A convicted sex offender who spent 15 years in prison for a violent attack on a young woman is facing new charges after a teenage girl was lured and sexually assaulted at a Toronto hotel, police say.
A senior police officer alerted the public about the arrest Friday because police fear there may be additional victims.
Sex crimes unit Insp. Joanna Beaven-Desjardins said the sexual assault occurred Feb 1 and 2 at a hotel near The Queensway and Royal York Road after the 14-year-old girl was lured during online chats in January and extorted into meeting the suspect, who obtained photos of her and threatened to post them online.
“(The suspect) portrayed himself to be something he wasn’t,” Beaven-Desjardins told reporters at a news conference.
Beaven-Desjardins said this type of incident is not uncommon because sexual predators are known to scour the Internet for victims and obtain compromising photos that they use against their victims.
“The Internet, unfortunately, is where these predators hang around and they surf on it,” she said.
In this case, police arrested a suspect Feb. 4.
Hassan Steven Jarrar, 41, has been charged with sexual assault, sexual interference, extortion, accessing child pornography, making child pornography, child luring, and three counts of failing to comply with a recognizance, which includes a midnight to 6 a.m. curfew.
The Toronto man was previously convicted of a violent sexual assault that left a 19-year-old woman with life-threatening injuries in 1996.
The woman was dumped in a remote area near Lake Ontario, and she spent several months in hospital and underwent significant rehabilitation, Beaven-Desjardins said.
After Jarrar served the entire 15-year sentence and was released from custody in June 2012, he was bound by more than 15 court-authorized conditions under a Section 810 order.
The order is part of the Criminal Code and it is granted when a judge agrees that an offender is a risk to reoffend and there’s a threat of injury or sexual offence to the public.
When Jarrar was released from prison, police warned Toronto residents and they described him as a “high risk offender.”
In addition to a curfew, Jarrar’s conditions include orders to notify police before getting into a romantic relationship and report to police once a week.
Beaven-Desjardins said police were not monitoring Jarrar’s online activity because there was no evidence he was using the Internet and they didn’t have a court’s approval to do so.
The Section 810 order doesn’t bar Jarrar from surfing the web, given the fact that the 1996 attack did not involve the Internet, she said.
Under the court order, police are legally required to check on Jarrar only once a year, but officers checked on him many times, said Beaven-Desjardins, who declined to reveal how many times police checked on him.
“We do everything we possibly can to monitor these people,” she said.
Meanwhile, police are asking anyone with information about Jarrar to call investigators at 416-808-7474 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477).
In response to the arrest, police are urging parents, guardians and educators to visit Cybertip.ca for resources and to speak with children about online dangers.
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