The state attorney general's office is appealing a Family Court order preventing the state's top child welfare official from releasing records related to the case of a 12-year-old Makiki girl whose parents are accused of attempting to starve her to death.

Attorney General Mark Bennett yesterday acknowledged the state filed an appeal to an order issued Aug. 2 by O'ahu Family Court Judge Bode Uale that prohibits state Department of Human Services Director Lillian Koller from releasing records from a 2000 abuse case involving the girl, who was found emaciated, brain-damaged and malnourished in her parent's Kina'u Street apartment in January.

Bennett declined to comment further on the Wright case, citing Family Court confidentiality rules. He would not say when the motion is set for hearing. Uale's clerk declined to release the date of the hearing yesterday, citing Family Court confidentiality rules.

"We're asking him (Uale) to reconsider and we're hoping that he will at least allow a release of the 2000 records," Koller said yesterday. "It's a question of the judge's discretion to decide and weigh the competing interests."

Koller planned on releasing medical records, police reports and social worker evaluations from a 2000 case during which the girl's parents allegedly left her locked in a room without food, water or bathroom for more than eight hours a day.

Uale granted the gag order after a lawyer for the girl, William Durham, filed a motion in Family Court to prevent Koller from releasing the records.

The girl's parents, Denise M. and Melvin Wright Jr., were indicted July 3 on charges of second-degree attempted murder for allegedly starving their daughter between 2006 and 2007.

In the 2000 case, the charges of endangering the welfare of a minor were dropped after the Wrights attended parenting classes and abided by conditions similar to probation for a year.

The Wrights are scheduled for trial in the current case Sept. 10.

Two motions seeking to suppress the release of all records in the case are pending, one in Family Court, the other in Circuit Court.

In addition to the hearing in Family Court on Uale's gag order, O'ahu Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Nishimura will hear a defense motion Aug. 22 to seal all files and impose a gag order prior to the Wrights' criminal trial Sept. 10.

Uale's order states that releasing the records would generate "additional publicity and potentially be harmful to her and not be in her best interests as she tries to live a normal and productive life. ..."

Uale ordered that "all records and related files of this case are deemed confidential and are not to be released without prior order of this court."

On July 13, Deputy Public Defender Debra Loy filed a motion seeking to seal the pretrial records and to institute a gag order after city Deputy Prosecutor Maurice Arrisgado made "statements to the press, which have produced a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing the proceedings."

Loy included a copy of Arrisgado's statements in an article published in The Advertiser July 13 in support of her motion.

Arrisgado said the case is the "most heinous, egregious disregard of human life by anybody, parents or otherwise, and there is no explanation why this child was lost for so long."

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.