8 of 10 missionaries freed from Haitian jail, return to U.S.

[Lasher]

Source: Washington Post

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Eight of 10 U.S. missionaries jailed in Haiti on charges of child abduction were released on their own recognizance Wednesday pending a continuing criminal investigation and a possible trial in Haitian courts.

The eight, looking sweaty after three weeks in prison, were driven to the airport in a U.S. Embassy van. According to Haitian sources, they left on a military flight to the United States. Although the missionaries are obliged to return to Haiti if summoned, their release took the edge off a confused legal struggle that beclouded what officials have described as the largest U.S. disaster relief program in history to help Haiti overcome an earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000.

Two other missionaries -- Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter -- were not released from a Port-au-Prince prison, their attorney said, because the investigating magistrate wants to question them further. The lawyer said that the magistrate wants to ask about visits to Haiti before the ill-fated trip last month, in which they and fellow missionaries tried to take 33 children from Haiti to the neighboring Dominican Republic without authorization.

The Baptist missionaries, most of them from an Idaho church group, depicted their actions as a well-intentioned attempt to help children flee the conditions afflicting Haiti since the Jan. 12 earthquake. But Haitian authorities arrested them as they arrived at the border Jan. 29, saying that some of the children were not orphans and that the Americans had accepted them from often distraught parents without going through proper channels.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021705050.html

[Don Caballero]

1. Big shock there. These people were kidnapping children to be sold in slavery.

They hired an adviser who is wanted in relation to child prostitution rings. This is truly disgusting.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. The question is, were THEY conned by the guy they hired to advise them?

That is, they obviously knew they were flouting the law in taking the kids without the proper paperwork, but was selling them as sex slaves THEIR ultimate goal (as it was the adviser's) or did they just not think it through and not know or care what happened to the kids once they'd been 'rescued'?

It is possible that they were just clueless, and that they had no idea that the prospective parents that the adviser would be finding for the kids were actually pedophiles.

So the group goes home, the leaders of the group pay the price for flagrantly disobeying the law, and the adviser goes to prison for a very, very long time.

[dipsydoodle]

2. This was compounded

by the fact that the place in the Dominican Republic to which they said they were taking the children apparently did not exist.

Persoannly I wouldn't this bunch the benefit of any doubt whatsoever.

[niceypoo]

10. The fact that they were headed to the DR should raise flags

In the DR Haitians are treated like slaves. Children are brought across the border and sold. They are then forced to sell trinkets, shine shoes, wash cars at stoplights, or beg all over the country. Occasionally they sweep the streets detaining anybody who looks remotely Haitian and force then into Haiti (even if they have proof they are Dominican) or put them in slave camps called, 'bateys,' to work the sugar cane for corporate sugar companies. These slave camps exist all over the DR and many people are born, live their entire lives and die in them, never coming into contact with the regular Dominican society let alone attending school.

There is almost no work for Dominicans in the Dominican Republic because it is cheaper to hire Haitians for 50 cents a day. In many ways my wife and I found the Dominican Republic waaayy more appaling than we found Haiti. I am floored that they let these people go.

[BlueJazz]

3. From what I've read about these people, I wouldn't trust them to give me change for a Quarter.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

5. I doubt ANY will return if summoned. I doubt the US would extradite them either.

[Holy Moly]

7. tell it to de judge

I'm sure de judge knew that as well.
He was just following the
noble example of the Great Obama,
who art in our White House.
Crimes of the recent past should
be quickly forgotten and eyes
must be locked looking only forwards
and never backwards.

[Holy Moly]

6. Thank Merciful God!!

Rejoice and Hallelujah!
For Almighty God hath
mercifully chosen to complicitly
aid and abet His holy conspiracy of
loving criminal child abductors
with an case of premature Rapture.
Rather than unjustly rotting away in an
un-air-conditioned Haitian hellhole,
they now shalt be basking as holy
heroes welcomed by their sacred church
of God and each prematurely immersed
in his/her own personal
stable of 69 premature Haitian
virgins...
Praise God!

[Peace Patriot]

8. Well, there was evidence in the early stories about this affair that the leader of the group

was duping the others (not the brightest bulbs in the building, apparently). She told them they had legal papers to move the children. She did NOT tell them that authorities in the Dominican Republic had warned her that what they were doing was illegal. Their first lawyer said this. I'm not sure if he is still their lawyer, but when he chose to represent the others and not the leader, he got "fired" by some lawyer in the Dominican Republic who may have been acting for the leader, the church or the accused's families (in a very confusing situation, where the families were here, out of touch with their family members in jail in Haiti). Anyway, after this first lawyer said this, and got fired by the lawyer in DR, the group in jail sent out a handwritten note that their leader was trying to control them, and basically, "Help!"

I don't know if this was a tall tale, to get them out of jail--or the truth. But it gave me pause. I don't think they should all be lumped together, until proven otherwise. And the Haitian authorities seem to agree--i.e., that the leaders (the original stories mentioned just one leader, but two have been detained) were leading the others astray, and they were apparently too dumb/too naive to catch on.

From the media descriptions of the meeting in DR at which authorities warned the group, it seemed pretty clear that only the group leader was present, not the others. (Also, maybe they don't speak Spanish--I don't know). This may have also been the case as to dealing with earthquake victim parents--that the others weren't present or didn't understand what was going on. I do have some experience of the kinds of people who are enticed into church missions in foreign lands, and, believe me, it IS possible that they were that naive, and just thought they were doing good and rescuing orphaned children. These kinds of people don't tend to question authority, especially authorities who talk a glib religious line. I'm not saying they were naive. I'm saying it's possible. Also, that is what they are saying. That is what their first lawyer said. And that is what Haitian authorities seem to believe.

However, we can't rule out State Dept. intervention, guilty or not. But if that's what happened--political intervention--why didn't the State Dept. get them all out? They're all Americans, I believe. Maybe the case against the leaders was just too strong, and overrode any desire to rescue Americans from a "third world" prison (in a country with 200,000 dead and barely any infrastructure left standing). I doubt that Hillary Clinton wants to be associated with saving child sex trade criminals, if that's what they are--or child kidnappers of any kind, for an adoption scam or whatever. It sounds to me like the church got scammed, and maybe they made such a good case for the naivete of the members who joined this "mission," and put sufficient pressure on, to get them out, and not the two leaders.

[marshall]

9. The probe of the two women left behind goes beyond this one incident

It sounds like they might suspect a plan was underway to smuggle children into the DR before the earthquake happened. The earthquake provided a convenient opportunity to recruit some possibly well meaning dupes in Idaho and round up more children in Haiti.

Anyone who knows anything about such things knows that you cannot take children across an international border in these circumstances. Maybe the folks recruited from Idaho were too naive to understand that the border between Haiti and DR is an international border.

I would find it hard to swallow that there was authorization to just take the children elsewhere in Haiti, but that would at least be more believable than taking them into another country.

[Art_from_Ark]

11. If one grows up sheltered in a rural state

it is almost par for the course to be naive about the outside world, even if one has a lot of "book learning".

Been there, done that.

[Peace Patriot]

12. Yup, that's all I'm saying. It could be true or not. But it is possible. nt