Man charged with sex abuse

August 27, 2006

By MARY AMES

Frontiersman

A Willow man was arraigned on multiple counts of sexual abuse of a minor, child pornography, incest and more in Palmer District Court Friday afternoon, according to a report from Alaska State Troopers.

Mark Dunder, 46, who is employed by Laidlaw as a school bus driver, allegedly had sexual contact with his two daughters, both 15, for at least the past two years, and their friend, now 16, who told officers Dunder had molested her two years ago.

According to a report from Shannon Fore of the troopers' child abuse investigation unit, the three girls told her that Dunder touched their breasts and genitals, photographed them nude and used vibrators on them. One of his daughters also told the investigator that Dunder started having sexual intercourse with her in May.

On Monday, troopers obtained a search warrant and seized Dunder's computers and CDs, which contained multiple images of child pornography, including pictures of his daughters, according to the report. One of the photographs showed a man's hand touching the genitals of one of Dunder's

daughters.

Dunder also spoke to Fore, and according to the report, he admitted to taking nude photographs of his daughters and downloading the images to his computer. He told the officer that he didn't remember touching the girls on their genitals.

&#8220Dunder did not admit that the photographs of someone touching (his daughter) were even photographs of his daughter, and stated that someone made a clone of her and that he has downloaded photographs of girls that look exactly like his daughter,” Fore wrote in the report. &#8220Dunder stated that he only kept some of the more upsetting child porn showing children who were approximately 5 years old being raped because he wanted to remember how bad that type of thing was, and that all the child porn he downloaded was free because, if he paid for it, then he would feel like he was contributing to hurting the children.”

In addition to the images, stories had been downloaded onto the CDs, and according to the report, the stories were about fathers having sex with their daughters.

One of Dunder's daughters told Fore that &#8220she thought it was OK for fathers to have sex with their daughters because boys might just hurt them but fathers wouldn't just have sex with their daughters and then leave because they cared about them,” according to the report.

Fore wrote that many of the downloaded stories had similar statements.

Dunder was arrested Thursday and charged with three counts of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, one count of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and one count of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Dunder also was charged with three counts of unlawful exploitation of a minor, three counts of possession of child pornography, one count of distribution of child pornography, indecent exposure, two counts of indecent viewing and one count of incest, court records show.

Dunder has no other criminal charges filed against him in Alaska, records show.

Troopers first heard a report about Dunder's alleged crimes on July 26. Troopers and the Office of Children's Services then launched a joint investigation of Dunder.

Mat-Su Borough records show Dunder owns a mobile home and cabin property on West Bishop's Gate in Willow.

Leila Kheiry contributed

to this report.