Haiti kidnapping

This article from the Idaho Statesman gives a good roundup of the various ways in which the cowboy mission program of the Central Valley Baptist Church of Meridian, Idaho, led by the shady businesswoman Laura Silsby, has been a fiasco: Experts: Laura Silsby and nine other Americans may have caused more fallout than they realize by Katy Moeller 02/21/10.

This Idaho missionary/kidnapping story has fascinated me from the start, both because it's like something straight out of a Law and Order mystery but also because it's shed some needed public light into some previously dark corners of the human-trafficking and adoption businesses, and the questionable ethics of missionary activities that involve adoption of "heathen" children as a goal. And as Moeller's article puts it, "The fallout offers a cautionary tale and a lesson for people who simply want to help." Real emergency aid is very different from disaster tourism.

Moeller's article focuses specifically on the problematic arrangement the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has with its local churches over international missions:

Any local Baptist church can plan and run its own relief project abroad - without training or approval from the Southern Baptist Convention's missions boards. But some church officials hope that the disastrous trip led by two Idaho churches will lead others considering such efforts to tap available training and resources.

The detention of the Baptists in Haiti, though, has the potential of making other countries wary of U.S. help.

"Clearly there is a concern that, because of the acts of this one team, our tremendous history of relief over the years would be tainted in some people's minds," Roger Oldham, vice president of Southern Baptist Convention relations, told The Associated Press.

On Wednesday, Morris H. Chapman, president of the convention's executive committee, told the Baptist Press that the detention of the U.S group for three weeks was "unfortunate for everyone involved - the Haitian people as well as the volunteers, their families and churches."

"Hopefully, it will serve as a reminder that there is no shortcut for proper training and orientation before embarking on short-term ministry trips," Chapman said. "I pray this will be a catalyst for more of our cooperating churches to take advantage of disaster-relief training offered through our North American Mission Board." [my emphasis]

To the extent our Establishment press notices things like this at all, they tend to let groups like the SBC slide to avoid being accused of being Liberal Press, which the Republicans accuse them of all the time anyway.

But SBC should be held to account by the press, by its members and by the law for its acts of omission which result in disasters like this. If I were a reporter covering this story, I would be asking questions about the extent to which the national SBC encourages local cowboy projects like Silsby's to get around restrictions that countries like Haiti place on the SBC's official mission activities. Although it was theoretically a local operation from an individual church (Moeller's article says the mission was sponsored by two Idaho churches, but I'm not sure that's correct), national SBC officials prominently defended Silsby's group, and not just in purely humanitarian terms.

The SBC isn't just the largest Protestant denomination in the country, it's also the largest fundamentalist organization, having gone through a bitter purge two decades ago to enforce a narrow, fundamentalist doctrinal conformity. The national organization can duck legal liability for things like local church staff committing acts of sexual misconduct, because the Church is organized so that assignment of pastors is handled by individual churches, not by the national denomination. They have used a similar argument to duck responsibility for Silsby's cowboy operation in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

But the SBC was more than willing to use its central power to enforce doctrinal conformity. Churches that don't toe the line can be denied the Southern Baptist franchise, i.e., kicked out of the denomination. Since it is the largest Protestant denomination, the franchise means a lot to local congregations. It could apply similar sanctions on international mission operations.

Given that the Silsby operation involved the Southern Baptist brand name in a child-kidnapping action with more than one dubious, sleazy or criminal character heavily involved (Silsby, Jorge Torres Puello, Jean Sainvil), the statements from SBC officials Moeller quotes in the segment above are surprisingly mild.

The Christian Science Monitor ran another lessons-learned piece on the case on 02/18/10, US missionaries: Lessons from Haiti adoption or 'child kidnapping' case by Sara Miller Llana:

“There is a universal urge to help children. That universal urge is so much more powerful when children are in a crisis,” says W. Warren Binford, an assistant professor of law and an expert on international children's rights at Willamette University College of Law in Oregon. But this case shows, she says, how “important it is not to act on those instincts, without considering the long-term consequences.”

Llana also quotes Christopher Schmidt, an attorney with experience in international child custody disputes:

"I think the real key to remember is that it is a crime, in any country in the world, including Haiti and the US, to go to a foreign country, even if intentions are humanitarian, and to take children without consent of both parents and the government," says Schmidt.

With the kind of recklessness this Idaho group showed in their actions, it's really hard to credit their supposed good intentions.

Frank Bajak also reported in a 02/20/10 article for the A********* P**** that All Haitian 'orphans' with Baptists had parents. He also provides some useful detail on the parents who agreed to send their children to the (make-shift) orphanage, thinking it would be a temporary arrangement.

He also inteviews Pastor Jean Sainvil, a Georgia-based Haitian who helped Silsby's group round up the 33 children they tried to kidnap. According to Sainvil in that interview, he first met Silsby on January 27. It's yet another sign of the irresponsibility (at best!) of Silsby's operation that she was relying on a man she had just met for such a task that was critical to be done honestly, legally and professionally. Bajak notes that Sainvil has left Haiti but "denied leaving out of fear he might be arrested".

The Texas member of the group of eight that were released, Jim Allen, appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show Friday: Jim Allen's First Interview The Oprah Winfrey Show 02/19/10. Oprah did a half-decent job interviewing him, asking him to describe what he saw of how the children were rounded up. He made it sound like the only children he saw delivered to the group were brought out directly from an orphanage. Ophrah didn't follow up to clarify whether that was consistent with the reports of how Sainvil rounded up kids from their parents. She could also have probed a bit more as to Allen's motives for going on this cowboy mission trip. He flat-out denied the report that several members of the group had signed a statement and passed it to the press saying that Silsby was lying about the case while they were all in jail in Haiti.

Since Allen still faces legal charges in Haiti, the value of such interviews is questionable. Only if he made a statement that would be obviously against his own legal interests would it have particular credibility. Which would be foolish for anyone in his position to do.

Another of the eight released, Paul Thompson, appeared on the Today Show. I couldn't find a transcript, but John Hanna and Caryn Rousseau reported on it in an A********* P**** story Freed missionaries describe experience in Haiti Denver Post 02/20/10.

"We're four guys — well, we're a group of 10 people — that are convinced that it's better to get up off the couch and go and help people than just sit on a couch and do nothing," missionary Paul Thompson said during a segment taped from Topeka and aired Friday on NBC's "Today" show. Thompson is from Twin Falls, Idaho.

Thompson's story quoted there had a kind of self-defensive whining that I didn't hear in Allen's interview with Oprah.

But I was struck in Allen's interview and with what I've seen quoted from Thompson's that they didn't seem to have any sense that they had done anything that called for some kind of regret. Or even some Christian humility that they might have approached things in the wrong way. Their attorneys may prefer that they not talk in public at all. But surely there's a way they could express regret without admitting legal culpability.

Tags: haiti kidnapping

Haiti kidnapping update

Constantino Diaz-Duran reports in The Man Who Conned the Missionaries The Daily Beast 02/15/10 that Jorge Puello, the sleaziest known player so far in the Haiti kidnapping case, has disappeared. Since he's wanted in at least two countries for human-trafficking type charges, that was an understandable move on his part. If none of the Americans involved were linked up with him before they went to Haiti, this is a classic illustration of "when you're in a hole, stop digging." Getting busted on child kidnapping charges and then picking a character like this as your legal adviser is a pretty brain-dead move. At best.

Eight of the 10 arrested wannabe missionaries in Haiti have been released. They got lucky. Their leader Laura Silsby and one other woman who had visited Haiti with her last December are still being held. The Miami Herald has details: 8/church workers freed from Haitian jail land in Miami by Patricia Mazzei, Gerardo Reyes and James Burnett III 02/18/10. They cite the position of the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land, a leading Christian Rightist:

The handling of the case has angered prominent American Baptists in the United States, including Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, who wrote to President Barack Obama to ask him to press for the missionaries' release. Land wrote in an e-mail Wednesday that he was "relieved" that eight of the missionaries were let go.

"They should have been released many days ago," he said.

This case was clearly not about religious freedom. It was about protecting Haitian children against child traffickers, even if that may not have been the intention of Silsby and her cowboy "missionary" group.

También, la esposa de Jorge Torres Puello lo culpo a él en el caso de prostitutión en El Salvador. Esposa de Torres Puello lo involucra en caso de prostitución infantil El Nuevo Herald 02/18/10. (The wife of Jorge Torres Puello accuses him of being guilty in the prostitution case in El Salvador; she's also quoted in the Miami Herald piece.)

Time in UNICEF Seeks to Keep Kids Out of Haiti Orphanages
By Tim Padgett and Jessica Desvarieux 02/18/10 provides more information about the problem of orphanages and child trafficking in Haiti. And also points out how the Idaho missionaries are ridiculously posturing as Christian martyrs:

The 10 U.S. missionaries who were arrested in Haiti last month for allegedly abducting children no doubt consider themselves Christian martyrs. When a TIME reporter visited the Idaho Baptists recently in their squalid, rusted jail cells in Port-au-Prince and asked about their predicament, their unsurprising, biblical response was, "The Philistines won, the Philistines won."

Tags: haiti kidnapping

Haiti kidnapping case: stranger and stranger

The Haiti kidnapping case that hit the news with the arrest of the kidnappers two weeks ago has indeed turned out to be a story that has lead to some interesting developments. The initial sign to me that something was very unusual about this beyond just an unfortunately misunderstanding in a disaster situation was that the group was part of a project from a single Southern Baptist church in Idaho. Why would an individual church set up their own cowboy international missions program and send people into such a difficult situation? Especially since their own denomination has a large, long-established international missions program?

Marley Greiner has made her adoption-related blog The Daily Bastardette into a go-to site on this case. Check out, for instance, her posts of 02/13/10 and 02/14/10 on Jorge Puello, the latest bizarre mystery to emerge from this mess. She speculates a tad more than I would but maybe I'm being too reserved about that. I want to know more about the statement by Patrick Mahoney, who is prominent in far-right circles (a very dubious distinction), that he had worked on "past projects" with members of the congregation of the Idaho Central Valley Baptist Church that sponsored the kidnapping "mission".

The New York Times has had enough sloppy reporting that I'm reluctant to jump to conclusions about an accusation of criminal activity based solely on a Times article. For one of their most notorious failures in that regard (and not only theirs!), see Wen Ho Ho Ho Lee Gets Last Laugh by Jack Shafer 06/07/06.

So I'm treating their reports on the Haiti kidnapping case with caution: Adviser to Detained Americans in Haiti Is Investigated by Marc Lacey and Ian Urbina New York Times 02/11/10. But this is about about the mystery man Jorge Puello:

The police in El Salvador have begun an investigation into whether a man suspected of leading a trafficking ring involving Central American and Caribbean women and girls is also a legal adviser to the Americans charged with trying to take 33 children out of Haiti without permission. ...

The adviser, Jorge Puello, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he had not engaged in any illegal activity in El Salvador and that he had never been in the country. He called it a case of mistaken identity. “I don’t have anything to do with El Salvador,” he said, suggesting that his name was as common in Latin America as John Smith is in the United States.

Marley Greiner links to this article in which Puello's mother and stepfather confirm that the kidnappers' "legal adviser" is indeed the man sought in El Salvador for human trafficking: Adoption `lawyer' tied to child sex case by Patricia Mazzei, Michael Sallah and Gerardo Reyes Miami Herald 02/14/10.

Man, when your own mother is ratting you out to reporters, you have real problems!

Assuming that the shady businesswoman who was the head of the informal "mission" project and all her associates actually were acting on good intentions - a possible though highly dubious option to view this case - this is one more reminder that trying to set up a cowboy international missions program is very bad judgment. To do something like that right, they would have to have good legal representation and advice, among many other things. Like stable funding, qualified professionals in the required specialties like institutional child care, people who spoke the local language well, and legitimate contacts in the country.

See also:

Ten Baptists detained in Haiti get the best news since their arrest Idaho Statesman 02/12/10

Laura Silsby had grand ambitions in business and charity by Katy Moeller Idaho Statesman 02/14/10. This article gives some background on the group leader's previous connections to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It says without elaborating that her adult son got married in the Dominican Republic. It also includes several instances on this Haiti trip where Silsby was specifically warned against trying to take children out of Haiti without proper officials documentation. Also interesting and maybe not entirely irrelevant:

Silsby has more than 70 "friends" on Facebook, including many family members. Her page says she is a "fan" of Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience, Wild Ivy Gift Shop, Geo Challenge and Sarah Palin.

She's been a supporter of the Republican Party in the past, having donated to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee - $2,500 in 2008 and $500 in 2006.

Puello Probe Separate From Missionaries' Case by David Gauthier-Vallars Wall Street Journal 02/14/10

Regardless of how this case eventually turns out, a good lesson for anyone to take from it is: think twice - maybe think three or four or five times - if a cowboy group of "missionaries" headed by a shady businesswoman asks you go to a dirt-poor country in the middle of an emergency situation to pick up children to export. And if you do decide to go, hire your own qualified attorney ahead of time!

Tags: haiti kidnapping

Haitian kidnapping case links

Here are a few additional links adding detail to the Haiti kidnapping story:

Angelina Jolie, en contra de las adopciones en Haití El Mundo 10/02/2010

Attorney: Decision imminent on jailed missionaries by Frank Bajak (AP) Idaho Statesman 02/10/10

Haiti judge to free U.S. missionaries by Jim Loney Reuters 02/10/10

Laura Silsby's business couldn't pay rent, taxes by Katy Moeller Idaho Statesman 02/10/10

Tags: haiti kidnapping

Judge postpones wage claim lawsuit against Laura Silsby's Boise company by Katy Moeller Idaho Statesman 02/10/10

Haiti kidnapping updates

The New York Times is running a sloppy, credulous piece on US kidnappers in Haiti, countenancing their their persecuted-Christian posturing Americans Jailed in Haiti Plead for Help From U.S. by Ian Urbina 02/06/10. The Times could really have put some energy into this story. The Idaho Statesman's original reporting has been much better than this. The Times did run an earlier story giving some background on the child trafficking problem in Haiti, though the McClatcy/Miami Herald piece on that topic was also better.

The SBC News of the Southern Baptist Convention reports Idaho 10 face dire conditions; Silsby focus of inquiry by Erin Roach 02/08/10. The "Idaho 10" - soon perhaps to be a favorite slogan for those hyping the real and imagined persecution of Christians abroad.

The Idaho kidnapping group's new attorney is changing their public defense In Haiti, Americans' attorney says they had papers AP/Idaho Statesman 02/08/10. That claim seems unlikely to go very far based on previous reports, but we'll see.

Idahoans in Haiti agreed to pay $7,000 a month to house children in church center, newspaper says by Bethann Stewart Idaho Statesman 02/08/10 advances the story in pointing out that Silsby's current story on the arrangements they made for temporary housing for the 33 kidnapped children in the Dominican Republic, a story Stewart confirmed from an independent source:

... suggests that Laura Silsby, the Boise woman who organized the trip to Haiti to find children new homes after the Jan. 12 earthquake, didn't have housing for the children already lined up when she and the other Baptists first went to Haiti.

An anxious pastor encourages congregation to keep praying for 10 detainees in Haiti by Bethann Stewart Idaho Statesman 02/08/10

Fellow Baptist has faith in Laura Silsby Idaho Statesman 02/09/10 Despite the title, this article has a much broader roundup of recent news on the case. One single-sourced report said that the Idaho group had made an earlier attempt to take Haitian children out of the country but were blocked by Haitian officials, which could complicate the defense put forward by their first Haitian attorney that nine of the 10 thought the attempt in which they got busted was legally on the up-and-up.

Christian Imperialism in Haiti? Missionaries, Theo-tourism, and the Invasion of the Global South by Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado Religion Dispatches 02/08/10 deals with some of the broader issues at stake.

Marley Greiner has been following this story closely and commenting on it at her blog The Daily Bastardette and the Web page End Child Exportation and Trafficking in Haiti.

Tags: haiti kidnapping

What the evangelical Christian adoption business wants to keep under the radar

Joyce Kathryn, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (2009), provides some important background to the stance of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and far-right extremists like Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition defending the 10 American Baptists arrested for kidnapping in Haiti in Evangelicals' Adoption Battlecry The Daily Beast 02/06/10:

The news of an adoption organization driven by missionary zeal surprised many, but it shouldn’t. Although [the Idaho group] New Life’s illegal actions [in Haiti] have been condemned by other religious adoption agencies, their sense of calling fits into a growing movement of American evangelical churches embracing a new orphan theology that urges Christians to see adoption and “orphan-care” as an integral part of their faith—and a means of spreading the gospel. ...

This June, [Russell] Moore [of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary] helped pass a Southern Baptist Convention resolution calling upon all 16 million members of the denomination to prayerfully consider whether or not God was calling them to adopt. With both domestic and international adoption described as almost "contagious" in evangelical churches, with even small congregations boasting dozens of adopted children, it’s evident that more Christians are feeling that "call" — whether from God, or from leaders like Moore.

Kathryn also describes some of the serious ethical problems with the approach being taken by the country's largest Protestant denomination on the issue of adopting children from poor developing countries like Haiti:

In the wake of the New Life fiasco, Russell Moore worried the news would “give a black eye to the orphan-care movement,” as anti-abortion vigilantes had to the pro-life movement—a lawless take on a shared agenda. But there are larger problems with the call for American Christians to adopt en masse. Among them are the widely misunderstood definitions of orphans, which lead to ever-ballooning estimates of children in need of adoption. Another is the strong taint of colonialism in casting American adopters as saviors and focusing on adoption as a solution for impoverished communities. In some countries in recent years, including Liberia and Ethiopia, religious adoption organizations have been singled out for censure by national authorities, accused of using church ties to legitimize unethical practices. [my emphasis]

The link to the Miami Herald's excellent story on the recent history of orphanage and adoption problems that I quoted in an earlier post is still broken as of a few hours ago. (That's actually the main reason I use a practice still uncommon for bloggers of usually citing the title, author, date and publication of articles I link. I discovered early in my blogging experience that if a link is broken, it's much easier to find the story if you have the exact title and the author.) But the story is now available at the Idaho Statesman: Why Haiti is so upset with the American detainees by Scott Hiassen, Kathleen McGrory, Jacqueline Charles and Trenton Daniel, McClatchey Newspapers 02/07/10.

But the New York Times has weighed in with its own story on those problems in Haiti: Bleak Portrait of Haiti Orphanages Raises Fears by Ginger Thompson 02/06/10. The story also appears at MSNBC under a similar title, Bleak portrait of Haiti orphanages raises fears. Thompson reports:

At the front lines of the system are the orphanages, which run the gamut from large, well-equipped institutions with international financing to one-room hovels in a slum where a single woman cares for abandoned children as best she can.

Most of the children in them, the authorities said, are not orphans, but children whose parents are unable to provide for them. To desperate parents, the orphanage is a godsend, a temporary solution to help a child survive a particularly tough economic stretch. Many orphanages offer regular family visiting hours and, when their situations improve, parents are allowed to take their children back home.

But instead of protecting Haiti's most vulnerable population, some orphanages have become tools of exploitation, the authorities fear.

“There are many so-called orphanages that have opened in the last couple of years that are not really orphanages at all,” said Frantz Thermilus, the chief of Haiti’s National Judicial Police. “They are fronts for criminal organizations that take advantage of people who are homeless and hungry. And with the earthquake they see an opportunity to strike in a big way.” [my emphasis]

The Idaho Statesman has new articles related to the case:

At Sunday service, Meridian church members are asked to pray for Haiti detainees by Bethann Stewart 02/07/10. This report says that only five of the 10 arrested in Haiti are actually members of the Central Valley Baptist Church, which sponsored their "mission" and of which far-right activists Patrick Mahoney says he has worked on past projects with members of that congregation in a small Idaho city. I hope the church members also prayed for the well-being of the 33 children whose safety was put at risk by the reckless acts of their "missionaries".

Silsby 'lying,' detainees say 02/07/10. The members of the missionary group kidnapping gang are starting to turn on each other, it seems. They would have been well-advised to work through an established charity or NGO that knew what they were doing:

Meanwhile, the Haitian lawyer for the Baptists charged with child kidnapping tried to bribe their way out of jail and has been fired, the attorney who hired him told The Associated Press Saturday.

Haitian lawyer Edwin Coq denied the allegation. He said the $60,000 he requested from the Americans' families was his fee.

Jorge Puello, the attorney in the neighboring Dominican Republic retained by relatives of the 10 Americans after their arrest last week, told The Associated Press that he fired Coq Friday night. He had hired Coq to represent the detainees at Haitian legal proceedings.

Coq orchestrated "some kind of extortion with government officials" that would have led to the release of nine of the Baptists, Puello charged.

Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times of London reports Clinton brokers deal over Haiti orphan abductions by Tony Allen-Mills 02/07/10. The Times of London's repeated reports of an imminent Israeli nuclear attack on Iran which never happens make me cautious about their diplomatic reports. We'll see what happens on this. Allen-Mills article looks like it may have been based on the reports of Edwin Coq, the Haitian attorney who was just fired from the Americans' case.

Tags: haiti kidnapping, southern baptists

Baptist branding issues

The conservative Christian Post reports that Baptist groups not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant denomination in the US, are making sure to distance themselves from the Baptists in jail in Haiti for kidnapping Haitian children (Baptist Bodies Distance Themselves from Americans Charged in Haiti by Ethan Cole 02/05/10):

The global fellowship Baptist World Alliance issued a statement Thursday "to assure its member bodies, the media and the public" that neither the team of missionaries nor their churches are affiliated with BWA or with any of its member bodies.

Similarly, the American Baptist Churches USA on Wednesday stated that the ten American Baptists arrested by Haitian authorities over concern about child trafficking are not members of churches affiliated with the denomination.

“While the people involved are Baptists from the United States, they are not members of the denomination known as ABCUSA,” the denomination stated.

Most of the team members are from two Idaho churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

The SBC itself has a double track going. They seem to be highlighting their cautious concern for the well-being of those arrested while at the same time promoting it as a case of innocent Christians being persecuted for their good-faith acts as "missionaries". Morris Chapman, president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee, wrote on Wednesday of the arrested Americans in Pray for the detainees in Haiti Baptist Press 02/03/10:

The Haitian government and the international community immediately interpreted their actions in the worst light possible, alleging that they were trafficking in children. As the story has unfolded, it has become more and more apparent that these ten individuals were driven by the true selflessness of altruism. Moved with compassion, they acted.

Really? The more I hear about this story, the less credible "true selflessness" sounds as an explanation. At at some point, subjective intention can't really count as goodwill if it overrides a basic sense of responsibility. Anthea Butler in Missionary Imposition: Idaho Baptists Charged With Kidnapping 33 Haitian Children Religion Dispatches 02/05/10 takes this case as an example of how (presumed) good intentions in these situations can wind up at the service of arrogant and egotistical ones.

The Haitian lawyer representing the 10 arrested claims that the leader of the group, Laura Silsby, fooled the other nine into thinking she had the correct legal papers: Haitian lawyer: Nine Baptists were conned by Bethann Stewart Idaho Statesman 02/06/10. I don't know how effective that may be as a defense. But they certainly knew they were there at the border with a bunch of Haitian children on a cowboy operation on behalf of a mission group with apparently no formal legal existence.

Meridian church goes into lockdown mode after learning of charges NWCN 02/05/10. The local officials of the Idaho church sponsoring this cowboy mission program to kidnap Haitian children are probably realizing that they are facing not only scandalous international publicity but some potentially serious legal liability. If evidence were to emerge, for instance, that the "mission" group had conspired inside the US to commit an illegal act in taking the Haitian children out of Haiti, they could face federal charges here.

Marley Greiner has been following this story closely and commenting on it at her blog The Daily Bastardette and the Web page End Child Exportation and Trafficking in Haiti.

Tags: haiti kidnapping, southern baptists

Haiti kidnappers: the Persecuted Christians pitch is now underway

One of my more irreverent Facebook friends on the East Coast just posted that the mega-snowstorm has only been going on a few hours and the Baptists are already showing up to steal their babies.

The Miami Herald has a good background article on the problems that Haitian "orphans" have been encountering in recent years: Haiti 'orphans' face a life of neglect and pain by Scott Hiaasen, Kathleen McGrory, Jacqueline Charles and Trenton Daniel 02/05/10. [02/06/10 - The link to this article at the Miami Herald appears to be temporarily broken. The first few paragraph appear at the McClatchy DC site.] The orphanage business there can get really ugly. Including ones that call themselves Christian:

Haiti's record before the Jan. 12 earthquake showed just how vulnerable to abuse the country's children have been. Consider:

• In September, U.S. prosecutors indicted Douglas Perlitz, a Colorado missionary, on charges that he used food and gifts to extract sexual favors from teens at an orphanage he ran in northern Haiti. The orphanage was financed with donations from a Connecticut church group. Perlitz has pleaded not guilty.

• Two years ago, two Canadian aid workers were convicted in their home country of sexually abusing boys at an orphanage in southern Haiti.

• In 2007, the International Organization for Migration discovered 47 children who were solicited from their parents by the operators of a rogue adoption center in Port-au-Prince.

• That same year, Haitian police arrested the operator of an orphanage housing 32 children being offered in black-market adoptions.

I first came across that article via an aggregator site that I just found out about, the Haitian News Network.

Apparently it's dawned on the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) officials that this is not good publicity for their denomination, as the A********* P**** reports in Baptists concerned Haiti arrests may hurt image by Travis Loller Idaho Statesman 02/05/10. Duh!

At the SBC Web site is an article providing the text of a letter to President Obama that is clearly but not unambiguously defending the dubious group of white Idahoans busted trying to take 33 Haitian children out of the country illegally last weekend: In letter, Baptists ask Obama to aid 10 held by Haiti 02/05/10. My own first reading of this letter is that the SBC would like to get those Idaho Baptists sprung from jail and put this story to rest before it draws too much scrutiny to other orphanage and adoption services being run by conservative Christian groups dealing with Haitian children.

Richard Land, a top SBC officials and one of the most influential leaders of the Christian Right, sent his own separate letter: Land: Haiti govt's behavior 'outrageous' Baptist Press 02/05/10. Land's letter puts a different spin on the SBC's position than the A********* P**** story gives it.

"The Haitian government is receiving massive assistance from the United States, from both public and private sources," Land the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, wrote to Obama. "Our nation's churches are giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to relief efforts for the people of Haiti. These fine Christian men and women sought to do even more to help alleviate the suffering of some Haitian children. For the Haitian government to respond in this way to the obvious good intentions of these honorable Christians is outrageous. [my emphasis]

Before I saw the Land article, I would have said that I hadn't seen anyone making an outright pitch that these accused kidnappers are white Christians being persecuted for their religion by a bunch of black voodoo-following, Devil-worshipping Haitians. Of course, Land didn't explicitly put it that way. But the framing of this one isn't ambiguous, though the other SBC letter is. Land is explicitly saying these are "honorable" Christians with good motives and that their arrest was illegitimate.

It says a lot about Land, not much of it good, that he would so enthusiastically endorse such a dubious undertaking.

But you can also see the outlines of that framing of the issue in the first SBC article linked above and the milder letter to the President. It's also not far below the surface of the latest statement from the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, that was sponsoring this particularly strange international mission program:

It's perfectly natural for the families and friends of those arrested to try to put the best face on their actions. I would be doing exactly the same thing if a relative or friend were in that situation. And it's part of the duty of the State Department to monitor situations like that and do what's possible to protect the rights of Americans detained.

But if these Idahoans were well intentioned, their good intentions didn't include a minimum sense of responsibility. It especially disingenuous for the church to talk about their special concern "for the young people who are jailed in a foreign country." This sounds like a typical paranoid-conservative projection. None of the ten Idaho "missionaries" is a minor. But they attempted to take 33 children, ages 2-12, out of Haiti in a manner that at very best recklessly put the safety of the children at risk. That kind of screaming hypocrisy will work fine if their goal is whip up a frenzy among Christian Rightists and white supremacists. But it's not very likely to work in the favor of the 10 sitting in jail in Haiti.

The SBC's news service is also running a story that includes a ringing defense of the group by the pastor of a Kansas church that one of the group attended: Attorney asks for release of volunteers by Erin Roach 02/05/10. That piece also quotes the SBC's North American Mission Board making it clear that the Idaho operation was not one of theirs but nevertheless defending them. The group's interim president says, "We believe the mission team had the best intentions for the children they were transporting." Exactly why would he believe that? The story doesn't say

Loller's AP story reports a statement by an SBC official not included in the SBC news article linked above:

The Christians, most of them Southern Baptists, weren't acting under the auspices of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention, when they were arrested Jan. 29 while trying to take 33 children out of Haiti. Even so, Vice President of Convention Relations Roger Oldham said, "Clearly there is a concern that, because of the acts of this one team, our tremendous history of relief over the years would be tainted in some people's minds."

The Southern Baptists' Disaster Relief ministry is the third-largest relief organization in North America, according to the convention. Oldham said Friday that more than 90,000 trained disaster relief volunteers are ready to assist Haiti with earthquake recovery as soon as they are invited in by the Haitian government. [my emphasis]

Which raises one of the biggest questions about this "mission": why would an individual Southern Baptist church whose members genuinely wanted to help in this emergency in Haiti use their own separate mission program when the denomination has established, experienced resources of its own to which they could contribute.

It would be interesting to know if the SBC's Disaster Relief group would have accepted anyone on the Idaho team as a volunteer. I've yet to hear that any of them had any relevant skills for this situation. I also wonder why the Haitian government hasn't yet approved the official SBC group to enter the country yet. I'm sure this cowboy mission from Idaho didn't inspire confidence among Haitian officials. But is there more to it than that?

I'm also intrigued by this language in the SBC letter to Obama:

We ask, therefore, that you use all means necessary to secure for these mission volunteers the medical treatment and spiritual counsel that they need while imprisoned, and that you arrange for a representative from their churches or from the Southern Baptist Convention, or both, to visit them in Haiti as soon as possible. Upon their release, we also ask that those representatives be allowed to accompany them home to provide pastoral care and spiritual encouragement. [my emphasis]

There's no point into splitting hairs over individual phrasing. But it sure sounds to me like the SBC is trying to take ownership of this situation and hush it up, while at the same time trying to avoid any damage to their brand name or any legal liability.

Just to be clear, brand identity and legal liability are perfectly valid concerns for the SBC. And in itself, it's good to see that the denomination seems to be taking an active role in intervening for these unofficial missionaries.

But big questions remain as to what they were doing there. And I sure hope some competent reporters follow up on the claim that Patrick Mahoney of the far-right Christian Defense Coalition that he had worked with members of the sponsoring church in Idaho on past projects. I'm also curious why the SBC leaders decided to go with two different letters to Obama. Land's is much more explicit in defending the kidnappers. Is this kind of like when the Supreme Court has concurring opinions? I'm guessing it's something like a two-track strategy: protect the brand but set up the political issue as "persecuted Christians" and victimized white people.

Monica Potts at Tapped has a good post on this, on which I commented there: Helping Haiti With Arrogance 02/05/10.

Tags: haiti kidnapping

Coming soon: "Let my white people go!"

I see a Christian Right claim of "persecuted Christians" about to emerge over the Haiti kidnappers case. Nine of the white Idahoans busted at the Haitian border trying to take Haitian children out of the country illegally were formally charged today with kidnapping in Haiti.

Stephen Kurczy reports on it in Haiti ambassador: 'compassion' for American missionaries charged with kidnapping Christian Science Monitor 02/04/10. And he links to a story reporting on the Christian Defense Coalition getting involved in the case: Update on Attempt to Free American Missionaries in Haiti Christian Newswire 02/04/10.

The official story of the accused kidnappers so far has been that their local Southern Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho (pop. 85,000) had set up its very own international mission program to set up an orphanage in the Dominican Republic to care for orphans from Haiti. The project started in late 2009. Their project's documents talked about putting kids up for adoption, as well. But the defendants are claiming that they intended to keep the 33 kids they had in their bus in an orphanage - even though they don't have a facility set up yet - in the Dominican Republic, claiming they thought they were orphans. The Haitian Christian minister who, according to press interviews with some of the children's parents came to ask them to give their kids up to the American group, was promising the parents that they could visit them regularly at the orphanage in the Dominican Republic.

So this jumped out at me from the Christian Newswire story, apparently a press release from the Christian Defense Coalition, which Dave Neiwert says "is constantly on the lookout for 'anti-Christian' activities on the part of whatever miscreants it can manufacture":

Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition and the Rev. Rob Schenck, President of the National Clergy Council, prayed and shared their concerns with the [Haitian] Ambassador [in Washington].

Rev. Mahoney, who has worked with members of the Central Valley Baptist Church of Idaho on past projects, assured Ambassador Joseph that the missionaries were caring, loving Christians who were not kidnappers or traffickers. [my emphasis]

Say what? So in addition to this program whose founder with a shady business history was recently inspired to set up isn't the first, or even the second program from that same local church that required the services of the Christian Defense Coalition (CDC)?

Mahoney was formally involved with the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. His CDC group is highly political: Conservative Christian Group Invokes Slavery In Opposing Obama by Jake Tapper ABC News 07/08/08. Mahoney was very involved with the Terry Schiavo protests in 2005: Activists see base being fired up by Maeve Reston Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 03/28/05.

So what "past projects" has the far-right activist Mahoney worked on with the good white folks at the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho?

Tags: christian right, haiti kidnapping

It's almost like a throwback...

... to those long-ago days when TV news was actual news instead of bad infotainment.

Brother Al defends the controversial Christian adoption business taking Haitian children

ABC News actually did a segment asking questions about what's up with the Christian adoption business with Haitian children, putting it in the context of the white Idahoans who got busted trying to take 33 children out of Haiti illegally: Saving Haiti's Children 02/03/10.

This report raises some real questions, not just about this very suspicious Idaho group, but about how Christian adoptions of Haitian Christians children were being carried out even before the earthquake emergency.

This segment features our friend Brother Al Mohler, one of the most prominent honchos in the Southern Baptist Convention, seemingly defending the whole enterprise and, at least by implication, the Idaho crew. He makes it sound almost like a civil rights project. And Brother Al doesn't seem to think that the Librul Media quoted him out of context, because he posted a link to the segment on Twitter:

Brother Al also put out a defense of adoptions in Haiti at his blog: Adopted for Life ... and in Death 02/03/10. His blog post comes days after the arrest of the white Idahoans, and it doesn't so much as mention the case. Instead, it's a maudlin defense of foreigners adopting Haitian children. According to the ABC News report, even before the earthquake some of these adoptions were of children that had parents and were giving them up for American adoption. And it's clear that less missionary-oriented adoption services think even the technically legal practice is often downright unethical. Does Brother Al mention any of this in his article? No. But he assures his readers, "Adoption is perhaps the most powerful depiction of the Gospel found in the Bible."

There's a larger story here. The very fact that a high-profile Southern Baptist like Brother Al is defending the Idaho kidnappers, albeit very cautiously and by implication (but clear implication to those following the story), tells me that more is going on here than one quirky Southern Baptist church in Idaho setting up there own international mission to help little black children in Haiti.

Responsible government agencies and the press need to start taking a much harder look at the adoption business run by conservative Christian groups. I posted earlier about this story concerning Christian adoption services called "crisis pregnancy centers" targeting young mothers who don't want to have an abortion but who initially feel unable to properly care for a child: Shotgun Adoption The Nation 08/26/09. Some of the practices reported there are ugly.

Tags: albert mohler, christian right, haiti kidnapping

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

A strange story: Idaho Baptists kidnapping Haitian children

Kidnappers? Human traffickers? Well-intentioned fools? Some of the Americans held in the Haiti child-kidnapping case

I know appearances can be deceiving and all. But when I look at the pictures of these folks busted in the Haiti kidnapping case, the first thought that comes to my mind is definitely not, "Gee, these look like bleeding-heart Christian missionaries who were inspired to go to a dirt-poor underdeveloped country and care for black orphan children."

That story about the Southern Baptists from Idaho who got busted allegedly taking kids from Haiti illegally bears following. It may wind up shining a bit of light into one of the many dark corners of the Christian Right.

BBC News has a background story on the group responsible, Profile: New Life Children's Refuge 02/01/10. I thought the story sounded weird from the beginning. Why would a group of Baptists from Idaho come down and scoop up lost kids in Haiti and try to take them out of the country without proper authorization? The BBC reports, this part apparently based on the group's official claims:

New Life Children's Refuge (NLCR) is the brainchild of Laura Silsby, 40, and Charisa Coulter, 23, who are both members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho.

The charity, which Ms Silsby incorporated in Idaho in November last year, says it is "dedicated to rescuing, loving and caring for orphaned, abandoned and impoverished Haitian and Dominican children, demonstrating God's love and helping each child find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ".

Before the earthquake devastated Haiti, NLCR had planned to buy land and build an orphanage, school and church in Magante on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic.

The profile discretely raises a flag of suspicion, noting that the people arrested came from two Idaho churches: "The two churches are part of the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination which has extensive humanitarian programmes around the world."

Yes, it does. And there are lots of other organizations like the well-established and respected Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages charity and the Red Cross, who have actual experience in extreme crisis situations like this. The Haitian children that were taken from the New Life Children's Refuge group were put into the care of SOS Children's Villages. (This is grotesque; the New York Times Web version of this article, Case Stokes Haiti’s Fear for Children, and Itself 02/01/10, misidentifies the group as "SS Children’s Villages" as of this writing; SS Children's Villages?!?

At there very minimum the members of this Idaho group were amazingly lacking in responsibility. The most benign interpretation I can think to put on it would be this group had just started a project to set up an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, and they saw this emergency as a way to jump-start the project and maybe get raise some bucks through grants and donations. So they went down not really knowing what they were doing, snatched a bunch of kids off the street at least some of whom have parents or other living relatives, and tried to cart them out of the country.

But I find even that hard to believe. Because not only does the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) have missionary and charity organizations, but there are others coming from a more-or-less Christian fundamentalist perspective that do, as well. So why would a group of white people from Idaho want to start up a project like this? Did any of them have any real experience in Christian missions, working with orphans or international charities? The BBC profiles lists Carla Thompson, one of the Idahoans arrested, as "missions coordinator at the Central Valley Baptist Church". Which probably means she was in charge of putting together a special presentation once a year in support of the annual drive for mission contributions. Not exactly training for assisting orphans in a catastrophic earthquake situation.

The whole thing sounds like some sort of scam to me. Although they were apparently very serious about taking kids out of Haiti for some purpose.

I'll bet scriptwriters for Law and Order are already working on a episode based on this case.

This article, Baptist group denies trafficking in Haitian kids MSNBC 02/01/10, quotes an official from the SOS Children's Village as basically convinced that the group was indulging in human trafficking, aka, slavery:

"As far as we know they would have been, I say it clearly, sold for $10,000 each," said Georg Willeit, who runs the SOS Children's Village outside Port-au-Prince. "That's what one of the policemen told us. Every child was very desperate, hungry, thirsty. They all were in a bad condition."

"One of the elder girls told us, 'I'm not an orphan. I still have my parents,'" he added. "She thought she was going on a summer holiday vacation given by friendly people from America and the Dominican Republic."

The MSNBC piece identifies the group as the "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" instead of "New Life Children's Refuge." This El País article also uses the New Life Children's Refuge name (in Spanish): Los falsos huérfanos de Haití von Francisco Peregil 02.02.2010.

The Idaho Statesman has video of the Clint Henry, pastor of the Central Valley Baptist Church, reading a statement to the press, apparently on Monday. Even taking into consideration that this is probably the first time Brother Henry has found his church in the center of a serious international controversy, the statement is surprisingly empty. He didn't even bother to vouch for the good will of his church members or their dedication to the Lord or whatever. The News Update on the church's Web page as of this writing is only slightly more generous:

A ten member church team traveled to Haiti to help rescue children from one or more orphanages that had been devastated in the earthquake on January 12. The children were being taken to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic where they could be cared for and have their medical and emotional needs attended to. Our team was falsely arrested today and we are doing everything we can from this end to clear up the misunderstanding that has occurred in Port au Prince.

Henry gave an interview to CBS News in which he at least vouched for their good intentions.

The Christian Science Monitor also has coverage: Haiti 'orphan' rescue mission: Adoption or child trafficking? by Matthew Clark 02/01/10; Haiti: Americans accused of child trafficking could be tried in US by Matthew Clark 02/01/10. Clark uses both names for the organization.

Tags: haiti kidnapping