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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, May 30, 2003

Jury hears conflicting versions of child abuse

By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer

A 33-year-old Waikiki man has a history of using "brute force, intimidation and deceit" to get what he wants, whether it be an attempt to kill his 6-month-old son or to get the boy's mother to write a letter clearing him of any wrongdoing, a city deputy prosecutor told a Circuit Court jury yesterday.

In his opening statement, Dan Oyasato said defendant Anthony Chatman beat, violently shook and nearly killed his son, Tyson Suzuki, at a Waikiki hotel on April 7, 2002 and then forced the boy's mother to write a letter six months later saying she lied to police about Chatman assaulting the infant.

But Chatman's lawyer, Chester Kanai, said the boy's mother "was deceitful and manipulative" and suggested she was the one who beat the infant.

Kanai said the boy was healthy when Chatman saw him the morning of April 7 but appeared to have a bruise or some kind of "plaster" on his forehead the following morning when the toddler's mother, Asahi Suzuki, called him to drive her to the airport for a flight back to Japan.

Kanai said Asahi Suzuki was alone with her son when the injuries occurred and that Suzuki had become increasingly upset that Chatman would not make a commitment to marry her.

Chatman is being tried on charges of attempted second-degree murder, bribery, intimidating a witness, second-degree extortion and abuse of a family member.

His trial is expected to last three weeks. Suzuki will be the prosecution's key witness.

Oyasato said Chatman met Suzuki, a resident of Japan, in June 2000. He said Suzuki returned to Hawai'i three more times before the end of 2000 to see Chatman, and that by December 2000, Suzuki was pregnant.

Suzuki then learned that Chatman was living with his ex-wife and daughter and she returned to Japan, Oyasato said. Tyson was born on Sept. 14, 2001.

Oyasato said Suzuki brought the baby to Hawai'i in November 2001, returned to Japan after realizing the relationship was troubled but returned, at Chatman's urging, on April 2, 2002.

Suzuki talked with Chatman for several days about their future and was stunned when she saw Chatman put a finger under the baby's chin and force his head back at a room in the Ambassador Hotel on the evening of April 6 in an effort to make the boy stop crying, Oyasato said.

The next day Suzuki left the boy in Chatman's care to go to the hotel's front desk to resolve a problem with her key card, Oyasato said. He said she returned a few minutes later to find a bruise on the boy's forehead. When the boy would not stop crying, Chatman scooped him up with one arm and slammed him into the bed repeatedly, and pushed on the back of the infant's head, forcing his face down into the bed, Oyasato said.

Oyasato said the baby vomited throughout the night and that by morning, Suzuki had decided to go back to Japan. But airline employees noticed the boy's condition and would not let her board the plane.

Oyasato said the infant was taken to Kapi'olani Medical Center, where it was learned he suffered severe brain damage.

"Tyson was shaken with the kind of force that would be generated in a car accident at highway speeds," Oyasato said. The toddler lost the use of half of his brain, all of the vision in one eye and part of the vision in the other eye.

He was placed in the custody of Child Protective Services.

But Kanai told the jury that Chatman was very concerned about his son, that he took Suzuki shopping for a used stroller and spent hours cleaning it.

Suzuki's recollections about the two incidents in the hotel room in which Chatman is said to have struck the boy "are very hazy" at best, Kanai said.

He said that Suzuki brought up the issue of Chatman's commitment to her "time and again" and that the two argued for 10 or 15 minutes before Chatman left the hotel room the night of April 7.