'Ware the Baptists ?

[Jolie Rouge]

Haiti says Baptists may be tried in US
By Michelle Faul And Frank Bajak, Associated Press Writers
5 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haiti's prime minister said Monday it's clear to him that the 10 U.S. Baptists who tried to take 33 children out of his quake-ravaged country without permission "knew what they were doing was wrong."

But Prime Minister Max Bellerive also told The Associated Press his country is open to having the Americans go before courts in the United States because his own nation's judicial system was devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The aborted Baptist "rescue mission" has become a distraction for a crippled government trying to provide basic life support to millions of earthquake survivors.

But the prime minister said some legal system needs to determine whether the Americans were acting in good faith — as they claim — or are child traffickers in a nation that has struggled to fight exploitation of children.

"It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents," he told the AP.

"And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong."

If they were acting in good faith, "perhaps the courts will try to be more lenient with them," he said.

Members of the church group, most from Idaho, have insisted they only trying to rescue child victims of the quake. Few if any had any significant experience in international charity.

Since their arrest Friday near the border, the church group has been held inside two small concrete rooms in the same judicial police headquarters building where ministers have makeshift offices and give disaster response briefings. They have not yet been charged.

One of their lawyers said they were being treated poorly: "There is no air conditioning, no electricity. It is very disturbing," Attorney Jorge Puello told the AP by phone from the Dominican Republic, where the Baptists hoped to shelter the children in a rented beach hotel.

One of the Americans, Charisa Coulter of Boise, Idaho, was being treated Monday at the University of Miami's field hospital near the capital's international airport. Looking pale and speaking with difficulty from a green Army cot, the 24-year-old Coulter said she had either severe dehydration or the flu. A diabetic, she initially thought her insulin had gone bad in the heat.

Two Haitian police officers stood besides the cot, guarding her.

"They're treating me pretty good," she said, adding that Haitian police didn't bring her group any food or water, but that U.S. officials have delivered water and MREs to eat. "I'm not concerned. I'm pretty confident that it will all work out," she said.

Investigators have been trying to determine how the Americans got the children, and whether any of the traffickers that have plagued the impoverished country were involved.

Their detained spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, conceded that she had not obtained the proper Haitian documents, but told the AP from detention that the group was "just trying to do the right thing" amid the chaos.

The 33 kids, ranging in age from 2 months to 12 years and with their names written in tape on their shirts, were being sheltered in a temporary children's home, where some told aid workers that they have surviving parents. Lassegue said the Social Affairs Ministry was trying to find them.

"One (9-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," said George Willeit, a spokesman for the SOS Children's Village.

Foreigners adopting children from the developing world have grabbed headlines recently — Madonna tried to adopt a girl from Malawi amid criticism from locals, while Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have a burgeoning multicultural brood.

But in Haiti, a long tradition of foreign military intervention coupled with the earthquake that destroyed much of the capital and plunged it even deeper into poverty, have made this issue even more emotionally charged. Of 20 Haitian parents interviewed in a tent camp by the AP on Sunday, only one said she would not give up her children to give them a chance at a better life.

"Some parents I know have already given their children to foreigners," said Adonis Helman, 44. "I've been thinking how I will choose which one I may give."

"My parents died in the earthquake. My husband has gone. Giving up one of my kids would at least give them a chance," said Saintanne Petit-Frere, 40, a mother of six. "My only fear is that they would forget me, but that wouldn't affect my decision."

Haiti's overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the earthquake amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold. Sex trafficking has been rampant in Haiti. Prime Minister Max Bellerive's personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.

"For UNICEF, what is important is that for children separated from their parents, we do everything possible to have their families traced and to reunite them," said Kent Page, a spokesman for the group in Haiti. "They have to be protected from traffickers or people who wish to exploit these children."

The arrested Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. The churches are part of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is America's largest Protestant denomination and has extensive humanitarian programs worldwide, but they decided to mount their own "rescue mission" following the earthquake.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100201/...icans_detained


Ill advised at best ....

[Advertisement]

[gmyers]

I do think its strange that they didn't get the papers they needed to take the children out of the country. You can't just go in there and take them without permission. That looks illegal to me.

[Jolie Rouge]

As stated ... ill advised at best. Child trafficing at worse ... in which case, they belong UNDER the jail. PERIOD.

[krisharry]

Their story sounds fishy to me. If they were trying to take these children, I hope they get what is coming to them. If they were actually trying to help, they were very stupid and misinformed and probably have made it all the more difficult for legitimate agencies to help these children.

[freeby4me]

Good intentions or not, they're lucky someone didnt shoot them.

[dv8grl]

The news said that one lady gave them her kid, because the child would go to school & have a better life.

[gmyers]

Thats sad that they do that because they think its better for the child. A lot of kids have paid the price for that thinking though and end up slaves or sex slaves.

[janelle]

The news said that one lady gave them her kid, because the child would go to school & have a better life.

Well they should have known that is illegal to take a child like that. Have someone come up to you and just give you her kid. How sad.

[Jolie Rouge]

Arrest of Americans deepens Haiti adoption debate
By David Crary, Ap National Writer
2 hrs 2 mins ago

NEW YORK – The debate over international adoption, already a bitter one, has intensified in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake and the arrest of 10 Americans for trying to take children out of the devastated country without permission.

Some groups are urging a long moratorium on new adoptions from Haiti, saying there is too much chaos and too high a risk of mistakes or child trafficking. Other groups fear any long-term clampdown will consign countless children to lives in institutions or on the street, rather than in the loving homes of adoptive parents.

Chuck Johnson, chief operating officer of the National Council for Adoption, said the arrests of the 10 U.S. Baptists would probably undercut his organization's push to expand adoptions from Haiti as soon as feasible.

"It was a critical mistake — the Haitian government has been very clear they did not want any children leaving without its express permission," Johnson said Monday. "Maybe the Americans thought they were helping 33 kids, but now there's going to be a much slower process and maybe even a ban on future adoptions — and that would be a tragedy."

The Americans, arrested Friday near Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic, were being held in a police headquarters in Port au Prince while Haitian and U.S officials discussed their fate.

Even before the arrests, the Haitian government called a halt to new international adoptions. Numerous organizations have endorsed the moratorium, some of them citing U.N. guidelines recommending that at least two years be spent tracing lost families before adoptions should be considered.

"No matter how horrific the situation looks ... the full process of reuniting children with parents and relatives must be completed," said Deb Barry, a Save the Children child protection expert.

The next steps, says UNICEF, should be compiling a registry of children separated from their families, an extensive campaign to trace relatives, and development of safe, well-supplied places where these children can stay during the search process.

The consequences of rushing to help children leave Haiti can be severe, according to the Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

In one case, LIRS said, a 12-year-old boy who was allowed onto a U.S. military plane without documentation or relatives in the U.S. and is now in limbo while officials try to find out if he left family behind in Haiti. In another case, a 3-year-old boy arrived on a private plane with other orphans even though the family who had been planning to adopt him had changed their mind and abandoned the process.

"It's an example of why it's important to be patient and thorough," said Olivia Faires, director of children's services for LIRS. "It does add trauma, even in the midst of the chaos, to remove them from their customary surroundings."

The differing views on adoptions from Haiti mirror a long-running global debate — fueled recently by adoptions of African children by Madonna and other celebrities. Some advocates say international adoptions should be expanded so that more abandoned, destitute Third World children can be lovingly raised in comfort, while others say this is a patronizing attitude that ignores the benefits of being raised in one's own culture.

Down the road, whenever Haiti manages to stabilize itself and re-establish documentation for vulnerable children, there is likely to be vigorous debate on whether international adoptions should be resumed on an expanded scale.

There were 330 adoptions of Haitian children by Americans last year, about 900 more were in the works at the time of the quake, and Johnson said the Haitian government had identified an additional 7,300 orphans as eligible for international adoption.

"We'd hoped to focus on those 7,300 — but now it gets harder and harder to do that," he said. "The arrests give those anti-adoption groups more ammunition to call for a permanent moratorium, and the kids suffer."

Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard law professor who supports expanded international adoption, expressed concern about a possible overreaction to the arrests.

"If not all their paperwork was together, that doesn't seem to me the worst crime in the world," she said. "The Haitian authorities should be trying to help a lot of kids get out — both the kids in the process of adoption and others who appear not to have parents or relatives able to take care of them."

"It is astoundingly hypocritical," she said, "that people, in the name of helping children, would close down adoption."

Other groups, however, say international adoptions should not be promoted until other options are exhausted.

SOS Children's Villages, which is caring for the 33 Haitian children targeted by the arrested Americans, said international adoptions "should be avoided until every effort has been undertaken to reunite each child with her/his family or to provide suitable care within the country."

The organization's CEO, Heather Paul, said American families might prove useful at some point in providing adoptive homes for children suffering medical or psychological problems from the quake. Meanwhile, she urged restraint.

"Sometimes Americans believe that children are better off in an American middle-class environment almost as a priority over being with their own family who are impoverished," Paul said. "I don't believe that. Children — they just love their families."

___

On the Net: National Council for Adoption: http://www.adoptioncouncil.org

Save the Children: http://www.savethechildren.org


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100202/...ption_backlash

[gmyers]

I wish those people had stopped and thought about what they were doing. They may not let people adopt kids from there anymore because of what they did. I saw a woman on Larry King that wanted to adopt a kid from Haiti. He asked her if she would adopt from here if she couldn't but she seemed to only want to adopt if she could get one from Hati. Whats the difference both kids need homes.

[janelle]

I wish those people had stopped and thought about what they were doing. They may not let people adopt kids from there anymore because of what they did. I saw a woman on Larry King that wanted to adopt a kid from Haiti. He asked her if she would adopt from here if she couldn't but she seemed to only want to adopt if she could get one from Hati. Whats the difference both kids need homes.

Local adoptions have tons of regs on them. The mother can even take the child back after a long time. Scary.

My hubby said even Mexico is very careful about adoptions. People adopt for bad reasons so they search cars going over the border for children who may be taken without the right permits.