Today, now, this very minute, actions must be underway at the state’s Child Welfare Services (CWS) to improve help to vulnerable keiki. Must.
Within a recent week’s span, two heinous deaths of tortured kids came to public light:
w On March 4, an Oahu grand jury indicted Janae Perez, 25, and her girlfriend Ashleigh Utley, 34, for the 2024 starvation and beating death of Perez’s daughter, 3-year-old Sarai Perez-Riviera. The pair entered not guilty pleas Monday to five felony counts, including second-degree murder, first-degree assault and kidnapping.
w Three days later, Sina Pumehana Pili, 39, was charged with manslaughter for allegedly torturing and neglecting adopted daughter Azaeliyah Pili-Ah You, 11, who died in December 2023. Adding to the shock of the brutality alleged is that Pili was working as a behavioral health specialist and senior class adviser at Kahuku High and Intermediate School. She was arrested on campus Friday, and was scheduled to be arraigned today.
The defendants are presumed innocent at this time. Nevertheless, everyone needs to know about the sheer savagery under which these kids died.
Sarai — whose photos in earlier days show a smiling, active girl with bright wide eyes — would die from starvation just a month shy of her 4th birthday. She was only 20.5 pounds, the average weight of an 11- to 14-month-old infant — and in addition to being starved and dehydrated, she had numerous blunt-force injuries to her head, face, back, buttocks and extremities.
Azaeliyah had extensive bruising “deep enough to penetrate skin” and reaching her diaphragm, said police Lt. Deena Thoemmes. Her wounds were consistent with being bitten, and injuries included internal ones to her neck “likely from strangulation,” two broken ribs and a scalp hemorrhage.
“Child torture is insidious. It is gradual, calculated and systematic, and intended to break its victims completely,” said Thoemmes, in discussing Azaeliyah’s case.
The cruelty of these deaths requires — demands — that Hawaii wake up and take immediate protective action.
State lawmakers are urged to pass Senate Bill 281, which would make child torture a Class A felony — on par with manslaughter — punishable by 20 years in prison. It also would allow law enforcement more power to intervene, investigate and arrest people who abuse children.
As chillingly stated in the bill: “Many forms of cruel and degrading sadism are inadequately addressed by the current criminal law.”
Outrage that Hawaii’s keiki are being so monstrously beaten or starved to death — behind closed doors, but in our midst — must drive prevention.
Bearing responsibility are those who suspect but stay on the sidelines; family members, too, must own their inactions as readily as they blame others. And certainly culpable is the state Department of Human Services’ CWS, which has a sad history of failing keiki suspected of being abused. In fact, the grandmother of Sarai Perez-Riviera is now suing the agency, which she claims knew of the welfare concerns over Sarai and her three siblings, months before the child’s death.
In her suit, Leah Schnabel says she called CWS to report that her grandchildren “had been removed from school, appeared dirty and uncared for, and appeared to be skinny and losing weight.” On March 5, 2024, she says, she spoke to a representative of Parents and Children Together, a contractor for the state, to report her concerns about the children’s physical welfare; she would call PACT again on May 23 and 26, but to no avail — until Sarai died in June 2024, and her siblings were removed from their Kapolei home.
“Why is it so hard to get CWS to follow through?” Tiffany Texeira, Sarai’s aunt, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “Why is there not better laws? They say, ‘See something. Say something.’ We did, and still the same results.”
Let’s hope that this, and another, new lawsuit will shed needed light on CWS’ protocols and actions. That other suit, over the 2024 death of Geanna Bradley, 10, claims that a state social worker dismissed reported warnings of abuse.
For the sake of the children, quick improvements must be made — at least in the urgency of responses to suspected abuse being reported. Do not be complacent. Because if we are, we are all complicit.
To report abuse
The statewide toll-free child abuse reporting hotline is 1-800-494-3991; also on Oahu, call 832-5300.
