Repeat offender Taylor Dueck remains in custody
Anotorious repeat offender whose undisclosed release and subsequent alleged victimization of a young Kelowna girl will remain in custody.
Taylor Dueck’s application for bail was denied Thursday in a Kelowna courtroom by provincial court judge Michelle Daneliuk.
“A detention order was made in relation to Taylor Dueck yesterday, so he will remain in custody until the file is concluded. His next court appearance is on March 21, for an arraignment hearing,” Damienne Darby, communications counsel with the B.C. Prosecution Service, wrote Friday in an email.
Details of a bail hearing cannot be reported.
Dueck, 29, was charged with sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, and breach of probation after an incident at a Kelowna equestrian centre in early February. He is alleged to have confronted an 11-year-old girl in a washroom.
Dueck has a history of sexual offences involving children and one involving a weapon. Although his previous releases from custody were accompanied by notifications to the public, no such warning was issued when he was most recently released and came to Kelowna.
In circumstances that have created shock and outrage among both the public and provincial politicians, Dueck was able to sign up for free horseback riding lessons that are primarily geared to children at the Kelowna equestrian centre.
The supervisor assigned to continuously monitor Dueck as per court orders is said by Premier David Eby to have sat in his car outside the centre while the incident unfolded.
“This is completely outrageous. You know, you’re a parent, you drop your kid off at a place that they’ve been a hundred times before. It would never cross your mind in a million years that there would be such a profound lack of judgement that somebody would put a repeat sexual offender, a pedophile, into that facility, and sit in a car, on the phone, and not do the one job that was supposed to be done here,” Eby said in the legislature earlier this month.
Dueck was being monitored by a contractor arranged to shadow him by Community Living B.C., a Crown corporation. Eby has promised a full investigation in the matter, with a view to holding those responsible accountable.
“It is the absolute most unbelievable string of incompetent decision-making that one could even imagine, and we will address it,” Eby said.
But the Opposition BC United Party says the government, and Eby himself as both premier and a former attorney general, bear responsibility for presiding over a legal system where such an incident could occur.
“The premier needs to take accountability for this latest catastrophic failure of his government,” BC United Leader Kevin Falcon said.
Eby’s comments on the matter ring hollow and should be considered in the context of an environment where an increasing number of people in B.C. feel unsafe because of rising crime rates, Falcon said.
“Every time one of these horrific events happen, whether its stabbings or the sexual assault of a young child, we hear all the right words,” Falcon said. “We just don’t see the action.”