FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Uruma, Okinawa
— It’s been a year since 8-year-old Jordan Peterson died from injuries
allegedly inflicted in a beating by his stepfather at his off-base home in
Uruma.
But it was just last week that Jordan’s real dad found out his son
was gone.
“You can’t believe my shock,” Damion Peterson said Monday in
a telephone interview from his San
Antonio home. “All in one day a friend said he had
information that the military on Okinawa had investigated the possibility that Jordan
was abused. And then I called my ex-mother-in-law to find out about the abuse
and she tells me he’s been dead for a year.”
That was April 7. A Google search of his son’s name then
brought home the horrible truth.
Peterson’s sister found a series of stories in Stars and
Stripes that detailed Jordan’s death and the arrest — and later release —
of the boy’s stepfather, Roberto Deleon, by Japanese police who alleged the
child was beaten to death.
“My brother was devastated,” Marlo Saenz said. “The divorce
was horrible, but he had always hoped to see Jordan again. He was the sweetest
little boy.”
Peterson, 32-year-old former airman now living in Texas, said he had been
estranged from his ex-wife for four years and she refused to let him have
contact with his son during most of that time. He said she left him while they
were living in Germany and
he lost the ability to have Jordan
for the summer visitations spelled out in their divorce decree.
“I was single, living in the dorms,” Peterson said. “I
couldn’t keep him with me.”
He said he continued to have child support taken out of his
paycheck, but had infrequent phone contact.
“She’d tell me Jordan did not want to talk to me,”
he said.
When Peterson transferred back to the States and was
discharged, he remarried. He now has a son and a daughter, ages 2 and 1, and
was hoping to work out visitation with Jordan
when his ex-wife, Staff Sgt. Sabrina Deleon, returned from a three-year tour on
Okinawa that began in 2004.
Peterson said the last time he saw his son was just before
the boy’s mother left for Okinawa.
In the week that followed the discovery of his son’s death,
Peterson and other family members have been busy seeking information about what
had happened. He said he called his ex-wife in Maryland
— she is now assigned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware — but the calls turned into
arguments and her phone has since been switched to an unlisted number.
Stripes was unable to contact Sabrina Deleon.
Peterson also said he spoke to Roberto Deleon before the
number was changed, but he wasn’t sure who he was at first. Peterson had not
known that his ex-wife, who had remarried a man named Brown after their
divorce, had gotten another divorce and had remarried on Okinawa.
“He yelled and cussed me out,” Peterson said of Roberto
Deleon, 26.
~ ‘Through the cracks’ ~
Peterson said a friend who worked on child welfare cases at
a base in Texas told him April 7 that he had seen files from the Air Force on
Okinawa that showed “multiple abuse and neglect cases filed against [his
ex-wife and Roberto Deleon] by the Family Advocacy Clinic on Okinawa.”
“But somehow the military allowed my son to fall through the
cracks because they lived off base,” Peterson said.
Citing privacy rules, the Air Force and Department of
Defense Dependents Schools officials have repeatedly declined to comment on
whether any reports of abuse were made to them prior to Jordan’s death.
One abuse complaint was filed with Japanese authorities in
November 2006, when an Okinawan woman found Jordan wandering barefoot and
shirtless, dressed only in shorts, a few blocks from his Uruma home. She said
the boy was bruised and told her he was running away from home. She took him to
a store and bought him some clothes, but he refused to wear them, telling her
that his stepfather would not allow him to wear anything new.
The woman, Hisa Uechi, now 23, called the Okinawa
prefectural police, who questioned the boy. But he refused to speak and Jordan
was handed over to his mother.
“It seemed neither
the Okinawa or military authorities would do
anything for him,” Uechi said at the time.
A year later, Jordan’s death still affects her.
On April 11, she left flowers outside the house where the boy once lived.
Observing the first anniversary of a death is an important Buddhist-influenced
Japanese tradition.
“I just wanted to let him know that he is still remembered,”
she said.
~ A new family occupies the house. ~
“There was no trace at all that Jordan once lived there,” Uechi
said. “It was like his existence was completely and quietly wiped away.”
She said she shed tears of joy when she learned that Jordan’s
biological father and his family are seeking justice for the young boy.
After Jordan’s
death, the director of the Okinawa Prefectural Department of Health and Welfare
admitted her office failed to properly investigate the November 2006 abuse
report.
“We should have gone to his home and checked up on him,” the
director told Japanese reporters last July. “It might have saved his life.”
Damion Peterson is working to ensure the case does not fall
through the cracks again. He has contacted his congressman to look into the
matter and has confirmed with the U.S. District Attorney’s office for the
Eastern District of Maryland that Jordan’s death is being
investigated.
~ Roberto Deleon remains the prime suspect. ~
Deleon was alone with the boy April 11, 2007, when he called his wife and
said Jordan
had stopped breathing. His wife rushed home with a military ambulance in tow
and the child was taken to the U.S. Naval Hospital on Camp Lester, where he was
pronounced dead about two hours later.
An autopsy showed he had a massive loss of blood from
internal injuries, according to Okinawa
police, who arrested Deleon on May 16 on suspicion of causing the injuries that
resulted in the boy’s death.
But on June 6, Deleon was released with no charges filed.
Hirokazu Urata, the deputy chief prosecutor for Okinawa,
said there was not enough evidence to prove Deleon was responsible.
“The autopsy showed he died from the shock of excessive
bleeding caused by recent damage to the liver,” Urata said when Deleon was
released. “A criminal act was highly probable, but there is insufficient evidence
the suspect inflicted the fatal injury.”
The military had no jurisdiction over Deleon, a civilian, and Air Force
investigators forwarded their case files to the U.S. Justice Department.
The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, passed in
2000, treats as a federal crime any acts committed outside the United States
that would have been considered felonies if committed on federal lands in the
U.S. The cases can be tried by any federal court.
In a message to Texas Rep. Nick Lampson, Peterson said the autopsy performed at
USNH showed Jordan
had a lacerated liver “and ruled the case a homicide with the stepfather as the
only suspect.”
“I was not even notified of the murder,” Peterson wrote to
Lampson. “His mother hid it from me for a whole year...
“She changed her address several times over the years; she
has retained at least three different last names in the past three years and
refused to keep me updated about my son’s whereabouts, as she was ordered to do
per our divorce decree.”
“I paid child support for Jordan
until he disappeared into Japan,”
Peterson said Monday.
“We tried several times to get a current address. We even sought the help of
the Veterans Administration, but we couldn’t locate her and she never called us
— not even about the funeral. Finally, I just felt I’d have to wait until Jordan
was older and could see me on his own and I could apologize for the lost years
and tell him how much I loved him.”
Jordan’s
obituary in the local newspaper made no mention of his father, who visited his
son’s grave on the one-year anniversary of his death.
Peterson went there with several other family members,
including his 2-year-old son, Israel.
“I stayed there for two hours,” he said. “Israel looks so much like the engraving of Jordan
on the headstone that I broke down. I didn’t want to leave.”
[David Allen, “Former Airman Shocked To Learn His Son Has Been Dead
For A Year,” Pacific Stars & Stripes (Okinawa, Japan), Apr. 16, 2008]
***
FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): Baltimore, Md. – U.S. District
Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Roberto E. DeLeon, age 28, of Glen Burnie,
Maryland today to 30 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised
release, for the murder and assault of his stepson while the family was
stationed in Japan. DeLeon was convicted by a federal jury on October 22, 2009.
The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the
District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Brigadier General Dana Simmons,
Commander Air Force Office of Special Investigations; and Special Agent in Charge
Richard McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"Robert DeLeon has been held accountable for the
senseless murder of his 8-year-old stepson Jordan Peterson in Japan, where
Jordan's mother was serving in the U.S. Air Force," said U.S. Attorney Rod
J. Rosenstein." Although the murder did not occur on a U.S. military base,
federal law allows us to prosecute persons who accompany our Armed Forces for
crimes committed in foreign countries."
According to the evidence presented at the three week trial,
Jordan died on April 11, 2007, as a result of internal bleeding due to a
laceration of his liver caused by blunt force trauma to the abdomen. The injury
is consistent with a hard punch to the stomach—a type of punishment and
discipline DeLeon would inflict upon Jordan, according to trial evidence.
Jordan was 8 years old, 3 feet 11 inches, and weighed 52 pounds at the time of
his death.
At the time of Jordan's murder, DeLeon was the husband of a
member of the U.S. Air Force assigned to Kadena Air Base in Japan. DeLeon had
joined her and her two children on a tour of duty. The evidence at trial showed
that, very soon after DeLeon moved into the family home, he began to assert
disciplinary authority over the children. Jordan, in particular, received the brunt
of DeLeon's strict and stern measures.
Evidence of the abuse of Jordan, going back to September
2006, came from testimony provided during the trial by physicians, family
advocacy personnel, teachers, and neighbors, who had contact with and observed the
injuries to Jordan. At the time of Jordan's death, DeLeon was in counselling
with the Family Advocacy Program on base because of the severe punishment he
inflicted upon Jordan.
According to evidence presented at trial, after the
defendant returned to Japan from a brief visit to the United States in March
2007, DeLeon began a new form of abuse: making the young boy stand with his
arms outstretched while DeLeon punched him in the stomach as hard as he could.
Evidence established that the fatal blow to Jordan's abdomen
was likely inflicted upon Jordan sometime between the night before and the
morning of his death. Later that morning, Jordan complained to his stepfather
that his stomach, abdomen, and groin hurt; of blurry vision; dizziness; and an
inability to eat. At one point, Jordan was slumped over the sink. Emergency
medical personnel arrived at about 12:56 p.m. to find Jordan with no vital
signs. Despite the efforts of medical personnel to revive the young boy,
doctors pronounced him dead at about 2:00 p.m.
The medical examiner performed the autopsy and testified at
trial. The autopsy revealed that in addition to the lacerated liver, there were
numerous other injuries to Jordan's body including: deep bruises on the
buttocks in caused by a belt or strap, bruising on his thigh, multiple bruises
to the chest consistent with forceful finger poking, and bruising on the wrist
and forearm, consistent with being grabbed. The bruises on the buttocks
inflicted a few days prior were the basis of the assault charge in the
indictment.
United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended Assistant
United States Attorneys P. Michael Cunningham and Paul E. Budlow, who
prosecuted the case.
[“Husband of U.S. Airman Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for the Murder
of His Stepson in Japan, Law Enacted in 2000 Authorizes Prosecution for
Overseas Crimes,” United States Attorney's Office, District of Maryland,
Press Release, Jan. 6, 2010]
***
