Ex-Cadet Officer Apologizes For Molesting Boys
By Terri Theodore
Originally published by The Canadian Press, January 19, 2001
VANCOUVER (CP) — A former sea cadet officer who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting teenage cadets in his unit apologized through his lawyer at his sentencing hearing Friday.
"To each of you victims he says, 'I'm sorry and regret what I did,'" Conrad Sundman's lawyer, Robert Mostar, told the now adult victims as they sat in provincial court.
"He's not asking for forgiveness. How could someone in these circumstances ask for forgiveness? It's too much, too brazen."
Mostar told Judge Elizabeth Arnold that a 1996 stroke has left Sundman, a Calgary resident, with no memory of the assaults. However, Mostar said he now has begun to remember being sexually assaulted himself as a young man.
"He says, 'I was a victim, too,'" said Mostar. "Evil spawned evil."
Crown prosecutor Mark Rowan demanded at least a 10-year prison term for Sundman.
But Mostar said Sundman, who arrived at the hearing in a wheelchair, has already been punished for his crime by his debilitating stroke.
"Perhaps it was a divine hand for the need to supreme retribution," the lawyer said. "Perhaps you might say he deserved it.
"As a result he's been, in a way, in jail since then. His life ended in 1996 for all practical purposes."
Sundman, 49, pleaded guilty last September to 16 sex charges involving 14 teenage boys in Vancouver while a captain in the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets between 1970 and 1978.
The offences, which included 13 counts of indecent assault and three of buggery, took place while Sundman was in charge of 13-to-16-year-old cadets at HMCS Discovery, located near the city's Stanley Park.
Sundman pleaded guilty on the eve of his trial when he initially faced more than three dozen charges.
Pre-sentence medical and psychological reports said Sundman told doctors he has no specific memory of the assaults.
He told them he pleaded guilty because, "it doesn't seem reasonable that I could be innocent, since so many people accused me."
While revealing that he now believes he had been sexually abused too, Sundman told the doctors he could not accept that as a reason "for being a monster."
The reports concluded Sundman's memory loss about his crimes stemmed from fear and shame about his actions, not his stroke.
Rowan said Sundman committed the assaults over an eight-year period, using a high degree of manipulation.
"In some cases he was virtually pouring liquor down their throat to get them to give into his demands," the prosecutor said.
"Despite his ill health, a sentence in excess of 10 years would be appropriate."
Sundman is the second Discovery cadet officer being sentenced in string of sex-abuse incidents three decades ago.
Ralph Bremner was handed an 18-month sentence on four counts of indecent assault involving four cadets.
But after he challenged the sentence, the B.C. Court of Appeal agreed Bremner could serve the term conditionally at home, without going to jail. It accepted evidence he had rehabilitated himself and never repeated the abuses.
The decision angered some of Bremner's victims, who said the former cadet captain showed no remorse and should serve some jail time.
Bremner claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy that sought to blame him for a number of assaults committed by another sea cadet officer who died in 1978.
