Former Kodiak corrections officer convicted of sexual assault
Published 4:30 am Friday, October 16, 2026
An Alaska jury has found that a corrections officer at Kodiak Jail staged a cleaning assignment to take a female prisoner away from surveillance cameras before sexually assaulting her.
Fredrick Fangonilo, 27, was convicted Tuesday, Oct. 13, of third-degree sexual assault following a trial that lasted about a week and a half. The verdict concerns a March 2022 incident involving a woman being held at the jail, where Fangonilo worked as a corrections officer from 2019 to 2023.
Prosecutors said Fangonilo brought the woman to an area behind washing machines, claiming she needed to clean a drain. The location was outside the view of the facility’s video surveillance system. Once there, he had the prisoner perform oral sex on him according to evidence presented at trial and summarized by the Department of Law.
The jail is located within the Kodiak Police Department, where Fangonilo was employed when the assault occurred.
Under Alaska law, people held in correctional facilities cannot legally consent to sexual contact or intercourse with corrections employees. The statute makes sexual penetration involving an employee and a person the employee knows is in corrections’ custody a criminal offense.
Third-degree sexual assault is a class C felony under Alaska Statute 11.41.425: the provision addressing the authority correctional employees hold over incarcerated people, making such conduct illegal regardless of whether the prisoner appeared to agree to the encounter.
The incident came to the attention of authorities more than a year later, when the woman reported it to the Kodiak Police Department in 2023.
According to charging documents described in May 2023, the woman was the only female prisoner at the facility when the encounter occurred, and investigators alleged that Fangonilo had initiated a flirtatious relationship with her before arranging the encounter.
The original charging documents described subsequent communications in which Fangonilo allegedly apologized to the woman and asked her to keep the incident between them. The Department of Law’s announcement did not specify whether those communications were presented during the trial.
Fangonilo was arrested May 10, 2023, and charged with one felony count of third-degree sexual assault.
At the time, the Kodiak Police Department said Fangonilo had been placed on administrative leave. Then-police chief Tim Putney said the department would conduct both criminal and administrative investigations.
Fangonilo was taken into custody following Tuesday’s verdict and is ineligible for release while awaiting sentencing, according to the Department of Law. Following the completion of his sentence and any probationary period, he will be required to register as a sex offender for 15 years, the department said.
His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Feb. 8, 2027, at 2:30 p.m. in Kodiak; the conviction carries a sentencing range of two to 12 years in prison.