More on the Haiti kidnapping case

This is an article about the youngest a member of the Idaho "mission" team that got busted for trying to take Haitian children out of the country to the Dominican Republic, Charisa Coulter: Boisean 'felt call from God' to help Haitian children by Bill Roberts Idaho Statesman 02/02/10.

Coulter, probably foolishly from a legal viewpoint, admitted that the group knew they didn't have the proper papers to transport the children. She had been working as a nanny for Laura Silsby, who is considered a co-founder of the group with Coulter. The article mentions that Coulter's father attends a Nazarene church, a Pentecostal denomination.

This group's story sounds stranger the more I think about it. A single Southern Baptist Church in Idaho sets up its own international mission project in Haiti? And sends a bunch of white people down there in middle of a terrible natural catastrophe? Coulter is diabetic; did any of them take into account that she could easily wind up with problems in that situation, i.e., having her insulin stolen or lost? I still haven't seen anything that tells me any of the people in the group had actual experienced organizing mission work in another country, in orphanage or adoption services, or international charities. I haven't even seen anything saying that any of them were fluent in French or the Haitian Creole dialect.

UNICEF seems to share with SOS Children's Villages, both of which are active in Haiti, a very critical and downright suspicious attitude toward the Idaho group (Rescue attempt could hamper Haiti adoptions Idaho Statesman 02/02/10):

Child trafficking across the Dominican border is a serious issue for the poverty-stricken country [Haiti].

In 2005, UNICEF officials estimated that 30,000 Haitian children were trafficked each year to be used as prostitutes or to perform other types of degrading work.

"They do go into servitude in the (Dominican Republic), because they're Haitian and they're not considered human beings," DiFilipo said. "The best intentions can really do damage and that's what happened here."

With this background, the Idahoans' attempt to take a group of children across the borders, some of whom were not even orphans, without having any kind of permanent orphanage facility for them in the Dominican Republic, without proper papers, and on behalf of a group that had no history of mission or charity work in Haiti earlier than a couple of months ago just looks awfully suspicious.

Tags: haiti kidnapping