Posted on 02/01/2010 5:58:01 PM PST by Dubya
MERIDIAN, Idaho (BP)--Members of two Southern Baptist churches in Idaho are awaiting word on what a Haitian judge will decide Feb. 1 when he hears the case of 10 Americans accused of unlawfully trying to remove 33 children from Haiti.
Five of the 10 are members of Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, and three are from Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, including Eastside's pastor, Paul Thompson. Two others are believed to be from other states.
(Excerpt) Read more at bpnews.net ...
Agree.
I’ve heard the same thing from the MSM - that they were engaged in “human trafficking”. PLEASE!!! These Baptists are the most unlikely people for trafficking that I could imagine.
Once again, the old adage “no good deed goes unpunished” applies here!
They apparently had everything they thought they needed to cross into the DR. There was a new “presidential decree” that created a need for new paperwork, but it wasn’t clear that they couldn’t go into the DR (to a well-known, established orphanage) with what they already had.
I think it’s just simply that nothing in Haiti is ever Haiti’s fault. Their problem with child trafficking involves Haitians (most of them relatively well-off), but rather than take responsibility for this, they have to find somebody else to pin it on.
That’s the story of Haiti’s life, and is the reason it’s such a miserable hole.
They supposedly had a “permission slip” from DR to bring in kids.
They didn’t have “paperwork” needed to take the kids out.
This is from one of the women in the group.
So we can write all day long about this and brides and such not paid, but the fact is they had “NO” paperwork.
I appreciate the gentleman from Haiti who stopped them.
Hopefully the priest who gave them “permission” by word, will show up and clear the matter up so these folks can move on.
Bet next time they will have proper paperwork needed to cross borders with one or more person(s), in this case children.
No telling what would have happened when they arrived at Immigration with 33 undocumented children and no paperwork.
They may have ended up in jail there with our without the permission slips.
Good luck to them.
There are varying accounts from various people in the group, obviously depending on their level of involvement with the paperwork end of it. Even the Haitian government admitted that it had changed the regulations suddenly last week.
What is undeniable is that there was no intention to “kidnap” these children, “traffick” in them, or do anything remotely like that, and both you and the Haitian government are fully aware of that.
This was all for show, so that Haiti could distract attention from its own self-created problems and point to evil foreigners.
...awaiting word on what a Haitian judge will decide Feb. 1 when he hears the case of 10 Americans accused of unlawfully trying to remove 33 children from Haiti.Thanks Dubya.
I don't know that nor do I need you thinking for me.
What we know is there was no paperwork and the one of the spokespersons claimed she would return to Haiti to get the proper PW.
What leveldo you think she was at if she was to return?
Probably not at the lowest level.
As I wrote before, let the priest vouch for them and get them out of their pickle.
Ummm, no, they didn’t believe their paperwork was in order. The group’s spokeswoman freely admitted they hadn’t even attempted to get any permission from the Haitian government. They apparently had permission from the Dominican Republic to bring a group of children IN, but they knew full well they didn’t have permission from Haiti to take any children OUT.
As for where they were planning to take them, frankly it sounds like a classic illegal adoption-for-profit scheme, designed to compete aggressively with other illegal and legal adoption sources. From Fox News: “The Idaho churches had elaborate plans before the earthquake to shelter up to 200 Haitian and Dominican boys and girls in the Magante beach resort, complete with a school and chapel as well as villas and a seaside cafe catering to adoptive U.S. parents.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,584423,00.html?test=latestnews
I don’t think there’s a legal adoption source anywhere in the world that can afford to set up anything like a “seaside cafe” as a marketing tool. And why would you plan (before the earthquake) to take children out of their native country to another country, in order to have them adopted by people from yet a third country? I’m afraid I know the answer — it’s easier to obscure the children’s real family situation and real route to the adoption agency when you’ve already got them out of the country where their family resides, and especially when you get them out of the country by sketchy means, such as getting the children from a pastor who vaguely explains that they were left with him “by distant relatives”.
That said, I strongly suspect that *some* of the church members who were in the arrested group honestly didn’t realize that they’d been suckered into helping with an illegal adoption business. The ring-leaders of such businesses know better than to take that many people into their confidence, and churches are a good place to find naive well-meaning people who’ll join in something like this, and provide a lot of free labor, while also helping make it look legitimate.
Yeah Vic, I agree with you, they should have just let those kids there to die, then we wouldn’t have had this paperwork problem.
ps: no, I don’t really agree with you.
No way are any of these people *ever* going to get permission to take a single child across a border again, at least not from any country that makes any effort at all to prevent child trafficking. Nor will they ever get permission to operate an adoption agency inside any such country. I'm sure any permission they had from the Dominican government to operate an orphanage and arrange adoptions there is in the process of being revoked.
Can’t just take people out of a country without paperwork.
You’re assuming also the kids would have died if not taken by these people.
We can all jump to conclusions but I’ll stick with the facts and that is these people had no legal claim to these children.
Leads one to question the organization itself.
Glad they were stopped.
If it’s on the up and up the priest will appear and vouch for these folks and the kids can go to DR.
Well, then that counters the interview I heard on the radio today by the pastor.
I can’t see what’s in this for Haiti...poor PR saavy
it’s obvious these are baby traders
Which pastor? The one who heads the Idaho church? He’s carefully distancing himself, pointing out that the mission was not a church-sponsored activity, but that the church had “gotten involved” because the mission was organized by two of its members. He may want to keep distancing himself . . . further. Of the two members, one is 40 year old Laura Silsby, who has a sufficiently sketchy financial history that she certainly shouldn’t be allowed to collect donations at a church for an organization she’s really in complete control of. The other organizer, Charisa Coulter, is a mere 24 years old, and probably just taking orders from Silsby. Neither has any prior experience whatsoever with managing orphanages or arranging adoptions.
“The mission was organized through the nonprofit New Life Children’s Refuge, which Silsby incorporated in Idaho on Nov. 25. . . . Silsby, 40, acknowledged on Sunday that she hadn’t obtained the proper Haitian documents for the children, whose names were written on pink tape on their shirts during their bus ride to the border. Public records show Silsby also owns Personal Shopper Inc., an online shopping assistance company. Incorporation papers for New Life Children’s Refuge show they were sent from the company’s fax machine. Silsby’s records also show she personally has some unpaid state tax bills dating to 2003 and other debt from civil judgments and state tax liens filed by the state against Personal Shopper Inc. She owes more than $1,300 to the state in back taxes; the biggest civil judgment is for $4,500 in 2009, owed to a Boise law firm.” http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-haiti-idaho-church,0,4160212.story
Seems you are a lot more informed than most of us on this thread.
I just read what was first reported and the statements by Silsby and her own admissions of not having proper documentation.
Felt it was bizarre.
Thanks for the additional information. Helpful to read.
Hope your wrong, but your probably right.
Just glad they were detained till they can sort out the lack of paperwork for the kids.
I’ve been doing a little surfing around. I really think the organizers of this thing knew they were engaging in a totally illegal operation and that their only motive was profit. Hard to say at this point whether any of the others realized what they were involved in. The Idaho church certainly should have done a basic background check on these two women, who had zero experience with orphanages or adoptions, before letting them collect donations on church property. Amazingly, their Dominican Republic-based lawyer is now whining to the media about how “disturbing” it is that his clients are being held in a building which lacks air conditioning. He could use some PR training, to say the least. He also might be interested to learn about Ms. Silsby’s unpaid legal bills back in Idaho.
Apart from the 18 year old girl, who was brought along by her father and probably had no clue and no real choice in the matter, I’m happy for all of them to sweat it out in their un-air-conditioned makeshift prison until they make it to the top of the Haitian government’s massively long priority list, which they ought to be near the bottom of. Even if some of them really thought this was a legitimate charitable mission, they need to learn to do some basic investigating before they run off to foreign countries to help with some vague orphanage/adoption scheme run by somebody they don’t actually know.
More: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/02/haiti.border.arrests/index.html
Silsby’s claim about having gotten all the children from a Haitian pastor, who had in turn gotten them from “distant relatives”, is collapsing fast and hard.
So the feel good story of Silsby helping out orphans is just not holding up?
Appears she is the shady one and not the Haiti Gov., in this particular case.
LIke you, I would think some had really good intentions to join a group to go and help the children in Haiti.
Unfortunately they may have hooked up with the wrong person. In this case, Silsby.
Going to take some time to sort out for the folks that joined Silsby and were misled.
Thanks again for the research.
Helpful to me and I hope others that wanted to blame the folks in Haiti.
Who knows maybe the guy who stopped them at the border saved the lives of these kids.
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