Aug 31, 2009 04:30 AM
Jim Wilkes
Staff Reporter

A 50-year-old man declared a dangerous offender in 1990 after more than a decade of sexually assaulting children has been arrested in Toronto, accused of attacking a friend's 5-year-old son.

Toronto police say the youngster was sexually assaulted in a bedroom in the suspect's apartment on Sherbourne St. last Thursday.

The child told his mother about the assault the following day and she called police, who arrested the neighbour on Saturday night.

Residents of the building said the boy's single mother, who lives on the third floor, allowed the man to take the child to his fifth-floor unit.

The building, near Dundas St. E., had human feces in the elevator and garbage heaped in upper hallways.

Residents described the suspect alternately as "quiet" and "weird." They said he had a dog and four cats, which were seized by humane society workers after his arrest.

Dennis James Taylor is charged with sexual assault and sexual interference. He was remanded in custody during a brief court appearance yesterday.

In 1990, Taylor was sentenced to nine years in prison for assaulting four children in Ottawa between July 1988 and February 1989.

The Ottawa Citizen reported that Taylor, a bisexual pedophile, pleaded guilty in June 1989 to three sexual assaults on boys and sexually touching a girl.

Judge James Fontana said the long prison term was necessary to protect the public.

The dangerous-offender section of the Criminal Code allows judges to impose an open-ended prison term of which the convict must serve at least three years. The individual is then assessed by psychiatrists every two years until he is fit to be released.

But Fontana rejected that option, saying it was not appropriate in Taylor's case because it would have amounted to a life sentence.

Taylor had already served two four-year prison terms for sexual assaults on children in his hometown of Brampton, The Canadian Press reported.

Fontana said he wished doctors could have been more certain about the potential for successfully treating Taylor.

He had been treated for pedophilia at the Royal Ottawa Hospital for four years before he committed the assaults in Ottawa.

A psychiatrist told court that Taylor's potential for violence, graded on a scale of one to 10, was somewhere between four and six.

Assistant Crown attorney Louise Dupont, who had earlier asked Fontana for an indefinite prison term, predicted that Taylor would reoffend.

"The main concern of this court today should be the protection of the public," Dupont said at his sentencing hearing.

Taylor had been living in the Sherbourne St. apartment for about two years, residents said yesterday.

Det. Harold Morris said Toronto police fear there could be more victims and hope to speak with anyone who knows Taylor, particularly those with children.