Robert T. Frechette - Repeat Sex Offender - Can't follow rules

Robert T. Frechette - released from prison in 2007 only to be jailed a couple of months later for violating key public safety restrictions imposed on his freedom -- has been sent back to prison again for essentially the same violation.

Robert T. Frechette was given credit for 161 days of pretrial custody by Justice Paul Megginson and sentenced to a further two years behind bars after he pleaded guilty to violating two different orders that forbade him from drinking.

Frechette, who's deaf and was assisted by a sign language interpreter, listened to the sentence without showing any emotion.

"I accept what's happening," he told the judge in sign. "I just want to move on."

Frechette first appeared in court in Kingston in the summer of 2007 when he was about to be released after serving every day of a 9 1 /2-year sentence for a sexual assault in Belleville. At the time, it was his sixth sex crime conviction in a criminal record dating back 20 years.

Frechette served every day of that sentence, however, and would have been released into the community without any supervision had Kingston Police not applied to the court for a special public safety peace bond.

The one-year order was granted by Justice Judith Beaman after she was satisfied that police had grounds for fearing that Frechette would commit a serious personal injury offence. unless they were given some means of controlling him.

In 1997, he tailed his last victim from a Belleville bar, grabbed her from behind, knocked her to the ground and told her "you're mine" as he began to sexually assault her.

Six years before that, in 1991, Frechette attacked a woman in Ottawa, hitting her in the head with a shovel before sexually assaulting her in the rooming house where she lived. He was sentenced to 4 1 /2 years in federal custody for that crime.

Eleven years earlier, he received a three-year sentence for the attempted rape of a woman in Toronto. He pulled her to the ground and attempted to tear off her underwear. He fled when she screamed, but was subsequently caught. And prior to that, he served one year for two indecent assaults he commited in 1977 and 18 months for being unlawfully in someone's home.

Alcohol was identified by the National Parole Board as a trigger to Frechette's crimes. Beaman consequently forbade him from purchasing or consuming it, banned him from bars and imposed an 11 p. m. curfew on him.

"25% of all sex offenders re-offend within 15 years"
.........Sarah Tofte