Renowned sex offender program closing in GTHA, Kitchener

The moment planted a seed in Nigh’s mind that soon led to a novel idea: a program to support and monitor those seen as society’s most heinous, watch over them, keep tabs on them and stop them from doing it again.

Some 30 years later, the made-in-Ontario Circles of Support and Accountability, or CoSA, has been copied across Canada and in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and South Korea. It’s widely held up as one the most successful — and only — rehabilitation programs for child sex offenders after their release from prison, reducing rates of reoffending by nearly 90 per cent, according to a 2018 study.

Except now, CoSA is going away in the very communities where it was created — with three locations in Toronto, Hamilton and Kitchener announcing they’re closing over the latest in a long series of funding challenges.

For the man who helped start the first CoSA circle in Hamilton in 1994, the news is bleak. “I think this is a crisis,” said Nigh, who is now retired.

Where will the next child sex offender go when they’re released from prison in Canada’s most populous area, he wonders?

“If we really cared about keeping kids safe, I would think (the government) would want to invest deeply in programs like this, amongst all the other priorities,” he said.

Supporting a sex offender may not be a popular approach, he added, “but it is an effective one.”

The program, which is now available to anyone convicted of sex crimes, involves a circle of volunteers providing emotional, moral and social support to offenders, as well as assisting with efforts like seeking employment or obtaining counselling.

There’s also an important layer of accountability; they check on participants to ensure they’re not breaching their conditions or engaging in any criminal acts. If they do, volunteers are required to inform authorities.

CoSA started as a grassroots program with a handful of volunteers. In the late ‘90s, it received funding from the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) to help it expand, delivered through the Mennonite Central Committee of Ontario (MCCO).

That federal funding expired in 2015, only to be restored in 2017 with a five-year, $7.48 million grant from Public Safety Canada to CoSA Canada, which by then had 14 locations nationwide. When that funding expired, the MCCO took on sole responsibility for the GTA locations in 2022, and has kept the program going through fundraising and grants.

Last week, the charity announced that the approach was unsustainable; the three locations will wrap up their services by mid-June.

The news was unavoidable, said Rod Friesen, Ontario programs team lead with MCCO, who explained that ongoing efforts to secure funding from provincial and federal governments had failed.

“The impact of this program over many decades has been tremendous. And I think that’s what makes it the most difficult. It’s been an effective program and, unfortunately, we’re not able to keep it going,” he said.

Together, the programs in the GTHA and Kitchener cost about $400,000 to operate annually, Friesen said.

Since the last round of federal funding expired, CoSA locations from coast to coast have had to find funding on a piecemeal basis — and not always successfully. In 2022, two locations in Montreal shut down and another location in Halifax closed its doors last year, said Cliff Yumansky, executive director with CoSA Canada.

Although the organization received temporary funding from Public Safety Canada in 2023 to operate a Virtual Circles program, physical sites have been forced to scale down operations and there’s a risk more will close without financial support, Yumansky said.

“It’s a wake-up call,” he said, calling on both the federal and provincial governments to “put their money where their mouth is.”

In regular meetings with Yumansky, government officials say “they really value our program,” he said. “But at this point in time, with a few exceptions in the country, they haven’t come forward yet with funding.”

In a statement, Public Safety Canada said it has provided more than $15 million in funding to CoSA since 2006 and has “also facilitated connections with other partners to help CoSA broaden its network and seek additional financial assistance from other sources.”

The agency declined to say whether it would offer new funding support.

Explaining why CoSA is important, Yumansky acknowledged how the public can be outraged, understandably, when the government seems to show any support for convicted sex offenders — for example, when Paul Bernardo was relocated to a medium-security prison.

But unlike Bernardo, most sex offenders aren’t sentenced to life in prison. When they’re released, they can often “go underground” due to the nature of their crimes, Yumansky said.

CoSA steps in to stop that dangerous scenario from happening. Using a randomized control trial, the 2018 study, which evaluated the effectiveness of a Minnesota program, found CoSA participants were 88 per cent less likely to be rearrested for a new sex offence compared to sex offenders in a control group. A 2009 Canadian quantitative study found similar results.

David Byrne, a former chair of CoSA Canada, said that’s particularly concerning for CoSA to close in a sprawling urban centre such as the Toronto area.

“It’s the kind of space where people can live quite anonymously. And as far as I know, there’s nothing that will replace CoSA,” he said. “For me, just as a dad and a citizen, that to me is a great concern.”

When Byrne first got involved with CoSA, he was primarily focused on reducing the risk of people reoffending and protecting victims. While that’s still the ultimate goal, he said he had a “conversion of heart” when he understood what made the approach actually work.

“I began to see that the reason for CoSA’s success was this commitment to the dignity of the other, especially an other who has been ostracized or marginalized in society,” he said.

“That’s the controversial thing, but also the reason why it works.”