Baptist Missionaries Charged With Child Trafficking in Haiti

Missionaries Charged with Child Trafficking

After the recent devastation in the Western hemisphere's poorest country, Haiti, parentless children are running rampant. Ten American Baptist missionaries are in a makeshift jail in Port-au-Prince while they await their fate today after being accused of trying to take a group of 33 Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic without proper documentation.

The group, known as The Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission, originated out of Idaho and is dedicated to saving children who have been traumatized and abandoned. The church officials organizing the rescue effort said the group's focus was strictly humanitarian. The group merely wanted to place Haitian children, whom they thought were parentless, in a newly established Dominican Republic orphanage called the New Life Children's Refuge. The group had planned on filling the beach-resort-like facility with at least 200 Haitian and Dominican children in order to get the wheels in motion to establish a school, villas, seaside cafe and chapel for the attention of potential American adoptive parents.

The transfer effort began last Friday, when a truck carrying 33 Haitian children, ages 2 months to 12 years, was stopped at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The missionaries had no permission from the Haitian government or proper documentation to present to border officials, and this raised a red flag.

"They tried to leave with the children without the proper documents and without following the formal procedures," said Public Security Secretary Amarick Louis. "Specialized units and territorial units, have been instructed to take all appropriate measures against people who don't respect the rules."

Drew Ham, a pastor with the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, adamantly defends the intentions of his own church members. Ham says there's been a serious lack of misunderstanding, "The group was trying to help. They thought they were acting by the book. They had contacted the Dominican government, they had the paperwork they were told they needed to have, they went to Haiti and were in contact with an orphanage there," he said. "From all our accounts, this is simply a paperwork issue. And the next thing our folks know, they're being arrested." The other missionaries who were also in the group came from East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho.

The Haitian government announced last week that all adoptions would be placed on hold, unless folks are in the midst of completing one. There has been a rash of sex trafficking by foreign interlopers, and Haitian children have been the prime targets. In order for any adoptee to leave Haiti, Prime Minister Max Bellerive has to now personally authorize it.

The children in question were taken to an orphanage in Santo, on the outskirts of the capital city. The facility is run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, where a spokesperson said that 33 children arrived hungry and thirsty--a few infants were even dehydrated. It is reported that at least 10 of the children in question have parents.