A former campus supervisor convicted of sexually assaulting a boy while working at a Hawaii island elementary school in 2007 was back in court Wednesday for fondling two boys at Walmart and attempting to lure a third boy into a bathroom stall at Costco in Waipio in 2013.
Cary Cantere, 45, was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison by Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario for two counts of third-degree sexual assault and one count of attempted third-degree sexual assault. He pleaded no contest in September.
Cantere stood with his head down before Rosario and said he didn’t understand his own "sickness."
"I’m very, very, extremely sorry for the incident I caused to each of my victims," he said. "I’m sorry that I inflicted pain and suffering in their daily lives."
Cantere received credit for 485 days spent in jail. Rosario said he sentenced Cantere to 10 years for the public’s safety.
Deputy Prosecutor Rochelle Vidinha said Cantere molested the two boys in the Walmart in Mililani 18 days after he finished probation for the Hawaii island assault.
"This defendant is very dangerous," Vidinha said in court. "Despite having received treatment for substance abuse issues as well as for sexually deviant behavior, the defendant continues to reoffend."
She said Cantere fondled the boys, ages 5 and 12, as they played with toys in the store on Dec. 22, 2013. Cantere left before the boys could tell their parents.
The next day, Cantere tried to lure a 9-year-old boy into a bathroom stall at Costco, Vidinha said. She added that the boy left and told his father, who followed Cantere out to the parking lot and took down his license plate number.
Vidinha said that after Cantere was arrested for the Costco incident, the two other victims were able to identify him as their attacker.
Cantere has two convictions for third-degree sexual assault involving an 8-year-old boy at Keaau Elementary School on Hawaii island. Cantere pleaded guilty in 2008 to fondling the boy in two incidents in 2007. He was sentenced to 270 days in prison and five years’ probation.
Vidinha said that in a sentencing report for that case, Cantere admitted to fondling two more boys, ages 8 and 9, at the school. It was unknown what happened in those incidents.
Los Angeles attorney David Kadin, who is representing the Hawaii island victim’s family in a lawsuit against the state Department of Education, said in an interview Thursday that Cantere was working at the school when he sexually molested the boy.
He said Cantere took the boy to a side room for reading lessons and fondled him.
In another incident, Cantere pulled the boy over to the side of the gym and fondled him, Kadin said.
Kadin alleges the DOE hired Cantere without conducting a background check. He said Cantere told him he was hired after moving to Hilo from Honolulu to get away from drugs.
Kadin said lax hiring practices at the DOE "permitted this person to come into contact with vulnerable individuals."
The lawsuit is pending.
Deputy Public Defender Kirsha Durante, Cantere’s attorney in the 2013 cases, told the judge Wednesday that Cantere’s sexually abusive behavior goes back to his childhood when he was sexually assaulted and did not receive support from his family.
The mother of the boys who were assaulted in Walmart said in court that her children lost self-confidence after the molestation.
"They feel like failures," she said. "Our children are destroyed because of his sick habit."
