WAIALUA — At first glance, the redeveloped plantation community once known as Arakawa Camp looks like a tranquil retreat with its quaint cottages, picturesque gardens and rural atmosphere.

But there's been no peace here since Eric and Mirella Davies moved in three years ago, residents say.

Neighbors complain that the couple's penchant for relentlessly playing loud Christian music and sermons for hours at a time — sometimes at 2:30 in the morning — has turned their dream homes into a nightmare.

The Davies say their songs, readings from the Bible and sermons taken off the Internet are part of a lifestyle that they should not be denied.

The situation has resulted in numerous noise complaints, restraining orders against the Davies, several arrests and even a foreclosure action against the couple.

The cost to both sides has exceeded $100,000 in attorney and court fees and forced the Davies into bankruptcy.

On Monday, the Davies home was sold at auction for $9,000 to satisfy a foreclosure action brought by the other homeowners in the community association.

But Eric Davies said he doesn't intend to back down now. He said he has 30 days until the sale closes.

"It's our belief that this entire thing was done exclusively for this purpose, to run up the fee to have an excuse to foreclose on our house," he said. "We will fight for our rights and our home."

Without the problem, the residents — including the Davies — all agree that the small, 15-family community would be idyllic.

"This street would be the most perfect place to live if we didn't have to deal with the Davies," said Ivy Aquila, who lives across the dead-end street from the couple.

For more than three years Jane and Terry Moysa, middle-age grandparents from the Mainland, and their neighbors said they have been trying to dampen what they said is a constant barrage of noise produced by the couple. Two restraining orders have helped but the Davies found a way around them or ignored them altogether, leading to one or the other's arrest, Jane Moysa said.

The Davies, a young couple originally from the Mainland who also lived on Maui before moving to Waialua, say that the Moysas and other neighbors are harassing them, producing their own loud noise and trying to set them up into violating the restraining order that led to more police complaints and arrests.

"There were times when I would actually, out of being gracious, turn it down quieter than I needed to just to have peace," Mirella Davies said. "Every time we went through a peace period, they would come back with some counter thing to provoke conflict again."

POLICE VISITS

The problems began shortly after the Davies moved to the neighborhood in February 2006, said Jane Moysa, who had moved in the month before. The Davies would play their music and sermons for hours, sometimes putting a speaker in the window facing toward the Moysa house next door, about 71 feet away.

"The police were here for the first time Feb. 19," she said, adding that the problem persisted almost daily until finally in June of that year the Moysas hired an attorney to write a cease-and-desist letter.

"They would play sermons ... that you could hear at the end of the street," she said.

In the meantime, the Davies had their complaints against the Moysas, saying they suspect that they are responsible for three death threats to their parrot, a mango thrown through their window, poisoned grass and plant killings.

All of this began because the Moysas didn't like the volume of the Davies' Christian music and sermons, Mirella Davies said.

"Police came out here so much," Mirella Davies said. "It was almost daily, sometime twice a day and what they kept telling her is it's not unreasonable."

But a Circuit Court judge did find the noise levels unreasonable and ordered the Davies in January 2007 to stop noises above 55 decibels. That was later changed to any amplified sound that could be heard 30 feet away. The order was included in the first of two restraining orders against the Davies brought by their Waialua neighbors, but as soon as it was issued the Davies violated it, causing an arrest, said Terry Moysa.

Now instead of amplified music and sermons, Mirella Davies sings and reads aloud from the Bible for hours at a time — loud enough to be heard by some neighbors — and has taken to walking up and down the road with her blue parrot and sometimes pulling a noisy lawn-mower toy that children would play with, he said.

The second restraining order was a result of e-mails the Davies sent to Ivy and Ash Aquila's pastor asking that he help resolve problems between them, Mirella Davies said.

Ivy Aquila said it was much more sinister than that and said even her pastor suggested she seek a temporary restaining order.

The Davies have called the police on the Aquilas for calling their dog, playing basketball or singing while playing outside, Ivy Aquila said, adding that the restraining order is less than perfect.

"If all of us are outside playing ... even though there's a court order telling her she cannot be near our families, she'll come with her bird and she'll start walking right through the middle of us, back and forth until we are forced to go back into our house because if we say or do anything they'll call the police," Aquila said. "We went to the court to try to get help and it's turned around so it's actually entrapped us."

'MORE OF A NUISANCE'

Eric Davies said the restraining orders violate their civil rights and now they fear arrest for listening to the radio or television in their home. At one point, they could not even talk about the Moysas to anyone but that was taken out of the injunction after about 18 months, he said, calling the orders the sign of a government out of control.

"(It's) rampantly violating civil rights ... and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it," he said.

Frustrated by the ineffectiveness of the two restraining orders, the community association then called in city prosecutors to discuss community prosecution, a program effective for getting rid of drug houses.

Because the program focuses on criminal activity, it was not suitable in this case, said Tana Kekina-Cabaniero, deputy prosecuting attorney.

The Davies "seemed to be more of a nuisance" situation, Kekina-Cabaniero said. "We did listen to (the community) and we gave them some idea of what they can do, but we were focusing on the criminal action, not the nuisance action."

The community association eventually worked with an attorney and began citing the Davies for alleged infractions of community association bylaws. Each time the community association sent a notice of violation, it wanted the Davies to pay the attorney's fee.

It was the accumulation of attorney's fees, about $9,000, that led to the foreclosure, Eric Davies said.