Idahoans' rescue effort strikes nerves in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Ten U.S. Baptists detained trying to take 33 children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti without government permission say they were just trying to do the right thing, applying Christian principles to save Haitian children.

But some in Haiti say their "Orphan Rescue Mission" is misplaced in a country that has long suffered from child trafficking and foreign interventions, and where much of the aid is delivered in ways that challenge Haiti's own rich religious traditions.

Prime Minister Max Bellerive on Sunday told The Associated Press that the group was arrested and is under judicial investigation "because it is illegal trafficking of children, and we won't accept that."

The Americans are the first people to be arrested on such suspicions since the Jan. 12 quake. They were being held Sunday in Haiti's judicial police headquarters until a Monday hearing. The adults have been charged with lacking proper documents for the children, officials said.

In Meridian, the Rev. Clint Henry urged his tearful congregation at Central Valley Baptist Church to pray to God to "help them as they seek to resist the accusations of Satan and the lies that he would want them to believe and the fears that he would want to plant into their heart."

The 10 detained Americans include five members of the Meridian church and four members of the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls. They are part of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is America's largest Protestant denomination and has extensive humanitarian programs worldwide.

Another detainee is a part-time youth pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan.

The government and established child welfare agencies are trying to slow Haitian adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold. Without proper documents and concerted efforts to track down their parents, they could be forever separated from family members able and willing to care for them. Bellerive's personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.

The church group's own mission statement said it planned to spend only hours in the devastated capital, quickly identifying children without immediate families and busing them to a rented hotel in the Dominican Republic without getting permission from the Haitian government.

Whatever their intentions, other child welfare organizations in Haiti said the plan was foolish at best.

"The instinct to swoop in and rescue children may be a natural impulse, but it cannot be the solution for the tens of thousands of children left vulnerable by the Haiti earthquake," said Deb Barry, a protection expert at Save the Children, which wants a moratorium on new adoptions. "The possibility of a child being scooped up and mistakenly labeled an orphan in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster is incredibly high."

The church members, mostly from Idaho, said they were only trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children.

"In this chaos the government is in right now, we were just trying to do the right thing," the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, told the AP from inside the police headquarters.

Officials said the group lacked the proper documents for the children.

Silsby said she didn't think she needed Haitian permission to take the children out of the country. She said the group had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, whom she said were brought to a Haitian pastor by their distant relatives.

Child trafficking "is exactly what we are trying to combat," Silsby said.

The children, ages 2 months to 12 years old, were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, where spokesman George Willeit said they arrived "very hungry, very thirsty, some dehydrated."

"One (8-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," Willeit said.

The orphanage was working Sunday to reunite the children with their families, joining a concerted effort by the Haitian government, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other NGOs.

As the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is in a difficult spot - it needs aid but deeply resents foreign meddling. Many have mixed feelings about American evangelical Christian groups that funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into their missions in Haiti.

"There are many who come here with religious ideas that belong more in the time of the inquisition," said Max Beauvoir, head of Haiti's Voodoo Priest's Association, which represents thousands of priests and priestesses. "These types of people believe they need to save our souls and our bodies from ourselves. We need compassion, not proselytizing now, and we need aid - not just aid going to people of the Christian faith."

Many religious groups run legitimate adoption agencies and orphanages in Haiti. Some of the children in them aren't actually orphans but have been left by relatives who can't afford their care.

Other adoption brokers offer children to rich Haitians and foreigners in return for processing fees reaching $10,000, according to the intergovernmental International Organization for Migration.

For many poor Haitians, giving up their kids for adoption is the best hope for their children's future.

"Foreigners have come here a lot asking if we would be willing to have people abroad adopt one of our kids," said Joseph Emmanuel Amazon, 53, a former concrete laborer who now struggles to support seven kids.

"I've said yes - I see all these kids running around and I can't do anything for them. They would be better off in another country. I'd like one of them to go to the United States."

His wife, Marie Rita Pierre, agreed: "I would allow one of these groups to take one of my children. My youngest daughter wants to go to university. We can't help her."

About 20 other Haitians interviewed Sunday echoed the same desperate conclusion. But others disagreed.

"If their parents are dead, that's one thing. But there is no way I would give my three up," said Juliet Victor, 32, a jeans seller who is surviving for now on the few pairs that weren't destroyed in the earthquake.

Henry, the Meridian pastor, said his church became involved with the Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission because the founders, Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter, were members of the congregation.

Even before the earthquake, the Idaho churches had elaborate plans to "provide a loving Christian homelike environment" for 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.

"One of the reasons that our church wanted to help is because we believe that Christ has asked us to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world, and that includes children," Henry said. His 500-member church gave several thousand dollars to the mission, Henry said.

When the quake hit, they decided to move faster. Silsby, who runs an online shopping site in Idaho, quickly put their plan on the Web, soliciting tax-deductible donations while preparing their trip. "Given the urgent needs from this earthquake, God has laid upon our hearts the need to go now, versus waiting until the permanent facility is built," the group wrote.