Haiti Is Open for Business

[Joanne98]

Child Trafficking in Haiti

This section deals with abducted children for profit, not Haiti's century-long Restavek system covered in an earlier article titled, "Child Slavery in Haiti." Under it, impoverished families send one or more of their children to live with wealthier or less poor ones in return for food, shelter, education, and a better life in return for performing tasks as servants. They, in fact, become de facto slaves subjected to verbal and physical abuse.

Trafficking children for profit is another matter, another scam. Operatives representing orphanages or adoption agencies approach poor families, offer money, promise their children will be well cared for and educated, then disappear them. None are ever heard from again.

According to Schwartz:

"Not one of the families ever received a single letter from the agency or from any of the adoptive parents. An SOS (Enfants Without Frontiers) employee obtained the address of (one) parent organization in Paris but, when they called, the person who answered the phone said that the agency had moved and left no forwarding address."

Schwartz visited "every single orphanage in the Province as well as Gonaives. They all look like scams to (him. He didn't want to) write a report saying the orphanages are all scams," but, in fact, they are, preying on impoverished families.

The problem, however, is far greater. World Vision and Compassion International sponsor 58,500 Haitian children. Christian Aid Missions (CAM) 10,000, the Haiti Baptist Mission 57,800, and many other NGOs run similar operations, trafficking children for profit or diverting funds for the poor to elite ones or their pockets. "....think about all the money that must be collected and never even gets there....So many people at these orphanages are outright lying. Most of the children are not orphans."

Schwartz's "dismay with charity and development was growing. (His) job wasn't over." He investigated further and found other alarming surprises, "shatter(ing) any remaining faith (he) had in foreign aid to Haiti." Under militarized control, perhaps much worse is underway, with hundreds of millions of donor aid likely stolen and thousands of predatory NGOs and other profiteers grabbing it.

The recent report about 10 Americans detained (likely to be released pending further investigation and perhaps absolved altogether) for illegally trying to spirit 33 children from Haiti is just the tip of a global problem, one very much affecting Haiti. This longstanding practice is now way accelerated with thousands of children separated from parents, enabling abductors to pass them off as orphans and sell them for profit.

continued>>>>
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/02/15/haiti-is-open-for-business

World Vision is connected to the 'Family'......

Legal adviser for Americans in Haiti facing his own charges

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (CNN) -- A Dominican man who is acting as a legal adviser to 10 Americans arrested on child kidnapping charges in Haiti is himself facing allegations of human trafficking in El Salvador and human smuggling charges in the United States.

An international arrest warrant was issued Saturday for the legal adviser on sex-trafficking charges.

Salvadoran police raided a home in May that turned up passports and an ID card in the names of both Jorge Torres Puello and his alias, Jorge Torres Orellana. Each of the documents bore photos of the same man. His wife was arrested in that raid and charged with sex trafficking, and her trial is pending.

In a phone interview with CNN on Sunday, Jorge Torres Puello acknowledged he is the same man wanted by Salvadoran authorities. He denied the charges against him.

According to the warrant, Torres Puello is accused of running an international sex trafficking ring that lured women and girls from the Caribbean and Central America into prostitution with offers of modeling jobs.

"I never did anything," Torres Puello said Sunday. "I started helping a Dominican pastor helping a lot of people who were stranded to get back to their home countries. We once gave some Nicaraguan and Costa Rican women some money to return home and instead they went to the authorities and put in a complaint against us. I never had anybody against their will."

Continued>>>
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/15/haiti.legal.adviser.charges/

Now they need to raid all the churches this guy has been working for. I'd look for child soldier cases too.

[Joanne98]

1. Haiti: Mission team's adviser "may be wanted for human trafficking"

This story just goes from bad to worse, doesn’t it?

Southern Baptist churches sent a mission team that “appeared to lack any significant experience with Haiti, international charity work or international adoption regulations.”

Then, when Haitian authorities arrested the team as it attempted to take undocumented children across the border, Central Valley church pastor Clint Henry described the Haitian government’s action as “accusations of Satan.”

It wasn’t a good start. Rather than honestly addressing the team’s own failures and dealing with them, Pastor Henry cast Satanic blame onto the Haitians.

The mission team was headed by a woman, Laura Silsby, who probably should not have been appointed as a leader for much of anything, much less for a project directed toward the “rescue” of children. Reportedly, Silsby was “plagued by financial and business problems” and had told people that she was leaving the country.

Nevertheless, Southern Baptists’ top-dog ethicist Richard Land blustered and bragged about how “churches are giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to relief efforts for the people of Haiti,” and then ranted that it was “outrageous” for the Haitian government to respond in this way to the “obvious good intentions of these honorable Christians.”

Of course, Richard Land wasn’t in a position to actually know diddly-squat. And apparently, even the mission team members themselves had more doubts than Land. After the arrest, 8 of the mission team members passed a note to an NBC producer, saying that their leader, Laura Silsby, was “lying.”

Meanwhile, other high Southern Baptist officials expressed concern for how the arrests might hurt the Baptist image.

And now, we learn that the adviser for the arrested missionaries “may be wanted for human trafficking in El Salvador.”

continued>>>
http://stopbaptistpredators.blogspot.com/2010/02/haiti-mission-teams-adviser-may-be.html

[Joanne98]

2. Southern Baptists Ask Obama to Help 10 Missionaries in Haiti

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, have asked President Obama to “do everything within the authority of your office” to free the American missionary team charged with abduction in Haiti.

In a letter dated Feb. 5, the leaders said it is “the consuming passion” of Southern Baptists to share the good news with the world and to “love every person He has created.” This characteristic is especially apparent during times of disaster when Southern Baptists work alongside other humanitarian groups to meet the physical and spiritual needs of people.

Though the leaders admit they do not know all the facts in the case of the detained missionaries, they say it is their understanding that the volunteers were trying to transport 33 Haitian children across the border for humanitarian purposes.

“e are concerned that the continued detainment and possible conviction of these Baptist mission volunteers will distract the world’s attention and undermine the relief efforts so desperately needed by the Haitian people,” the Baptist leaders said in a letter posted on Baptist Press, the news wire service affiliated with the SBC.

continued>>>
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100206/southern-baptists-ask-obama-to-help-10-missionaries-in-haiti/index.html

[Political_Junkie]

3. This is horrible.

How anyone can do this sort of thing to children is beyond me and then to try to pass it all off as helping them!

[Joanne98]

4. Really. And the longer they keep the missionaries in jail, the more we will know.

[Political_Junkie]

5. Agreed.

This bears watching.