US Baptists to stand trial in Haiti
Updated on 02 February 2010
Ten Americans accused of trying to take 33 Haitian children out of the country illegally are due to appear before a judge today in Port-au-Prince. Sarah Smith reports.
The 10 - all from an Idaho-based Christian Baptist group - face possible charges of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping and child trafficking.
They insist they believed the children were orphans and they were only trying to help.
The children at the centre of this international controversy are doing what they can to amuse themselves outside yet another orphanage in Port-au-Prince.
They were brought to the orphanage after a group of American Christians were stopped from taking them out of the country and many of them will be collected by their parents over the next few days because most of them are not orphans at all.
20 of the 33 children came from one small village. Parents there admit they willingly sent their children away with the Americans, thinking they would enjoy a better life.
The Americans being held in Port-au-Prince have been called "kidnappers" by the Haitian prime minister. But they insist they really believed the children were orphans who needed their help.
Laura Silsby of the New Life Children’s Refuge told Channel 4 News: “We may have been deceived by someone coming to us and saying: ‘The parents are dead. Please take our child.’ Because we’re taking them to a very… I mean, we have a beautiful place for them to go, and I can see how parents that were desperate, that had lost their homes, lost their jobs, would want possibly to have their child go to a better place.”
The Americans had no official paperwork with them when they were stopped at the border with the Dominican Republic. But they say they had permission to take the children from a Haitian pastor, Jean Sainville.
Pastor Sainville told the programme: "I had a verbal agreement from the parents, with their names and their contact phone number in any case we can contact them."
Many children were orphaned by the earthquake and do need help. But the Haitian authorities have been worried that, in the chaos, children would be adopted abroad who should have been kept with their families in Haiti. So they banned all children from leaving the country unless they had specific permission.
