April 18, 1999

KANEOHE — The two children sprawl across the living room floor, and they giggle as if they’ve never known anything in their lives but joy.

They talk about how much they like their new school and basketball with their friends and their Pokemon trading cards. They speak swiftly, as if words have been waiting a long time for someone to let them out.

But some thoughts steal the smiles from Allan and Chauntelle Acol. Some stories silence their laughter.

Allan is 12, his sister Chauntelle barely 10, and yet their past is a haunting presence that won’t leave, an unseen companion in their search for a normal life.

In their old life, they called Jaylin Kema their mother. Now that they have some distance between the pain and the present, they just call her Jaylin.

They never felt close enough to her husband, Peter Kema Sr., to call him their father. But they always felt close to — and sorry for— his namesake, Peter Boy. Now they worry about him every day because no one has seen him since the summer of 1997.

While they all felt Kema’s anger, Peter Boy felt it more.

Eight years ago, state social workers placed the children in protective foster custody after allegations that Kema abused them. Months after Peter Boy had been missing, the state stepped in again, placing Allan and Chauntelle and a younger sister in a new foster home.

Then in February, the Family Court awarded permanent custody of Allan and Chauntelle to their biological father, William Collier. The court also ordered Jaylin and Peter Kema to stay away — no contact, no telephone calls, no chance meetings, no photographs.

It was the answer to the children’s prayers, but it couldn’t unravel the one thing they’ve struggled with for nearly two years: What happened to Peter Boy?

“People always ask us that question,” Chauntelle says.

Peter Boy was 6 years old when the children last saw him at their parents’ Big Island home in Nanawale Estates.

In the morning, Peter Boy had been there. In the afternoon, he wasn’t.

Peter Kema would later tell police that he took the child with him to Oahu in August 1997 and gave him to an old family friend he identified as Auntie Rose Makuakane.

He says it was the last time he saw the boy.

Five months later, Big Island police persuaded Jaylin Kema to file a missing person’s report. No one has been able to verify the existence of Makuakane. The case is being reviewed by the prosecutor’s office, but if criminal charges are a possibility, no one is saying.

Collier, a large man with a sumotori-like ponytail and piercing eyes, has listened many times to his children discuss what happened to them. With the custody case over, he has decided to let the children share what they have experienced, and also to share his own festering anger over how police, prosecutors and Child Protective Services have handled the case.

His mother, Alice Taniguchi, also lives in this small home, and she is seated on the floor near the children. Like her son, she has needed to vent her anger since last April, when newspaper accounts of Peter Boy prompted Child Protective Services to remove the children.

Another sibling taken that day, a 6-year-old sister, remains in foster custody on the Big Island. Her case should be settled this summer.

“I asked the kids, and they don’t even want to talk to their own mom because of Peter Sr.,” Collier says. “They fear him. They really do. Because of all the things he did to them. He threatened them at one time.”

Chauntelle and Allan nodded in silence. They have smooth, round faces, long eyelashes and cheeky smiles. For the moment, any enthusiasm seems to have drained away. Then the words come rushing out.

“He said we always used to give our mom stress,” Chauntelle says. “He said he would kill us.”

“It was spooky,” Allan adds. “Sometimes, he’d just whack us.”

Still, they say, it was worse for Peter Boy. The children have no idea why.

Jaylin Kema made a public appeal April 1998 for the return of her son Peter Boy, whom she said she last saw in August 1997. Advertiser Library Photo

Parents’ denial

Peter Kema Sr. and Jaylin Kema could not be reached for comment on this article. They have disconnected their Hilo telephone. Their primary attorney, Steven Strauss, also was unavailable.

But in previous public statements, the Kemas have denied harming their son and pleaded with Auntie Rose Makuakane to return Peter Boy. They said they loved the child, that he was a good boy.

That rings hollow with Allan and Chauntelle.

“They said he was so naughty they’d make him sleep out on the porch,” Chauntelle says. “He wasn’t that naughty. They made him feel like he wasn’t part of the family. He’d say: I want to move away from here. He’d say, ‘When can I get away from dad?’ ”

Being forced to sleep outside was a regular occurrence for Peter Boy, the children say. But it wasn’t reserved only for him. Chauntelle says she too was sent outside, where she and Peter Boy would squeeze themselves onto a weight-lifting bench and try to stay warm.

She and Peter Boy would “scream our heads off,” but because their home was on a large, partially wooded lot, none of the neighbors could hear them, only their parents.

“The next day, we’d always get scoldings because they didn’t want to get in trouble,” Chauntelle says.

But whatever the measure of treatment, Peter Boy received it in harsher doses. Chauntelle says her stepfather had a BB gun and once, he used Peter Boy for target practice.

“One time Peter Boy was running and Peter said, ‘Run faster, run faster,’ and he shot him in the back,” she says.

Adds Allan, “He shot him on the back and his arm and his head.”

His injuries were minor, they say. But the incident heightened fears that they would suffer similar treatment.

They said they would watch, shocked, as their stepfather tossed darts at an old photograph of them and Peter Boy. And when he put Peter Boy in the trunk of the family car — and left him there after driving to the beach — the children kept silent, even as their brother called for help.

Sometimes, they could hear him singing to himself.

They wanted to run away and had nowhere to go.

“They hit hard,” Chauntelle says. “One time, Peter got real mad and he grabbed me and threw me against the ice box. He threw food all over the place and said, ‘ Eat.’ ”

The last day they saw their brother started so quietly, they barely remember it. Allan says he was given a cane knife and sent with Chauntelle to prune bushes and overgrown trees in the back yard.

“We don’t know what happened to Peter Boy,” Chauntelle says. “We just heard Jaylin shout, ‘Hey Babe!’ We heard someone run into the house, and we heard a car come up and stop.”

They were too afraid to get any closer, to look at the car or see who was there. Later in the day, their stepfather took them for Slurpees, and his pleasant behavior made them suspicious.

The children never questioned what they were told about Peter Boy’s whereabouts.

“They said Peter Boy and mom— I mean Jaylin — went to grab Peter Boy’s stuff and she dropped him off at the Cash ’n Carry store and his auntie would take him to the airport.”

But from that point, neither child is sure where Peter Boy was sent.

Not long after that day, the family moved to Hilo.

Chauntelle says Peter and Jaylin told them what to say if anyone asked about Peter Boy.

“They would say ‘If people ask you about Peter Boy, tell a lie, say something else, leave us alone already,’” Chauntelle says. “We did exactly what they told us.”

“But remember? We told some,” Allan says with a burst of half-whispered words.

“Yeah, Auntie Barbara told us to tell the truth because it felt good and God is with us,” Chauntelle says.

Auntie Barbara was their foster mom, and she made them feel comfortable. So they told her what happened. The information was included in Family Court documents last fall.

‘We’d all start crying’

Taniguchi has listened quietly, her teeth clenched, her anger rising to a boil for the umpteenth time. Her son shakes his head.

“They’ve been living in hell,” Collier says.

Ever since the children moved into his home last November, still under partial state supervision, Collier and his mother have watched them gradually relax.

It has come from knowing they won’t have to go back, Collier says.

“When they first came here, they would start crying,” Collier says. “They were always thinking about him. We’d all start crying. It was hard, but that’s how they were feeling. Now it’s getting better, but it’s still at the back of their minds: ‘Where is my brother?’ ”

Although a child psychologist on the Big Island gave them a clean bill of mental health, their fears often drive them to sleep together in their father’s room. They remain on guard wherever they go, especially if they are not with Taniguchi or Collier.

Collier says he is able to deal with this, thanks to parenting classes he attended as part of the custody arrangement. Now he speaks less and listens more.

Not long ago, Chauntelle asked her grandmother about Peter Boy’s upcoming birthday. It would be his eighth. Initially, Taniguchi wasn’t sure what to say. They finally decided on an ice cream cake.

“We think of Peter Boy all the time,” Taniguchi says. “The kids ask about him. Physically, he’s not here, but spiritually, he will always be here.”

Taniguchi clutches a stack of Peter Boy photographs. He smiles in every one of them. Even though her son and Jaylin had gone their separate ways well before Peter Boy was born in May 1991, she always thought of Peter Boy as family, and that fuels her anger with those who have investigated the case.

“They have a lot of information that they’re not acting on,” she says. “They keep playing stupid ego games. They haven’t done their job; they’re just brushing it aside.”

Police say they are actively investigating the case and last month turned over several thousand pages of investigation to the Hawaii County prosecutor’s office for review.

Taniguchi doesn’t think anything will come of the investigation.

And Peter Boy is dead, she says.

“Peter Boy gave his life so his brother and sisters could be free,” she says. “And that is so sad.”

The living room is quiet now. Allan and Chauntelle have skipped off to another room, thick stacks of Pokemon cards in their hands. Their laughter floats through the home.

Taniguchi furrows her brow, her hands balling into fists.

“As long as he’s not found, to the day I die, we will keep looking,” she says. “We want to know what happened.”

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