by Andrew Walden
This morning’s Star-Advertiser includes a lengthy book review trashing former DHS Director Lilian Koller’s newly published e-book, “PETER BOY Hawai'i's Most Notorious Case Of Child Abuse And Murder.”
It is obvious the Star-Advertiser’s hatchet-job reflects the fact that one or more entrenched interests within the DHS culture of secrecy are afraid of this book and its contents. As Lingle’s DHS director, Koller in 2005 released the 2000-plus pages of DHS files on the Peter Boy case. The records were removed when Abercrombie became governor in order to protect HGEA members from public scrutiny. The book is based on those records, hence the reaction.
Why are DHS insiders afraid of this book? Buried in a separate Star-Advertiser article, the answer comes:
After Peter Boy’s birth on May 1, 1991, he was medevaced with a respiratory problem from Hilo to Honolulu, where he was hospitalized for two weeks.
Meanwhile, his grandmother Yolanda Acol discovered half brother Allan, 4, and half sister Chauntelle, 2, with bruises and cuts on their faces and reported it to CWS and police.
Even though a CWS worker pinpointed his father as the abuser, CWS allowed the medically fragile infant, who needed constant monitoring, to be released to his parents, Koller said. By the time he was 3 months old, Peter Boy had multiple broken bones, which were determined to be from abuse.
Near his end, and a month before his sixth birthday, a 15-year-old cousin told her therapist that Kema broke Peter Boy’s arm and forced him to eat dog feces, and that the family was planning to move from Nanawale to Hilo.
The therapist reported the abuse April 4, 1997, but CWS and police didn’t start investigating until June 1997. By then it was too late. Peter Boy’s death, prosecutors say, likely occurred from septic shock due to a large festering wound in his arm.
“CPS had been bamboozled by the parents, thinking the Acols (maternal grandparents James and Yolanda) were just trying to meddle too much,” Koller said. “That’s why they minimized the injuries.” One worker was “suckered into believing what Jaylin and Peter say” — that the Acols were trying to control and decide how to raise the kids, she said.
Koller blames the system and those within that system who failed Peter Boy, including a Family Court judge, CWS social workers who allowed him to be returned to his abusive parents, and a court-appointed psychologist who pushed family reunification first. She said the judge failed to review the records and relied on social workers’ recommendations….
Private investigator Steve Lane, who has been appointed by the court to represent Peter Boy’s siblings’ interests as special master to determine whether grounds exist to sue the state for damages, also featured newborn Peter Boy’s illness in a report to Family Court.
He was given access to the DHS documents, which were resealed in 2011 by Koller’s successor and no longer accessible to the public. Lane wrote that if CWS had followed its own standards and protocols and acted on the therapist’s complaint, Peter Boy would have been alive today.
He concluded in his April 12 report that the siblings and the estate have claims against the state DHS’ Child Welfare Services.
To find out what the Star-Adv and DHS are afraid of, there is only one solution … READ THE BOOK
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Amazon: PETER BOY Hawai'i's Most Notorious Case Of Child Abuse And Murder
From Amazon.com
In this four-part book series, the author reveals the shocking details of Hawai'i's most notorious child abuse and murder case. The facts are literally torn from the 2,000 pages of official agency records that the book's author, Lillian B. Koller, J.D., then Hawai'i's Human Services State Director, courageously disclosed to the public in 2005. Now, in these books, Koller continues – part whistleblower and part storyteller – to reveal the heartbreaking story of Peter Boy’s short life, from 1991 to 1997.
From emotively lyrical to powerfully analytic, Koller uniquely combines “true life” and “true crime” genres, to create an engaging, non-fiction, book series – sometimes chilling, sometimes agonizing, but always surprisingly easy to read. It’s a “must read” for everyone who loves Peter Boy as well as anyone who cares about children and yearns to understand how this tragedy could have happened.
Koller shines a bright light on how Hawai'i's “system” to protect children from parental child abuse and neglect, failed little Peter Boy, again and again. Her poignant questions to the reader serve as welcome, silver linings – showing the way to improve such still-flawed “systems,” everywhere, to prevent more children from needlessly suffering and dying.
With compassion, hope, and unflinching honesty, Koller exposes more than the what, when, where, why, and how of Peter Boy’s tragedy. She also shares her own parents’ inspiration as Holocaust survivors. This book demonstrates, as Koller puts it, “the survivor's relentless quest for meaning when the pursuit of justice is futile.”
LINK >>> Buy Book Here