American Christians charged with Child Trafficking in Haiti

[PrairieGirl]

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/HaitiEarthquake...http://abcnews.go.com/WN/HaitiEarthquake/ten-americans-haiti-charged-child-trafficking-pm-calls/story?

Ten Americans Charged With Child Trafficking in Haiti; PM Calls It 'Kidnapping'
Group Spokesperson: 'We Were Just Trying to Do the Right Thing'
By LEE FERRAN and AYANA HARRY

Jan. 31, 2010 —

Ten Americans have been formally charged by Haitian authorities for what the prime minister called the "kidnapping" of Haitian children, the official told ABC News today.

"They were arrested on the border with children that were not theirs and that they had no papers for those children," Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told ABC News. "For me it's not Americans that were arrested, it was kidnappers that were arrested."

The 10 Baptist missionaries, mostly from an Idaho church group, said they were attempting to bring 33 Haitian children to an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic when they were arrested Friday night at a border crossing.

"We came here simply to help these children and we went to the border based on the approval of the Dominican government to take the children into the Dominican Republic and the pastor entrusting these precious children to our care because his orphanage collapsed and his churches collapsed, and he had nowhere for these children to go," the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby said.

"In this chaos the government is in right now, we were just trying to do the right thing," she said.

The Americans are being held in a police station near the airport at Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, and have been visited by U.S. officials, according to a statement by the U.S. embassy in Haiti.

According to Bellerive, some of the children were not orphans and were asking about their parents. Haitian officials contacted the American ambassador "to let them know that there was American citizens involved in kidnapping."

When asked about the charges against them, several in the group simply responded to ABC News, "Philippians 1." The first chapter of Philippians chronicles when the apostle Paul was in prison for preaching the gospel.

Pastor: 'It Probably Comes Down to Paperwork'

The detained Americans are the first to be charged in connection to child trafficking since the country's devastating earthquake on Jan. 12. The quake reportedly affected around 3 million children, in many cases separating them from the their parents and leaving many vulnerable to traffickers.

"We have concerns about traffickers, we have concerns about pedophiles," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said at a briefing last week. "We've seen a couple of cases of those in recent days. So this is just something we are working collectively with those organizations that are actively trying to help children, people on the ground, be alert for this kind of danger."

The pastor for the Idaho church where five of the detained Americans are members insists their mission was innocent.

"Our team traveled down to Port-au-Prince with a desire to help rescue orphans," Clint Henry, pastor of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Idaho, told The Associated Press.

"It probably comes down to paperwork and we believed that we had done everything we needed to do but they're saying that something else needed to happen," Henry told CBS' Idaho affiliate 2News.

"I know there has been illegal activity down there and it's unfortunate that we would be associated with that," Henry said. "Our hope would be that this situation could be settled tomorrow, but we've been trying to bring those children out for days and days and days, so I don't know what to say other than God is in control and he's got it figured out and we're just trusting him right now."

The group is scheduled to appear before a judge in Haiti Monday, Henry said.

[catsnotkids]

I think the Haitian government is out of line here - if there are starving kids with no one to care for them and a bunch of people from other countries WANT them - let the people take the kids! The whole thing of waiting 5 years to adopt and all this other crap is ridiculous in this situation.

[Horse Racer]

I do have to wonder what these people were up to. Maybe I'm just being cynical because it's a Christian group but you have wonder if there aren't groups and individuals going in there to snatch children for their own reasons.

[Ziggy]

It has happened in the past, where Christian groups sweep into a devastated country and remove children at random 'for their own good'. I don't trust them at all. This is in opposition to flights that are going to other countries with children that already have adoptive parents - essentially they are fast-forwarding the adoption process (over 100 children have come to Canada that way).

According to our information here, it takes between 2 and 3 years to adopt a child from Haiti. The item that interested me is that some of the adopters 'knew the childrens' birth parents", which indicates that the parents were not dead but just unable to care for their kids. In which case, why not support the parents and help them to be better parents?

After an earthquake many children are separated from their parents, or their parents are killed. An approximately equal number of children have been killed (well, perhaps more of one than the other, depending upon overall ratios in the country). We didn't see mass numbers of children brought to North America after the tsunami hit Asia because all the orphaned kids found homes... with neighbours and family members who had lost their own children.

They decreed a while ago that all children leaving Haiti have to have the specific approval of the president of the country, to avoid problems with trafficking. If these guys didn't get that approval then I suggest kicking them out of the country.

I also come from a background where a lot of people descend onto a devastated country to 'help', but in fact they are doing it for their own good and are causing more problems than they are solving. It irritates the heck out of me!

[CF Scorpio]

I saw this on the news this morning. Those people all had that scary cult look in their eyes. How could you really be so naive and dumb that you don't know you need paperwork to take a human being away?

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(02-01-2010 10:53 AM)catsnotkids Wrote:  I think the Haitian government is out of line here - if there are starving kids with no one to care for them and a bunch of people from other countries WANT them - let the people take the kids! The whole thing of waiting 5 years to adopt and all this other crap is ridiculous in this situation.

The problem is that at least half the kids have living parents, knew their parents' phone numbers, and were screaming and crying to be reunited with their parents. These are not poor little orphans.

[cassia]

Shouldn't these Christians "adopt" the entire family and feed and shelter them in Haiti?

Do good Christians sweep into an area of devastation to take the kids away and leave everyone else to starve?

One just dies NOT grab a bunch of kids who have families and take them to other countries without documentation.
That is what a cult would do, what a child molester would do, and what human traffickers do.

[PrairieGirl]

I'm horrified as well. And then, instead of making proper arguments they cite scripture???? Puh-leez. Either you have permission to take the kids -- legal permission -- or you don't. You DO NOT cross borders with children -- even in America, that's against the law! You can't cross a state line with another person's kid, unless you have explicit permission, preferably in writing. But they think they can take kids to a foreign country on the say-so of a preacher on each side of the line? -- that's just brainless.

[Ziggy]

The latest:
(photo of them is included)
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/01...http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/01/haiti-orphans-baptists-1

Haiti may force Baptists back to U.S.
Group accused of smuggling orphans out of devastated country

Officials in Haiti say they are talking with U.S. diplomats about whether 10 American Baptists arrested trying to take children out of the country should be sent to the United States for prosecution.

A lawyer representing the Americans said that nine of the 10 are being treated poorly while the 10th, a diabetic, was hospitalized after fainting.

Haiti's communications minister said the Americans might have to face justice in the United States because Haiti's court system has been crippled, and courthouses destroyed, by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Dominican Republic lawyer Jorge Puello said the Americans are crammed in a small room at Haiti's judicial police headquarters. He claims they have not been given adequate medical care or food.

Children taken to Dominican Republic

The Baptists are accused of taking 33 children out of the country without permission or documentation.

They were arrested Friday night trying to cross the border into the Dominican Republic in a bus and taken to judicial police headquarters in Port-au-Prince.

Members of the non-profit New Life Children's Refuge, most from Idaho, insist they were "just trying to do the right thing" by rescuing abandoned and traumatized children, said the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby.

Silsby, 40, said she hadn't been following news reports while in Haiti, and didn't think she needed Haitian permission to take them out of the country. She said her group had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, who she said were brought to a Haitian pastor, whom she would not identify, by distant relatives.

Silsby admitted she had not obtained the proper Haitian documents for the children, whose names were written on pink tape on their shirts.

Haitian PM outraged

But Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said Sunday he was outraged by the group's "illegal trafficking of children" in a country long afflicted by foreign meddling.

Haiti's overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the quake amid fears that orphaned or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold.

Without proper documents and concerted efforts to track down their parents, they could be forever separated from family members able and willing to care for them.

Bellerive's personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.

"The instinct to swoop in and rescue children may be a natural impulse, but it cannot be the solution for the tens of thousands of children left vulnerable by the Haiti earthquake," said Deb Barry, of Save the Children, which wants a moratorium on new adoptions. "The possibility of a child being scooped up and mistakenly labelled an orphan in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster is incredibly high."

The children involved with the Baptist group were aged two months to 12 years old. They were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, where spokesman George Willeit said they arrived "very hungry, very thirsty."

A two- to three-month old baby was dehydrated and had to be hospitalized, he said. An orphanage worker held and caressed another, older baby, who was feverish and looked disoriented.

"One girl was crying, and saying, 'I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.' And she thought she was going on a summer camp or a boarding school or something like that," Willeit said.

Willeit also said some of the children are not orphans but have living parents, who were reportedly told that the children were going on an extended holiday from the post-quake misery.

The orphanage was working to reunite the children with their families, joining an effort organized by the Haitian government, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other NGOs.

*************************
I can't believe that their lawyer is complaining about the way that they are treated. They are in a country that has completely fallen apart and they are complaining about a lack of supplies and being in a crowded room? Tough shit, that's what everyone there is experiencing! I also can't believe that they brought a diabetic with them. First rule of going to a place like that: don't bring people with life-threatening problems that require constant monitoring. I don't care if she brought enough supplies to last her a long time, shit happens and that person should have never contemplated going (real aid organisations and government employees going to nasty places cannot be diabetic or have similarly dangerous problems).

What else can I complain about? Oh, the fact that they've admitted that they didn't research the process for taking the children across an international border.

I don't know if it's possible, but I want the US to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that these idiots don't try something like this ever again.

[eslbee]

Believe it or not, I will give the church group the benefit of the doubt here. A couple of reasons. If nothing else, I doubt there's any molestation going on. They are way too visible for that. They may have messed up administratively, and they may even have wanted to "steal sheep for Christ," or some such nonsense. However, the Haitian government is so corrupt, I don't believe them, either. Another news story showed an airport official demanding bribes before relief supplies could be released. It's entirely possible someone refused to pay a bribe and this is what happened.

I believe they are investigating this on a child by child basis. The ones who want to return to their parents must go back, of course. Probably all of them must, and then adoption agencies should place them properly. But I don't believe these people should be tried for some sort of big crime. Probably they are just fuckups in a fucked-up land.

[catsnotkids]

I'm with eslbee. The Hatian government doesn't exactly have their hands clean. Who knows what really transpired with this group!

[Ziggy]

By sending them back to the US they are almost effectively just kicking them out of the country with a lot of administrative overhead. They are unlikely to be found guilty (or if they are then their punishment will be 'time served').

I really don't think that they are guilty of wanting to do something bad to the kids (I think that they meant well), and I don't think that they should rot in jail, but I think that they should be punished for stupidity. Because I do think that they are incredibly stupid. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, although I also strongly suspect that they will be prosecuted lightly and I don't mind that.

Doing something wrong in a shitty country doesn't make it right - the only advantage that we (as a modern western land) hold over such places is a moral one. We should do what is morally right in order to show them the standard that they should hold. This is the fundamental tenet to fighting counter-insurgencies, and is why the US tends to fail at the concept.

[CF Scorpio]

(02-02-2010 11:21 AM)Ziggy Wrote:  I think that they should be punished for stupidity. Because I do think that they are incredibly stupid.

Oh, if only this were really a law!

[Dog Holliday]

If there was a mixture of adults and kids they were trying to get out to a safer place, it probably wouldn't have been such a huge fiasco. But because it was kids only, everyone goes into "They must be child molesters" or "They're going to sell the kids" mode. This is one case of "must do everything for the children-fuck the adults" backfires. I think they were more interested in saving the kids because kids are easier to convert to their religion than adults.