A 30-year-old man charged with repeatedly raping an infant girl here was accused in 2005 of abducting his two young sons in North Carolina and placing them at "substantial risk of bodily injury," according to court records.

Danny F. Friddle, of a Wai'omea Street address, made an initial appearance in District Court yesterday after police charged him with 13 counts of sexual assault and abuse of a child under the age of 2.

District Court Family Judge Faye Koyanagi ordered him held on $100,000 bail. At the request of Deputy Public Defender Nicole Gibby, the judge set a preliminary hearing in the case for 1:30 p.m. tomorrow, although it is likely prosecutors will seek a grand jury indictment of Friddle before then.

The investigation of Friddle began last week after a woman found a videotape at a Kalihi bus stop that allegedly depicts Friddle engaging in sex with an infant girl on two occasions.

Court records here show that Friddle was divorced last year from an 'Ewa Beach woman. The couple have a daughter born in June 2006.

According to a police affidavit, Friddle's ex-wife was interviewed by Honolulu Police Department officers last week and she identified Friddle as the man in the videotape.

The video turned over to police allegedly contains evidence of two sexual encounters with an infant.

The first is dated June 25, 2006, and allegedly shows five minutes of a sexual encounter between Friddle and a girl who appears to be less than 6 months old, according to police.

The second is dated Jan. 8, 2007, and allegedly shows Friddle engaged in repeated sexual activity with a victim who appears to be about 1 year old, according to an HPD affidavit.

Friddle, whose occupation was listed in last year's divorce case as both a car salesman and an employee of a security guard company, is a high school graduate who was born and raised in North Carolina. An earlier marriage there ended in divorce in 2005.

Friddle's first wife obtained a court order from a Rutherford County, N.C., judge in May 2005 granting custody of the couple's two sons, now 6 and 4 years old, to their mother.

Based on the mother's allegations of "certain acts and conduct" by Friddle, the judge ruled "that there is an immediate and present danger of serious and irreparable harm to the minor children."

The same order said Friddle had "already abducted the minor children for the purposes of avoiding the jurisdiction of the courts of Rutherford County."

The custody order, signed May 17, 2005, said, "there is a substantial risk to (the minor children) being exposed to bodily injury."

Attorneys for Friddle's first wife in North Carolina declined yesterday to comment on the case.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.