Recently-released repeat Ontario sex offender back in custody: police

Barely a week after his release, an Ontario man with a history of sexual violence against women and children and a track record of aggresive behaviour behind bars is back in custody after allegedly breaching court-ordered conditions of his release.

Keith Theodore Constantin, a high-risk repeat-offender whose rap sheet is peppered with convictions for sexual assault, assault with a weapon, robbery and possession of explosives, among others, was re-arrested after he allegedly breached his curfew on Oct. 19th, the Durham Regional Police Service (DRPS) said Wednesday.

The Hamilton native is now being held in custody pending a bail hearing.

His re-incarceration comes nine days after a public safety alert about the 48-year-old’s statutory release to the region was issued on Oct. 11.

Constantin is not currently serving a federal sentence, the Parole Board of Canada (PBC) told National Post in a statement and, as such, is “no longer under” its authority, as the warrant for his last federal sentence expired in August 2023.

While details about the precise nature of his most recent federal sentence of two years, four months and two days are unclear, a July 2023 PBC decision to revoke his statutory release obtained by National Post shows he was serving time for four counts of uttering threats to cause death or harm, threatening to burn a property, assaulting a police officer, a mischief charge and failing to comply with probation orders.

During that stint of freedom in an undisclosed location (may wish to explain what this means?), the PBC noted Constantin showed up at a local hospital talking about self-harm and “thinking about children again.”

The board also said he “misused a media device… to take over 40 pictures of a young male who appeared to be a young female” and that he made statements “about having deviant fantasies of children.”

A subsequent “medication audit” showed he’d reverted to a “concerning pattern” of overusing mental health drugs to “calm” himself.

Constantin’s most current psychological risk assessment at the time placed him in the very high range for sexual recidivism and the high-moderate range for general and violent recidivism.

“You have no insight into your risk,” the PBC wrote. “While in custody and in the community you required close supervision because of your use of aggression, threats, self-injurious behaviour, and suicidal thoughts.”

Constantin was re-imprisoned that summer, but was released again in 2024 under Canada’s statutory release laws, as reported by the Toronto Sun at the time. He was re-arrested at some point thereafter because another warning came from Durham police in March 2025 that he was being released to live in the area. Two days later, they issued a press release noting Constantin had been arrested for breaching conditions of his release.

His most recent release, his fourth in as many years, follows that incarceration.

National Post has asked PBC for additional clarity on all of Constantin’s three federal sentences and his statutory release.

His first sentence came in 2000 when he was sentenced for two armed robberies and two sexual assaults — one against a seven-year-old boy he’d lured to a park and another on a 45-year-old blind woman who lived in the same building as him.

Again, it’s not clear how much time he served, but he was free in fall 2007, as he was later convicted of sexually assaulting an epileptic woman in the basement apartment of his parents’ home as she was recovering from a seizure that September, according to a 2014 story in The Hamilton Spectator.

Because of stress-induced seizures and fears of suicide in his 27-year-old victim, that case never went to trial. Instead, Constantin made a plea deal in 2009, was sentenced to eight years and received four years’ credit for time served. It also earned him a spot on the national sex-offender registry for life.

His 2014 release was met with considerable pushback in the Hamilton neighbourhoods where he was set to reside when York Regional Police (YRP) warned of it, National Post reported at the time. It led him to break curfew and ask to be imprisoned again.

YRP issued another warning in December 2015 when he was released again after serving 18 months for the breach.

The PBC’s 2023 release revocation decision also shows that Constantin has been anything but an ideal inmate while incarcerated.

“While in provincial custody serving a sentence, you flooded your cell and wiped feces on the cell window. You threatened to throw feces at a correctional officer and also threatened to kill him. You later threatened to sexually assault another female officer’s children,” they wrote.

He was equally problematic while living in a “group home environment” between June 2020 and January 2021 where he “threatened staff and damaged property.”

“In February 2021, while at a hospital for treatment for banging your head on the walls, you threatened to kill two police officers and throw feces at them,” the Board wrote.

Meanwhile, previous PBC documents obtained by the Spectator indicate Constantin’s behaviour earned him a great deal of time in segregation. He was also diagnosed with alcohol and drug addiction, paranoid schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, an “extremely low range of intellectual ability,” and “character features associated with psychopathy.”

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