Haiti: Arrested Baptists may be sent to US (Photo Gallery)
The arrest of 10 Americans for trying to take children out of Haiti has raised an uncomfortable question in this brutally poor and earthquake-devastated country: Could some children be better off abroad under the grim circumstances?
The Baptists from Idaho were waiting Monday to hear if they will be tried on child trafficking charges for attempting to take 33 Haitian children to the Dominican Republic without official authorization. Guards waved off reporters who tried to enter to meet them.
Child welfare groups expressed outrage over Friday’s attempt, saying some of the children had parents who survived the Jan. 12 earthquake. Prime Minister Max Bellerive denounced the group’s “illegal trafficking of children” in a country long afflicted by the scourge and by foreign meddling.
But the reality is that some struggling Haitian parents see adoption as a last-ditch hope for their children.
“My parents died in the earthquake. My husband has gone. Giving up one of my kids would at least give them a chance,” Saintanne Petit-Frere, 40, a mother of six living outside in a tent camp near the airport said Sunday. “My only fear is that they would forget me, but that wouldn’t affect my decision.”
The Baptists’ “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission” was described as an effort to save abandoned, traumatized children. Their plan was to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic. The 33 kids ranged in age from 2 months to 12 years.
They were stopped at the border for not having proper paperwork and taken back to Port-au-Prince, where the children were taken to a temporary children’s home.
Haiti’s justice secretary, Amarick Louis, told The Associated Press that a commission would meet Monday to determine if the group would go before a judge. The group was being held at a building where government ministers are giving regular briefings — a maze of dingy concrete rooms but not traditional cells. Their living conditions were unclear.
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