A lawyer for the estate of the late Peter Kema Jr. and the siblings of “Peter Boy” sent a cease-and-desist letter to a senior vice president of Amazon.com, attempting to persuade the online merchandising giant to pull the Kindle book series “Peter Boy: Hawaii’s Most Notorious Case of Child Abuse and Murder” from its website.
The letter from Honolulu attorney Randall Rosenberg to Amazon Senior Vice President David Zapolsky, who serves as the corporation’s general counsel, said the four-part series by Lillian Koller, former director of the state Department of Human Services under former Gov. Linda Lingle, invades the privacy of Peter Boy’s siblings and violates a 1999 Hawaii Supreme Court decision.
The high court ruled in Kema v. Gaddis that the requested release of Family Court files to the Honolulu Advertiser in the case of Peter Boy, who died in 1997 as a result of chronic abuse, “would be harmful to Peter Boy’s siblings” and that release of even redacted versions of the files “is not in their best interest.”
“That information should have never been disseminated, according to the Supreme Court ruling,” said Hawaii County Prosecutor Mitch Roth. “And I know of nothing else that gave her the authority to release those documents. Even if she had an attorney general’s opinion, I don’t think that trumps a Supreme Court ruling.
“The one line in the decision that really jumps out for me is (Child Protective Services) gets confidential information. And by letting out confidential information from informants, it really denigrates, it really takes away from the system. And it’s very troublesome. The other thing is, I know the victim’s family, the (siblings), had some information disclosed about them. It’s just beyond the pale. In talking to people in our office who have talked to the family, it took them by surprise. And the fact that she didn’t get permission from the family is deplorable.”
Despite the ruling, in 2005 Koller posted on the DHS website more than 2,000 heavily redacted pages of CPS files chronicling the abuse of Peter Boy and his siblings in the household of Peter Kema Sr. and Jaylin Kema. Those documents were removed after Koller left DHS in 2010.
This year, Koller started self-publishing the book series on Amazon, with the first installment in April and the second part hitting the internet Thursday.
In a media release Thursday, Koller said she’s “deliberately releasing Book 2 … on the eve of the court sentencing for Peter Boy’s father.” Peter Kema Sr. will be sentenced for manslaughter at 8 a.m. Monday in Hilo Circuit Court for the boy’s death.
Jaylin Kema, who cooperated with authorities after she and her husband were indicted for murder last year, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to a 10-year probation term.
According to Stephen W. Lane, a court-appointed special master whose task is to determine if there are grounds for Peter Boy’s estate to file a wrongful death lawsuit, Koller claims that while she was DHS director, she obtained an attorney general’s opinion that she was authorized to disclose the records.
“The Gaddis decision said, clearly, you can’t publish anything else about (Peter Boy’s) family. It’s all protected,” Lane said. “And her response about that has been, from the beginning, ‘(the attorney general) gave me an opinion.’ … And she’s refused to show me what that is.”
Koller responded to a Friday request for a phone interview with an emailed statement, saying her series “is based exclusively on official government records that were publicly disclosed and remained in the public domain … from 2005 to 2010.”
“I handle the material very sensitively while building the case for much-needed reforms in Hawaii’s child protection system,” Koller wrote. “These reforms could prevent other children from suffering the same fate as Peter Boy. You don’t need to look any further than the recent Big Island tragedy of a nine-year-old girl being starved to death to see that lessons from Peter Boy’s tragedy have yet to be learned!”
Roth called the marketing of the book by Koller, a former Maui deputy prosecutor whose law license is on voluntary inactive status, “a huge ethical issue.”
“I think it’s offensive that she abused her position to do this,” he said. “… She released the documents. And then, she turns around and writes a book for a profit using these documents, knowing — and it sounds like she knew — that there was a court order from the Supreme Court that says you’re not to release these documents.
“What really bothers me is that you’ve taken a family that’s already been victimized, and you re-victimize them. And these are some of the nicest people that I have ever met, some of the most humble people.”
Lane said he’s troubled that Koller took the Kema family CPS files with her when she left the DHS post.
“What really concerns me is that a Cabinet officer in the state of Hawaii who is the guardian of the most sensitive documents in our community — that is, the health documents, mental health and physical health of hundreds of thousands of our citizens — violates that trust to make a buck,” he said. “I think that’s just deplorable. Especially when she did it in the face of a Hawaii Supreme Court decision that says you can’t do that.
“She’s still a lawyer and I would think this kind of conduct would raise questions with the local bar association about her fitness to ever reapply for a license. I think it’s one of the most outrageous breaches of public trust in Hawaii that I have ever seen.”
Rosenberg said the first book contained “allegations of physical abuse and … an even more sinister type of abuse” of Peter Boy’s siblings.
“Our position is anything that has to do with abuse of the siblings should not be included,” he said. “Koller certainly has enough information about Peter Boy, and that should be what it is limited to. The rest of it, in fact, is barred by court order.”
His letter to Amazon stated: “My clients have authorized me to take whatever legal steps are necessary to protect their rights in this matter.”
Zapolsky didn’t return a Friday morning phone call seeking comment by press time.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
