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Quentin Allan Sumner

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“All females are at risk,” read the December alert warning Winnipeggers that Quentin Sumner was at large. As far back as 2005, Sumner was already enough of a violent rapist to earn the designation of “Long-Term Offender.” However, this had little effect in stopping him from confining, choking and sexually assaulting another victim only two years later. He was let out of jail in October, 2018 and had escaped his halfway house within two months. “Sumner is assessed as a high risk to re-offend both sexually and violently,” read the subsequent public warning.

Richard Darren Rondeau

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The Crown attorney who had Rondeau convicted in 2013 said he displayed a “shocking level of depravity.” In 2011, Rondeau had already been on probation when he kidnapped and violently sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl four times in one morning as he dragged her around Winnipeg. Rondeau’s attacks were captured in a series of 911 calls made by the victim. “It’s an open line, sounds like a female weeping or crying,” said a 911 operator over one call. While prosecutors had sought a 10-year sentence, Rondeau was in a Vancouver halfway house by 2018, from which he escaped in May. For the two days police were hunting him down, Vancouverites had to be alerted that he was at large. “He has been assessed by Corrections Canada as a high risk to re-offend,” read a police statement.

Brian Solberg

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In May, Vancouver’s women and teenage girls were warned they were at risk of “significant harm” when Solberg decided to take up residence in their city. Solberg has spent 21 of his 67 years in jail for violent sex crimes, including a vicious 1993 sex attack on a B.C. woman. He hasn’t been convicted of a sex crime since, but that’s partially because he’s such a high risk to reoffend that police agencies and neighbourhoods have been forced to keep a close eye on him wherever he moves. When a rented a Regina apartment in 2006, other women in the building were forced to alter their behaviour to accommodate their new neighbour. “To be perfectly frank, we’re scared when we leave here, we’re scared to come home when it’s dark,” a single mother told Postmedia at the time. In 2016, he was arrested for secretly starting a relationship with a woman and taking medication to increase sexual function.