Marcellus Jacob is back in custody in Vancouver.

The former Whitehorse resident turned himself in at a downtown Vancouver parole office at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Vancouver police Const. Howard Chow said in an interview this morning.

'They called us and we went and got him.'

Jacob had been released on parole in October after having served two-thirds of a seven-year sentence for the brutal knifepoint rape of a Whitehorse woman.

He didn't return to the half-way house he was ordered to live at in Vancouver by curfew last Sunday afternoon.

Jacob turned himself in after The Province newspaper in Vancouver ran a front-page photo of him.

National Parole Board spokeswoman Evelyn Blair said this morning Jacob's parole officer has 30 days to decide whether to cancel the warrant and permit him to return to the half-way house or refer the case to the board for a hearing.

If it is referred for a hearing, the board looks at options including whether the offender should be kept in prison, or whether to release him back on parole. If he's released back on parole, his conditions may be amended.

'We're waiting to see what the parole officer's going to do,' Blair said.

If the matter goes to a hearing, she added, anyone can apply to be present at the case or request a copy of the decision by faxing his or her information and the name of the offender to 604-870-2498.

Interested parties wanting to be at the hearing must pay their own travel costs, she said.

The hearing would be held down south in the area of the prison the offender could be ordered to, she said.

Jacob is charged with breaching his parole.

Prior to his release last month, a report by the National Parole Board described Jacob as a moderate to high risk to reoffend sexually and at a high risk to reoffend violently.

Jacob was suspended from the national maintenance sexual offender program while he was in prison, though he had taken programs for addictions, anger management, sex offences and cognitive skills.

In 2002, Jacob was given the seven-year sentence for the sexual assault at knife point and using household objects. When he was 21, he had broken into the home of a woman he didn't know, then raped and sodomized her over five hours.

'The key stressors that could lead you to violence is substance abuse, anger and frustration, depression, associating with negative peers and the emotional upheaval the loss of a loved one may incur,' the report from the parole board noted.

While Jacob had wanted to return to Whitehorse when he was released, the local Salvation Army's Adult Resource Centre had turned him down for residency. The parole board also was reluctant to permit him to return to Whitehorse in its report.

'Many of the negative influences of your youth can be found in that community and it is suggested you are setting yourself up for failure by returning to this location,' the document states.

And following the release of the parole board's document, a petition circulated throughout the community requesting Jacob not be allowed to return to Whitehorse.

'Jacob had been assessed as a moderate to high risk to reoffend sexually and a high risk to reoffend violently as in general offences.

'For the protection of our children, families and ourselves, we the undersigned request that Marcellus Jacob not be returned to the Yukon,' the petition read.

Other conditions Jacob was ordered to abide by as part of his parole include:

• follow psychological counselling;

• report any relationships with women to his parole supervisor;

• abstain from intoxicants;

• have no contact with his victim or her family; and

• have no contact with children under 19 without the written permission of his parole supervisor.

During his trial, protests were held at the Andrew A. Philipsen Law Centre to denounce violence against women.

It was in his decision though that territorial Judge Barry Stuart, now retired, called an an end to the violence of another sort to young people who grow up under the 'fragmented, truncated system' of government care.

During the three-day sentencing hearing, the court was told how Jacob was abandoned as a baby, sexually abused, neglected, taken numerous times from his home and then returned to the same place he'd been abused at.

Reports from as early as 1994 suggested the troubled youth would offend sexually, but preventative treatment was either not offered or not accepted, it was noted.