Jan 31 2010

American Church Group Accused of Kidnapping Haitian Children

Category: Religious News — Polycarp @ 8:47 pm

Trying NOT to form conclusions here:

Ten U.S. Baptists detained trying to take 33 children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti without government permission say they were just trying to do the right thing, applying Christian principles to save Haitian children.

But their “Orphan Rescue Mission” is striking nerves in a country that has long suffered from child trafficking and foreign interventions, and where much of the aid is delivered in ways that challenge Haiti’s own rich religious traditions.

…..

The orphanage where the children were later taken said some of the kids have living parents, who were apparently told the children were going on a holiday from the post-quake misery.

…..

“One (8-year-old) 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. (read the rest here)

The pastor is saying that his group had nothing to do with trafficking – that I can believe, but the church group is clearly in error. (He, of course, applies the error somehow to Satan). I suspect  and hope that this was an innocent attempt to bring hope in the midst of devastation.

Considering the loss of life, it is possible that when the children start screaming about living parents, the church group considered them hysterical.

Continue to pray for the children of Haiti.

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6 Responses to “American Church Group Accused of Kidnapping Haitian Children”

  1. Robert says:
    January 31st, 2010 8:49 pm

    Wow. It’s pretty hard to so royally screw up a relief effort, but stealing children is a surefire way to go about it.

    Keep it classy, Christians.

    Reply
    • Polycarp says:
      January 31st, 2010 9:11 pm

      Yeah, not too happy about this myself.

      Reply
      • Robert says:
        January 31st, 2010 9:15 pm

        I mean, what part of “We need food & water” did they not understand!?

        As much good as I’m sure church groups are doing, junk like this makes the whole endeavor look bad AND makes our country look like colossal jerks. A 2fer!

        Ugh. Really aggravating.

        Reply
  2. Qohelet says:
    February 1st, 2010 2:14 am

    “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

    Reply
  3. Robert says:
    February 1st, 2010 7:44 am

    Oh, OF COURSE this is how World Net Daily spins this massive lapse of common sense:

    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A group of 10 American Baptists were being held in the Haitian capital Sunday after trying to take 33 children out of Haiti.

    The church group, most of them from Idaho, allegedly lacked the proper documents when they were arrested Friday night in a bus along with children from 2 months to 12 years old who had survived the catastrophic earthquake.

    The group say they were setting up an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic.

    “In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, told The Associated Press at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held pending a Monday hearing before a judge.

    The Baptists’ “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission” was described as an effort to save abandoned, traumatized children.

    Their plan was to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, that they were converting into an orphanage, Silsby told the AP.

    Whether they realized it or not, these Americans – the first known to be taken into custody since the Jan. 12 quake – put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.

    Silsby said the group, including members from Texas and Kansas, only had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, whom she said they obtained from well-known Haitian pastor Jean Sanbil of the Sharing Jesus Ministries.

    Silsby, 40, of Boise, Idaho, was asked if she didn’t consider it naive to cross the border without adoption papers at a time when Haitians are so concerned about child trafficking. “By no means are we any part of that. That’s exactly what we are trying to combat,” she said.

    She said she hadn’t been following news reports while in Haiti.

    Social Affairs Minister Yves Cristallin told the AP that the Americans were suspected of taking part in an illegal adoption scheme.

    Cristallin said the 33 children were lodged late Saturday at an SOS Children’s Village outside of Port-au-Prince. SOS Children’s Villages is a global nonprofit based in Austria.

    Many children in Haitian orphanages aren’t actually orphans but have been abandoned by family who cannot afford to care for them.

    Advocates both here and abroad caution that with so many people unaccounted for, adoptions should not go forward until it can be determined that the children have no relatives who can raise them.

    UNICEF and other NGOs have been registering children who may have been separated from their parents. Relief workers are locating children at camps housing the homeless around the capital and are placing them in temporary shelters while they try to locate their parents or a more permanent home.

    The U.S. Embassy in Haiti sent consular officials, who met with the detained Americans and gave them bug spray and field rations, according to Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and 18-year-old daughter were being held.

    “They have to go in front of a judge on Monday,” Lankford told the AP.

    “There are allegations of child trafficking and that really couldn’t be farther from the truth,” he added. The children “were going to get the medical attention they needed. They were going to get the clothes and the food and the love they need to be healthy and to start recovering from the tragedy that just happened.”

    Haiti has imposed new controls on adoptions since the earthquake, which left thousands of children parentless or separated from their families. The government now requires Prime Minister Max Bellerive to personally authorize the departure of any child as a way to prevent child trafficking.

    Silsby said they had documents from the Dominican government, but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities before taking the children to the border.

    She said the children were brought to the pastor by distant relatives, and that the only ones to be put up for adoption would be those without close family to care for them.

    The 10 Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho.

    Idaho friends and relatives have been in touch with them through text messages and phone calls, Lankford said.

    The group had described its plans on a Web site where they also asked for tax-deductible contributions, saying they would “gather” 100 orphans and bus them to Cabarete before building a more permanent orphanage in the Dominican town of Magante.

    “Given the urgent needs from this earthquake, God has laid upon our hearts the need to go now versus waiting until the permanent facility is built,” the group wrote.

    Reply
    • Polycarp says:
      February 1st, 2010 10:02 am

      Robert, did you expect anything less than that from World Nut Daily.

      I hope that there were good intentions and just stupid behavior behind it, but if not, then they should be prosecuted.

      Reply

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