, 2017, and expiring Dec. 15, 2017.

It does not appear Deangelis was bound by any court conditions at the time of his most recent arrest.

— with files from Dean Pritchard

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera