June 6, 1999

For nearly two years, as Hawaii’s struggle with child abuse gained notoriety, critics frequently called for an independent review of the state Department of Human Services’ secretive child protection system.

Often, director Susan Chandler responded with a plea for the community — “the village” — to get involved.

This summer a new federally mandated citizen review panel could satisfy both requests. The volunteer panel — one of at least three the state hopes to set up — is to have access to any report, court document or case it wants to review. It will produce a public report each year with recommendations to the Department of Human Services.

Hawaii will just barely meet the July 1 deadline to form the group. Although panels are being talked about for Oahu and the Big Island, only Kauai is close to being ready.

Chandler’s department has come under fire for the way it handled several child abuse cases since August 1997, when Reubyne Buentipo Jr., then a 4-year-old Kailua boy, was beaten into a coma. Lawmakers and child welfare advocates questioned department policies that repeatedly returned him to a dangerous home.

In the months that followed, other controversial cases came to light, including the death of Cedra Edwards and the disappearance of Peter Boy Kema. Both were in protective foster custody at some point.

“You need the review panel,” said state Rep. Dennis Arakaki (D-Kalihi Valley, Kamehameha Heights), chairman of the House Human Services and Housing Committee and a long-time champion of children’s needs.

“(Child Protective Services) is such a closed system. There is no way you can challenge any of the policies or decisions being made,” Arakaki said. “Somebody needs to be able to look at it and make that assessment.”

Chandler calls the review panels “terrific.”

“This is hopefully a long-term initiative to improve child welfare services in this state with expertise from citizens,” she said. “I will certainly take every recommendation from them very seriously.”

The panels, required by the 1996 amendments to the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, will have diverse membership, Chandler said: adoptive or foster parents, doctors, ministers, former foster children, teachers, sex-abuse treatment counselors and ordinary citizens.

After some initial training, panel members will choose their own direction. “They might want to look at instances of serious re-abuse and what was the system’s response,” Chandler said. “They could pick anything within the system.”

Since 1996 the department has investigated about 5,000 reports of abuse and neglect each year. About half are confirmed statewide and by the counties, except for Kauai County, where 30 to 40 percent of cases are confirmed.

La Vonne Pironti of Kauai, chairwoman of the Child Welfare Services State Advisory Council, is overseeing the formation of her island’s review panel.

Potential members are being suggested by the community and the child welfare system. Chandler has made it clear to panel organizers that she doesn’t want members who already serve on public child-abuse groups, such as the legislative roundtable, and Pironti promised, “This panel won’t have those kinds of links.”

Pironti said it’s important to keep the panel free of state agencies or child welfare organizations connected with the Department of Human Services. “I think it gives them more freedom to criticize the system if they need to,” she said.

Positive results are possible with that kind of true independence, said Sarah Casken, executive director of the Hawaii Foster Parents Association.

“I guess it depends on who is on it — if they are strong personalities,” Casken said. “And part of it depends on the openness of the department to have the ‘village’ come in, rather than circle the wagons. If the department sees this as an opportunity and not a threat, there is real potential here.”

But Casken noted that the panels were not the state’s idea.

“I think that it is good that we have the impetus from (the federal government) to do this, because sometimes we don’t do things unless someone makes us do things,” she said.

Similar panels have been used on the Mainland since the 1980s. The Iowa Legislature created the Iowa Citizen Foster Care Review Boards in 1984 and gave them wide access.

Iowa’s volunteer boards even review cases, as a sort of backup to Family Court, said Dave Zimmerman, an area administrator in Cedar Rapids. They hold their own hearings, usually in informal settings such as a church or community hall.

The boards frequently recommend changes to the system in their annual report to the Iowa Legislature. And in an environment where the average social worker quits after two years, many board members have been around for a decade, Zimmerman said, bringing credibility to the process.

“We are unbiased,” he said. “The purpose is to advocate for the child and what is in the best interests of the child. We don’t have rules of evidence, but we have rules of common sense.”

On Kauai, the review panel will include the director of the sex assault treatment program for the local YWCA, Joan Luzney. Before moving to Kauai 18 months ago, Luzney oversaw child welfare services in Northern California’s Napa County.

Luzney wants to contribute to her new home, but she hopes the review panel won’t end up being a waste of time.

“I just don’t want it to be a citizens’ group that has no value in terms of impact,” she said. “That is the problem with advisory groups. How much power or say do they really have?

“And what is the feedback loop? What happens to that feedback? Does it disappear in a vacuum or is it an ongoing exchange?”

July 27, 1999

Family Court records about missing Big Island boy Peter Kema Jr. cannot be released because they are intertwined with information about siblings whose privacy should be respected, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

The opinion explained the high court’s initial ruling last November denying The Honolulu Advertiser’s request for the Family Court file.

The decision reversed a ruling by Big Island Family Court Judge Ben H. Gaddis that the file could be made public if information about the siblings was “redacted,” or blacked out, on the copies.

Media attorney Jeff Portnoy, who represented The Advertiser, said he was pleased the Supreme Court had agreed for the first time in Hawaii history with The Advertiser’s fundamental argument that some Family Court records could be released if the possible benefit to a child outweighed the child’s privacy rights.

Portnoy said public release of the Peter Boy file might give rise to information about the whereabouts of the 7-year-old who was reported missing in 1998.

But Portnoy said he was disappointed the high court chose to substitute its own belief about whether the file could be sufficiently screened to protect the other children over the judgment of the Family Court judge who had reviewed the file word for word.

The newspaper request for the records was opposed by the boy’s father, Peter Kema Sr., and mother, Jaylin Kema, and the father of the siblings, as well as by the Department of Human Services.

A series of Advertiser articles about the missing child raised concerns about the way the Department of Human Services was handling child-abuse cases. The Kema case is still under investigation.

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