Posted on 02/09/2010 3:25:48 AM PST by SkyPilot
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- The group of American missionaries in Haiti facing kidnapping charges for trying to take 33 children out of the country last week made an earlier, unsuccessful attempt at taking dozens of other children, a Haitian police officer said Monday.
Laura Silsby, left, and two other members of her missionary group are seen after a recent court hearing in Haiti.
The officer did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals. He told CNN that he had stopped the 10 Baptist missionaries, including group leader Laura Silsby, on January 26 as they tried to transport 40 children on a bus from Haiti to the Dominican Republic.
The officer said he discovered Silsby and the nine other Americans on a bus in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Petionville in the early afternoon of January 26 after receiving a tip from a concerned citizen.
He stopped the group and ordered the children to get off the bus. He then directed Silsby to the Dominican embassy.
"I said what happened, and she (Silsby) told me, 'I have the paperwork to cross the Haitian Dominican border with 100 children,' " the officer said. A former attorney for the group, Edwin Coq, said the officer has testified of his account.
The officer was questioned by prosecutors last week in the case against the missionaries. Prosecutors no longer suspect him of any wrongdoing, and he is now a witness, according Coq, who is familiar with the prosecution's case file.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
The question no one is answering: Did they obey the authorities or not?
Haiti is a cesspool of corruption and evil and self induced poverty. It is the worst place on earth by such a wide margin, that whatever the second worst place is is a paradise by comparison. I'd trust the judgment of a group of flaky do-gooders from the second worst country on earth over the judgment of the Haitian government, which has no problem with 300,000 children being enslaved by fellow Haitians.
Obviously not a successful one.
Methinks there is a lot more to this story. I feel bad for the people who followed this woman.
There are another couple threads on this case that are just plin sad.
It’s discouraging to read the posts from so many who are so gullible and easily persuaded by smear tactics. The original Haitian claim was that this group was trying to abduct these kids for sex slave trafficking. Because Silsby’s had financial problems, she’s therefore guilty of sex-trafficking, according to the logic of way too many FReepers who consider themselves so well-informed about all other political and media issues. They bought right into the Haitian spin in a New York second. The country doesn’t even have a real government, for pete’s sake. They’ve got our people in jail after letting all their own criminals out of the jail after the earthquake, criminals who are now out pillaging and raping. Haiti is a pathetic toilet run by greedy, corrupt scammers, yet we have people taking Haiti’s word about what happened and the group’s intentions and efforts, combining it with a story about a woman not being able to pay all her bills and business obligations, and thus concluding the suspects were up to some diabolical plot to steal a bunch of kids for sex trafficking and/or an illegal adoption scam. GMAFB.
Scary. It makes me wonder if I’m on the right side after all. It just shows you how impressionable and unable to think critically so many Americans are, and these are people who consider themselves well-informed about the tactics of the media and corrupt, banana republic tinpot despots. They’re thinking skills are no better than graduates of our public school system from the last 25 years, for all the smarts they show - not.
We should pull all government support out of that cesspool now. I never agreed with sending taxpayer-funded aid there in the first place. If people want to contribute privately, fine.
They so want to blame somebody for being evil and causing their misery, it's a pitiful example of The Emotional Plague. The horrible destructive idea that spreads like the plague through groups of people. I'm told the only thing that counteracts it is the light of day.
The missionaries were led by an incompetent. Let them go home and never return to Haiti with any aid.
Yes, but mastermind is not the word I would use. More like hastily concocted.
Haitians are so poor they often turn their children over to orphanages so that they can be fed and clothed, which is something their parents can’t do for them. This used to be the case in the US, too, in the 19th century, when poor parents would place their children in orphanages while the parents were still living. Also, sometimes the loss of one parent would mean that the surviving parent would place the children in an orphanage for care.
One of the objectives of Haitian orphanages is to provide a safe place for children, because otherwise, poor Haitian parents will give these children to better-off Haitians, who then treat them as slaves. Orphanages are a solution to this problem.
Hi dajeeps, Yes, I think it's worse. I don't mean to imply that Mexico is much better, but if I were to compare that government to another, it would be Somalia.
Keep em in jail. Let them start a prison ministry. Maybe they should help poor kids in Idaho or send their tax money to Florida to help us pay for all the haitians bankrupting FL.
They didn't have anything of the sort.
Source please? I've read virtually everything in the media and blogs about this case, and have never seen any such claim. You made it up. No Haitian official ever said anything of the sort.
Exactly. There are thousands of Christians currently working in Haiti, including many whites and Baptists. Somehow all the rest of them are managing to stay out of jail.
Yes there is. SOME of the children's parents have surfaced to say they gave permission, but most of those also report having been misled about where the children were being taken and for how long. Silsby was running around showing them pictures of a resort with a swimming pool, but that was just a hotel she had made an agreement to rent, but did not actually have the money to pay for beyond a very brief period. She also told parents about a school the children would attend, except that there was no school. Silsby had no permanent staff lined up to care for the children, educationally or otherwise. She was posting requests on websites for volunteers to come down for stints as short as two weeks to staff the "orphanage". She had no intention or means of doing background checks on these volunteers (if they ever turned up), meaning this was setting up a classic opportunity for pedophiles to sign up to "help".
Also, a lot of the children were handed over to the group by other relatives, informal guardians, etc, even though some apparently had at least one living parent. These people had no legal authority to give anyone permission to take the children out of the country.
And on top of all this, the Prime Minister had issued an order shortly after the earthquake prohibiting the removal of ANY children from the country without full legal documentation (including passports, which none of these children had) AND his own personal signature. This was to prevent trafficking of children during the post-earthquake chaos. Anybody who was caught trying to remove children from the country without full legal authorization would have been arrested.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,584982,00.html
Most of the children were from the village of Callebas, where people said they handed the kids over because they couldn’t feed or clothe them.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,584733,00.html
Parents in this struggling village above Haiti’s capital said Wednesday they willingly handed their children to American missionaries who showed up in a bus promising to give them a better life
Everybody agreed that they knew where the children were going. The parents were told, and we confirmed they would be allowed to see the children and even take them back if need be,” he said.
Most parents said they wouldn’t know what to do if they had to take the children back.
“I am living in a tent with a friend,” said Lelly, who said most of his wife’s close relatives were killed. “My main concern is that if the kids come back I’m not going to be able to feed them.”
The group had signed permission “to take children from Haiti back to the Dominican Republic,” as well as documentation from the Dominican Republic itself, he said. But when the group got to the border, Haitian officials told the group they lacked “one document.”
I just found this article from the Kansas Star where it says that they were asked for $300/head to cross but refused to pay and were arrested not long afterwards.
From the article:
In fact, said the Rev. James Keller, pastor of Topeka’s Bethel Baptist Church, the group had tried to get the correct paperwork.
In an e-mail from the Idaho church that organized the mission, Keller read that the group tried three times to acquire the paperwork before they were asked to pay $300 a head for the children to cross the border. Culberth’s group refused, Keller said, and before long they were arrested.
Read more: Kansan jailed in Haiti has ‘tender heart’ - KansasCity.com
It was on Fox News at the very outset of this case. They reported that the Haitian pooh-bah blah blah Minister of Whatever stated that the group was under suspicion of, among other things, attempting to traffic these children in the sex trade.
I didn’t make it up. You just haven’t wasted enough time on this yet or you’d know about the sex trafficking claim. And while you’re digging for more nebulous BS to support your dirty little theories, you can go ^#@! yourself. I don’t make up crap.
I can't in good conscience donate anymore until they are home....
and this is NOT the worse that is going on in Haiti....there are murders and rape, and assualt and robbery ...yet protecting children gets them hauled into court....
I think she’s a stupid and maybe arrogant woman...sometimes,
religious people think they can just plow their way thru because they have God on their side.....well, God wanted us to obey the rules too.....
its not ransom of course when Madonna or Jolie buys her children....
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