A man convicted in 2019 of running a prostitution ring in Kelowna has been released on full parole, six months after he was released to a halfway house. In total, he spent 17 months of his four year sentence in prison.

Simon Rypiak, 37, pleaded guilty in February 2019 to four counts of procuring adults to offer sexual services and one count of obtaining material benefit from sexual services.

The charges relate to four women who worked for him in the Kelowna area in 2015. He recruited three of the four women through dating sites and then set their rates, advertised their services, set a daily quota and kept a portion of their earnings.

As a result of his plea deal with the Crown, his victims did not have to testify at a trial, but the Crown dropped a number of other charges including human trafficking, sexual assault, procuring both minors and adults to sell sexual services and assault causing bodily harm.

Police initially said they had identified nine of Rypiak’s alleged victims, with one as young as 15. Procuring a minor to offer sexual services carries a minimum sentence of five years on its own, but the plea deal only related to Rypiak’s adult victims.

Justice Allan Betton agreed with the Crown and defence’s joint sentencing submission of four years.

But last September, 17 months after he was put behind bars, the Parole Board of Canada granted Rypiak day parole and he was moved to a halfway house in an undisclosed location. After spending six months at the halfway house with no issues, the Parole Board recently granted Rypiak full parole.

“While on day parole, there have been no concerns with your case management team (CMT) or with the staff at the [halfway house],” the Parole Board said.

“You are cooperative and maintain open communication. You have avoided any new relationships with females and have cut off all associations with old peers, which you commenced when on bail.”

The board also noted that Rypiak has been primarily associating with family members while on day parole, and has been working on renovation projects at his mother’s rental property.

In its published report, the Parole Board withheld where Rypiak will be living while on full parole.

The impacts Rypiak’s actions had on his victims were noted by the board.

“A victim impact statement on file from one of the victims speaks to the ongoing harm that includes impacts of abuse, psychological harm, and ongoing shame.”

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 safe house 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.

Rypiak will remain under his parole conditions until his sentence comes to an end in April 2023.