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Almost three years after 6-year-old Isabella Kalua died, the public still has no idea why the state and a Family Court placed her with the Waimanalo couple accused of killing her.

The latest impediment? A Family Court judge, Matthew Viola, who believes that releasing redacted court filings might give the public a “distorted and misleading picture” of official actions in the case.

Now it will be up to the Hawaii Supreme Court to decide whether that’s a legitimate reason for preventing the public from knowing how the state Department of Human Services, the Family Court and other players decided to place Isabella with a couple with criminal backgrounds and financial troubles.

Let’s think about this for a second. Viola is not arguing that the privacy rights of Isabella’s surviving siblings will be violated by revealing the horrible things that Isaac and Lehua Kalua are accused of doing to her and may also have done to them.

No — he’s saying that information about the surviving kids can safely be redacted. But the judge fears that the resulting records would leave us with “a distorted and misleading picture of contents of the court record and specifically of the factual and legal record on which the agency and court decisions placing the Children with the Kaluas were made.”

I have a hard time understanding how this could be so. Why would redactions meant to protect privacy include information that would put the state’s actions in a more negative or favorable light?

And even if that somehow were the case, couldn’t DHS or the other players merely clarify the record on their own, without jeopardizing anyone’s privacy?

The state and Family Court have been holding up privacy as a shield to prevent any public scrutiny of their actions in this and other stomach-turning abuse and neglect cases.

Though I believe they have done so cynically, privacy is in fact a legitimate interest.

But the reputations of the state bureaucracy and the Family Court system? How can those considerations outweigh the compelling interest of the public, whose tax dollars fund these operations, knowing how the child welfare system could have made such an awful decision? From what we already know, they had plenty of reasons to whisk these children away from the Kalua household as fast as possible, not agree to have Isabella adopted by them.

This judge is saying that the theoretical harm caused by the public thinking poorly or lacking a full picture of the child welfare system based on a redacted record is graver than the damage from keeping the public in the dark about how a child was placed in a home where she was allegedly tortured and starved to death.

Just imagine the havoc created by members of the public walking around thinking the state could have done a better job in this case. Who knows, they might even demand change. And all based on a redacted record!

This whole saga over Isabella’s case file began last year when I discovered that the federal government requires the states to release certain information about child deaths and near-deaths from abuse and neglect.

I asked DHS for this information over the past few years, and they did give me minimal facts about some cases. But I noticed that Isabella’s was not included. So I asked why.

First, DHS told me that it was because she had not officially been declared dead. The girl’s body has never been found.

Then a judge did declare her dead, but DHS said it was still handcuffed because it had not received the judge’s declaration. So I took it upon myself to send it to them.

Still not good enough. Yes, a judge had declared Isabella dead, DHS said, but the declaration did not say that it was a result of abuse. See, the 6-year-old girl might have just wandered off, never to be heard from again, even though her adoptive parents are facing murder charges. (OK, they didn’t say that, but how else to explain her disappearance except for abuse?)

Enter the Public First Law Center, which advocates for open government. Spurred by my columns, in December the law center portions of Isabella’s case file during the time she was placed with the Kaluas as a foster child and also when the couple adopted her.

The law center sought the case docket and records that could show the legal and factual basis for DHS, the Family Court and any other parties making recommendations and decisions in Isabella’s cases.

Her adoptive father Isaac Kalua, in jail awaiting trial, opposed the motions, as did DHS and the Court Appointed Special Advocates Program, whose workers represent the interests of abused or neglected children. They had various arguments — Isaac Kalua, for instance, cited pretrial publicity in his criminal case.

In June, Viola issued a ruling. He admitted that releasing the information would serve a legitimate purpose by allowing the public to assess the state and court’s actions. Viola was prepared to release a redacted version of a special master report on the Kaluas’ backgrounds and some of the allegations made about them.

Wouldn’t that be enough? Not at all, and here’s why.

According to Public First’s petition to the Supreme Court, the special master’s report echoes allegations included in a civil lawsuit against DHS and others over Isabella’s death.

I don’t know quite the right word for this concerted effort to keep these records secret. “Obscene” comes to mind.

That lawsuit alleges a number of hair-raising things, including that DHS had received an eyewitness report that Isabella was being beaten and starved by her foster mother. The lawsuit cites four separate medical exams that showed signs of abuse — suspicious bruising, finger fractures, clavicle fractures and multiple leg fractures. A teacher allegedly reported Isabella’s troubling behavior and apparent fear of talking about her home life.

What’s lacking from the special master report and the lawsuit is any explanation for how and why DHS and the family court made the recommendations and decisions they did.

Viola wouldn’t release any part of the court record that would reveal those decisions because of the possible “distorted and misleading” picture they would paint after the redactions had been made.

Among the problems with that ruling, according to Public First, is that the Legislature, in creating laws that allow court records to be disclosed in child welfare cases when there is a “legitimate purpose,” did not carve out an exception for the possibility that they might give an incomplete picture of the actions of bureaucrats and judges.

Every child welfare case would have to be redacted to some extent. So if that were grounds for keeping court records secret, the law would be meaningless — or as Public First puts it, “that exception swallows the legitimate purpose.”

It’s a strange rationale for withholding records — “It might make us look bad.” I mean, I think that often is the motivation — they just don’t usually say it out loud. (OK, it’s possible that the “distorted” picture Viola fears might be an overly rosy impression of officials’ actions. If you believe that, I have a directed-energy weapon I’d like to interest you in.)

Public First said it couldn’t find any laws in Hawaii or elsewhere that provided for otherwise public records being withheld for this “distorted picture” reason.

And talk about a subjective standard. What, should judges bring in a dozen random members of the public and ask them if they would think less of their government officials if this redacted record were released?

I don’t know quite the right word for this concerted effort to keep these records secret. “Obscene” comes to mind. The reasons to open them are so glaringly obvious.

“The death of any child by parents that DHS recommended deserves the hard light of public scrutiny to assess what went wrong and how to fix it,” Public First stated. Especially considering the fact that since Isabella’s death another innocent child died under very similar circumstances.

Public First is seeking writs from the Supreme Court blocking Viola’s order and ordering the records to be unsealed. There’s no telling when the Supreme Court will take up the case, or even if they will ask the parties to make arguments. The court could just deny the motions.

Whatever it decides to do, and I sincerely hope it is the right thing, we will be watching.

The Public First Law Center, formerly the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest, is an independent organization created with funding from Pierre Omidyar, who is also a co-founder of Civil Beat. Civil Beat Editor Patti Epler sits on its board of directors