Former Kelowna pimp is now living in a halfway house

Photo: RCMP

Simon Rypiak

A man who was convicted in 2019 of running a prostitution ring in Kelowna was released on day parole last September, despite displaying “misogynistic and negative attitudes towards women” and minimizing his responsibility for his crimes during his parole hearing.

While he was initially facing 14 charges following his 2016 arrest, Simon Rypiak took a plea deal with the Crown and pleaded guilty to four counts of procuring a person to provide sexual services and one count of benefitting from sexual services. He was sentenced to four years in jail in April 2019.

But Rypiak has been out of jail for months now, living in a halfway house since he was granted day parole last September. Day parole allows him to participate in community-based activities under a number of conditions, but he must return to the halfway house every night.

In his parole hearing, Rypiak requested a release to B.C.'s Interior, but the Parole Board denied this, as he committed his crimes in and around Kelowna. It's unclear where the halfway house that Rypiak has been living in is located, but he had also expressed the desire to move to a different province.

Rypiak had sought full parole, but the Parole Board of Canada deemed his risk to reoffend while on full parole would be “undue.”

“The Board remains concerned about your assessed moderate risk, and your limited insight demonstrated at today's hearing about some aspects of your contributing risk factors,” the Parole Board stated. “The Board is also concerned that, although you have consistently stated you accept full responsibility for your criminal behaviour, during your hearing you minimized and deflected responsibility a number of times.

"It appeared to the Board that your remorse and regret was expressed more toward yourself than to the victims."

He was assessed as a "high risk for future violence towards an intimate partner" and a report issued following his completion of a mandatory sex offender program said his ability and commitment to use the skills required to manage his risk factors was "needing some improvement."

Rypiak's convictions relate to four women who worked as prostitutes for him in 2015. He used the dating website Plenty of Fish to recruit teenagers to work for him as prostitutes, setting a daily quota for them.

During his Parole Board hearing, Rypiak said his offending started “as a joke,” but he became “blinded by the profitability of the sex trade."

Upon his arrest, police said they had identified nine alleged victims, who were as young as 15, but Rypiak only pleaded guilty to charges relating to women who were 18 and 19.

Procuring a person under the age of 18 carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years, while procuring an adult carries no minimum sentence. Additionally, the Crown also stayed two assault charges, a sexual assault charge and a charge of assault causing bodily harm.

Because of the plea deal, Rypiak's victims never testified at trial, but one woman who worked for him when she was 19 years old testified at his preliminary inquiry.

“I had decided that I was fed up with his abuse, so I had packed up my things,” the woman testified in 2017. “He came into the room and saw that my things were packed and he got very angry.

“He had pushed me over, he was smacking my face, he eventually took his foot and was stomping on my face and my body.”

The woman spent almost a week in a Calgary safehouse following the incident before she reported Rypiak to Kelowna RCMP on Sept. 27, 2015. He was arrested and charged two days later in Kelowna. The Crown then dropped those charges in December, but he was arrested and charged again the following summer.

The victim said the seven months she worked for Rypiak left her “extremely unstable,” and she tried to take her own life “on several occasions.”

In his Parole Board hearing, Rypiak denied that he had physically or sexually assaulted any of the women who worked for him. While the Parole Board said they were "not fully convinced" that he had not been violent, they noted the alleged assaults were never tested in court, because the Crown had stayed the charges.

The Parole Board noted Rypiak was suspected of assaulting another inmate early on his sentence, but the other inmate had claimed he simply fallen while they were mopping floors. He also spat at another inmate in October 2019 in an attempt to instigate a fight, but Rypiak claimed he was the one who had been targeted.

Because of his use of the internet to recruit young, vulnerable women, the Parole Board banned his use of computers or phones that can access the internet, unless approved by his parole supervisor.

The Parole Board granted Rypiak six months of day parole, which will expire in March. He's expected to apply for full parole again come March.