Keiki law center seeks files on Peter Boy
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
A nonprofit law advocacy center for children is investigating whether Peter Boy Kema's civil rights were violated and also hopes to give the next Legislature a package of bills inspired by the missing child abuse victim.
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Na Keiki Law Center, a project of Volunteer Legal Services of Hawai'i, also wants Kema's confidential files, authored by Child Protective Services.
Peter Kema of the Big Island has been missing since 1997, when he was 6.
Peter Boy, whose father claims he gave the then 6-year-old boy to an old family friend, has not been seen for more than four years. Police have no evidence that the friend exists and last summer classified the case as a murder investigation.
No charges have been filed, and the case is still being reviewed by the Big Island prosecutor's office. The parents of the boy have denied any wrongdoing.
The center provides volunteer legal representation for children. It decided to look into the boy's case at the urging of state Rep. Dennis Arakaki, D-28th (Kalihi Valley, Kamehameha Heights), who has introduced Peter Boy-related resolutons in the past two legislative sessions.
Two interns from the University of Toronto Law School spent the summer gathering information and reading court cases in which a CPS agency was sued over a civil rights violation.
Although they left for home Saturday, both Ashleigh Frankel, 23, and Beth Given, 24, will continue working on the project.
Frankel said they asked CPS officials to share their files, but that was not possible because it would break confidentiality laws. The only way to obtain them would be to sue the agency.
"We asked them what we can do to get the files but the only answer was, 'You have to subpoena us.' They won't give them over willingly."
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Given said she has already learned a valuable lession.
Ashleigh Frankel, left, and Beth Given, first-year law students at the University of Toronto, are working on the Peter Boy Kema case as interns for the Na Keiki Law Center.
"I guess we are idealistic," Given said. "We came in thinking people would be open-armed, thinking of the best interests of the children. But we found a lot of roadblocks. That has been a real eye-opener."
Considering what is already known about the child, the files could reveal much.
After abuse allegations were made by a relative, Peter Boy was placed in foster care in August 1991. Child Protective Services worked to reunite the family, eventually returning the boy to his parents and closing the case in October 1995.
High on the law center's list of concerns is a sequence of events in the spring and summer of 1997, well after social workers had ended communication with the Kema family.
In April 1997, Peter Boy's teenage cousin said the boy was being abused, but social workers did not investigate for two months. State human services officials have said they then told police they were concerned about the boy.
Police have said they were not told he was missing for six months.
Neither agency has offered any documented proof of the events, despite repeated requests through the years by The Advertiser.
Child Protective Services maintains a strict confidentiality policy regarding its cases.
Proving a civil rights violation can be difficult, Frankel said. State agencies are generally protected if they follow their own rules.
"The only way you can get them on a civil rights violation is if you can argue there was a special relationship between the agency or the child," she said. "We will need to find that they slipped up somewhere."
Attorney Keith Peck served as a mentor for the interns. Like many people, Peck believes that Peter Boy is dead. He wants changes in the system that protects children, especially children who have had previous involvement with CPS.
Typically, a call for help in a closed case comes under the same screening that a new case receives, Peck said.
"The state sort of closes the books and restarts and has to have the same level of incriminating evidence to find a reason enough to investigate it," he said. "And I think that is silly."
Annabel Murray, project coordinator for the center, said 10 bills could come out of studying the Peter Boy case, among them a bill to make it illegal to give away a child.
But confidentiality rules should not be allowed to get in the way, she said.
"Confidentiality shouldn't be there to protect anyone but the children," she said. "If a kid dies, then the siblings have some right to confidentiality, but I don't think anyone else does."
