It stated that while the siblings "appear healthy and unharmed, it might be prudent to remember that their brother is missing and the parents seem to be the perpetrators of this."

The report was included in an unprecedented release Tuesday by the state Department of Human Services of 2,000 pages of confidential records from the case.

An attempt to contact Peter Kema Sr. through his family court attorney, Hilo lawyer Steven Strauss, was unsuccessful last week.

A former landlord of Jaylin Kema has said in recent weeks that she does not know where Jaylin is.

The two are thought to be living on the Big Island, but court records from earlier this year show they have separated.

The 1998 report was prepared by a team evaluating the missing child's three siblings in the family home.

The team stated that the siblings could easily "conclude that being out of favor with father and mother could indeed make you 'go away.' "

Human services director Lillian Koller, who released the confidential files hoping they might produce new evidence in the case, said the document carries some weight, although not the kind that would work in court.

"It is one thing to say that people believe the boy is dead," she said. "But the question is: Who is responsible? This is an indication of what those people on the team were believing at the time."

She felt the team's opinion was significant because it was reached with much of the same information other authorities have had in the years that followed.

"And so that is a kind of clarity and consensus that distinguishes the assessment that they made of the facts they knew," she said.

State Rep. Dennis Arakaki, D-30th (Moanalua, Kalihi Valley, 'Alewa), was alarmed by the team's conclusion. He felt it was yet another piece of evidence for a crime that has gone unpunished.

"That is the hardest thing to understand," he said. "With all this evidence, how nothing could happen? It sure seems like somebody dropped the ball."

Peter Boy disappeared sometime in the spring or early summer of 1997 amid suspicious circumstances. He would have turned 6 that May. His father claimed to have given him away to an old family friend whose existence has never been confirmed by authorities.

It was not until January 1998, however, that his mother filed a missing person's report with Big Island police.

Because Peter Boy was originally reported as a child-abuse victim on April 4, 1997, social workers with the state's Department of Human Services had grown more and more alarmed by his absence the following spring.

They knew, too, that his family — which included a sister and two half siblings — had already been the focus of a previously closed child-abuse investigation.

"Given the history of serious physical abuse and reported abuse, the disappearance of Peter Jr. is very disturbing indeed," the team report stated.

It was felt that Peter Boy's siblings had "most likely been abused or been witness to repeated acts of violence toward other members of their family, up to and including the removal of their brother from the family."

The team included child protection services authorities, a pediatrician, a nurse, a psychologist consultant, a guardian ad litem and a therapist who had treated the Kema family during its previous child-abuse investigation. It was coordinated by the Kapiolani Child Protection Center.

Among the questions they specifically sought to answer when they met on April 15, 1998, was whether they could uncover something about Peter Boy's parents that authorities had missed. They wanted to shed light on the parents' actions and find out if they had any vested interest in not disclosing the child's whereabouts.

They urged Hilo police to "expeditiously investigate" what happened to Peter Boy.

Police investigated Peter Boy's disappearance as a missing person's case but reclassified it as a murder investigation when they submitted their final report to the Hawai'i County prosecutors office in June 2000.

Last year, police said that an investigative grand jury was convened but nothing had gone to a grand jury for an indictment.

Arakaki and state Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, D-13th (Kalihi, Nu'uanu), wrote to prosecutor Jay Kimura on Thursday strongly urging him to investigate whether a murder case can be prosecuted.