In addition, early in 1998, Judge Kevin Chang accepted another trustee's temporary resignation and removed the other trustees temporarily (King and Roth 254). All this was an attempt to finally reign in the Trust and the trustees, and to give a measure of fiscal control to a trust that was literally out of control and rampant with corruption and abuse. All of this corruption, although it finally was controlled, was allowed to go on for decades, and millions of dollars of money that should have gone to the schools was squandered as a result. Eventually, the trustees were all charged with over $200 million in surcharges, but in a plea deal, those charges were thrown out (King and Roth 279).
The authors had a clear purpose in writing this book, and it was to make public the convoluted case of the Bishop Estate, and how it came to be so full of mismanagement, greed, and corruption, and how that traveled all the way up the ladder to the State Supreme Court. They created a book that cried out for justice, and they offered specific examples of the corruption and arrogance of the trustees. For example, they report on Trustee Lindsay's failure to report for a bankruptcy prison sentence after she lost her trusteeship, because she was "taking care of her husband," who had been spotted at a Las Vegas casino rather than at home on his deathbed (King and Roth 265). This is just one example of how the trustees conducted themselves both before and after the first...
One of the trustees, trustee Jervis, attempted suicide shortly before his own removal trial, while other trustees could not believe they were being charged for something that had become natural for years (King and Roth 252). The authors wanted more than Hawaiians that read the papers to understand the scope of this scandal and what it meant to the children of Hawai'i. They did a very effective job of showing how the corruption spread throughout the political system to become some of the worst ever recorded by a trust entrusted to the management of a set of appointed trustees.
In conclusion, this book is so disturbing because this behavior went on for so long, and so many legal entities, including the attorney general's office, looked the other way for so long. It is very clear just how powerful the trustees were, and how this power made them greedy, arrogant, and corrupt. It is also clear they never cared about the Trust or the Kamehameha School, but only about themselves, and it is good that they were finally removed from power.
References
King, Samuel P. & Roth, Randall W. Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement & Political Manipulation at America's Largest Charitable Trust. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006.
References
Kafka, Franz. "The Metamorphosis." Gutenberg.com. 2008.…
