U.S. Baptists arrested in Haitian orphan incident

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

All have to go to jail no matter what their good intensions were.

I disagree with the "all" part of that statement, because it doesn't seem likely that all the people who were arrested understood what they were participating in. In particular, there's a 19 year old boy and 18 year old girl who are there with their parents (different parents, they're not brother and sister). It's extremely unlikely that these two, though they are technically adults, had any reason to think they were participating in something illegal. Most likely they both still live with their parents, who said to them "How would you like to come along on this wonderful mission trip to save Haitian orphans?", and they happily agreed, figuring their parents had ascertained that it was legitimate (and knowing that information about the trip was posted on their church's official website). Their parents may also have thought it was legitimate, having assumed that their local church leaders had checked it out before touting it on the church website. The only person that's it's absolutely clear knew she was doing something illegal is Laura Silsby, though it seems quite likely that her 24-year-old nany, Charisa Coulter (who is the only other person named on the incorporation documents of the "charity" organization), knew or had reason to know that things weren't being done in accordance with the applicable laws. Assuming most of the group didn't realize that this was a totally illegal operation, it seems unlikely that Silsby had given them any details about the lack of paperwork, how the children were to be obtained, etc. They probably assumed the organizer(s) of the mission had taken care of these things, and that those who'd just gone along as volunteer helpers only needed to worry about the manual labor, looking after the children, acquiring needed supplies, etc.

On a related note, it increasingly seems unlikely that "Jean Sanbil" from whom Silsby claims she got all the children, even exists. A number of relatives of the children and at least one Haitian who acted as an intermediary in helping Silsby find children to take, have described directly interacting with Silsby, and haven't mentioned any "Jean Sanbil" or "Sharing Jesus Ministries". One mother said she'd turned her 5 children (who were found with Silsby's group) over to an unnamed orphanage, with the understanding that they would be staying in Haiti at that orphanage. Also, Anne-christine d'Adesky, "a writer and human-rights activist from a prominent Haitian family who is a U.S. citizen", has e-mailed UN officials about her conversations with Silsby, whom she'd met at a hotel in the Dominican Republic -- she says she warned Silsby that it would be illegal to do what she was planning. But significantly, none of these people have mentioned speaking with anyone in the group except Silsby herself, which suggests that Silsby was keeping the others in the dark about the details of the operation.

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