Accused Big Island kidnapper claims entrapment

A 42-year-old Big Island man accused of kidnapping his daughter from the girl’s mother in Nicaragua and using another daughter’s passport to smuggle the girl into the United States wants to tell a federal jury that the government tricked him into breaking the law.

Peter Christopher of Honomu is charged with the fraudulent use of the second daughter’s passport and lying when later applying for a passport for the first daughter. Trial in U.S. District Court is scheduled for November.

Christopher filed papers last week asking the court for permission to use the entrapment defense for the charge accusing him of making false statements on a passport application. He said the government makes the passport application process and forms confusing, then uses the information the applicants provide to prosecute them for making false statements.

He said in his request that he asked the postmaster in Pepeekeo for help in filling out the passport application because of “the difficulty I was having with the boxes and questions on the forms.” He said he went into extraordinary detail and provided multiple ways of contacting the girl’s mother in Nicaragua.

“If I had wanted to trick or fool the government in any way, or hide anything from the government, I would never have given all this information,” Christopher says in his request.

The government says Christopher needed a new passport for the girl because he had intentionally left her original one in Nicaragua so authorities wouldn’t know he had taken her out of the country, where the girl’s mother has custody.

The false-statement charge accuses Christopher of lying about losing the girl’s original passport and saying that he took the girl out of Nicaragua because her mother ceased to fulfill her obligations to care for the girl.

The girl left Nicaragua and arrived in Hawaii in 2010. Following Christopher’s arrest in April, foster parents took over care of the girl, now 11, with the state’s Child Welfare Services petitioning for custody.

Christopher has three younger children with another woman, including the daughter whose passport he is accused of using illegally in 2010. The children are in the custody of their mother, Christopher’s ex-wife.

The federal public defender represented Christopher following his arrest. The government objected because Christopher claimed in a recent job posting for an operations manager that his internet company, Together Light Inc., takes in more than $1 million in revenue annually. The company connects men with women in the Philippines through its website ChristianFilipina.com.

Christopher chose to represent himself after the public defender withdrew from the case. The court, however, appointed a lawyer to serve as Christopher’s standby counsel at taxpayer expense.