Haiti charges U.S. church members with kidnap

[laconicsax]

Looks like those missionaries running a 'benevolent' human trafficking operation are now being charged.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35235514/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Ten U.S. missionaries in Haiti were charged Thursday with child kidnapping and criminal association for allegedly trying to take children illegally out of the earthquake-hit country.

...

They were arrested last week on Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic when they tried to cross with a busload of 33 children they said were orphaned by the devastating Jan. 12 quake.

The Americans, who range in age from 18 to 55, acknowledged under questioning from the prosecutor they had apparently committed a crime by seeking to take the children across the border without proper documents. But they said they were unaware of that until after their arrest.

Didn't some child rape apologist in robes give the same excuse of "we didn't know it was wrong" in the past year too? You'd think people claiming to have an inside line on some grand morality would know these things.

[sam sarrha]

1. there is supposed to be a cop that sold them bogus papers. is the president holding them for ransom

in a quick video clip i saw what looked like a Beretta 9mm 92Inox in the belt of what looked like a Haitian street cop.. they run close to $700. it didn't look like he even had a holster for it.. the reason Haiti is one of the Poorest countries is due to endemic corruption. the reason most of the buildings fell down is due to corruption, cutting bags of cement to make extra cash..

I'm afraid that helping Haiti rebuild is just Piss'n in the wind till they clean up their act.. the UN or someone needs to take over. the last president was kidnapped by the CIA and taken to Africa.. a Criminal Gang leader was put in charge.

i've got a Beretta 92FS 9mm.. real nice pistol.. its what our military uses as a side arm
http://www.gunshopfinder.com/beretta/92FSinox.asp

new info
http://www.ajc.com/news/gwinnett-pastor-who-aided-291351.html?cxtype=rss_news_128746

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/world/americas/05orphans.html?ref=us

still sounds like the Missionaries are the ones being kidnapped.

[moobu2]

3. Thats not what I read.

"They could not provide any official documents proving legal custody of the children, many of whom later were found not to be orphans."

LAtimes.

[sam sarrha]

5. Official Documents is what i was referring to.. the paper got messed up because everything there is

corrupt and not standardized.. the link i provided explained why some were not orphans.. apparently they were only taking them to a mission just across the boarder and not off the island. the first guy probably sold them the papers to take them across the boarder, not the custody papers. the Xings probably didn't know how to bribe the officials or more likely then not.. the Dominicans didn't want another Haitian's in their country.. Haiti is a diseased sespool. endemic syphilis in newborns at hospitals is reported to be down 75% ..but still around 20%.. and over 80% of births aren't counted in the stats because people are too poor to go to a hospital. so how many people there have siphylis..?? syphilis is fairly non-sexually transmittable. Haitians aren't not wanted because they are black, most likely people are afraid of them carrying disease because of the gut wrenching poverty there due to the corruption of their governments from the very beginning of Haiti

i was in Central America, i had to get stuff out of customs. you can't do it yourself, you have to hire one of the "Agents" standing around.. who are children 'runners' who for a fee take the paper to the guy with the stamp. that gets you into the next office. then they say you need another signature... his 8 year old nephew takes $2 and runs away for 4 minutes and comes back with the paper.. then you get another paper to take down the hall and his nephew hands you off to his older brother. who charges more. it took me 5 hours.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

4. I thought they already were under the UN's auspices.

I learned a couple years ago in my Latin America class that there are only two states in the Americas that are not democracies: Cuba, which is self-explanatory, and Haiti, which was at the time under UN control after they kicked out Aristide. And then of course there's the USA, where elections are a joke, but that doesn't really count.

[tiny elvis]

7. til they clean up their act

in our age that would mean building an atomic bomb so the US would stop its eternal proxy war against their popular governments

[Walk away]

2. A bunch of Fundies stealing a bus full of children....

under the cover of this tragedy. What gall! Leave it to the crazy, right wing christians!

[Art_from_Ark]

6. I don't get your premise

If these 10 people actually are "fundies", it would seem to me that some, most, or even all of them may actually have been trying to help the children escape from a miserable situation in their homeland, if they believed so strongly in the tenets of their religion. Also, it appears that none of them spoke the local language, so they had to rely on locals to give them information which may have been faulty. Parents have said that they willingly gave up their children because there was no life for them at home, and their interpreter may have called these children "orphans" because apparently, conditions in that country are so wretched even without an earthquake that children like that are often sent to orphanages anyway, even if the parents are living.

The leader may have had other intentions, but it sounds to me like others in the group may have been suckered into going along. I'm thinking about, for example, that 18-year-old girl, who, I would bet, did not sign up for child trafficking. At 18, I was pretty naive, and if I had nothing to do and someone from my church that I respected had said, Let's go help those poor kids, I might have gone along, with the full intention of helping poor kids, without any suspicion that there might be a dark side to the project. And once there, and enlisting the aid of a Jesuit priest to find destitute kids, and hearing my leader telling me that the paperwork was in order to take the kids to a better place that was still within visiting distance of whatever remaining family members there may be, why would I, as a naive, trusting 18-year-old, have any reason to be suspicious?

[moobu2]

9. Gullibility is no excuse for kidnapping children.

If there is a trial and convictions, they can tell the judge about any extenuating circumstances there might i.e. stupidity, gullibility, God telling them to lie to parents who were in desperate circumstances in order to kidnap their poor black heathen children etc... As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[Walk away]

10. It is true. I feel really sorry for an 18 yr old who is that stupid.

I was brought up to think critically and not follow a leader blindly. It does not surprise me that these folks believe whatever their "leader" tells them to believe. Catholic parents continued to send their children to pedophile priests even after they've heard the truth. They just kept believing because that is what "faith" means. Aren't they in any way responsible?

Charles Manson told an eighteen yr old girl to slice up and murder innocent people. Are you absolving her of all guilt?

Stealing children because your church group says it is the right thing to do? Bad Bad Bad Fundie

[tiny elvis]

8. there is only one solution

the people in charge of the adventure must offer themselves up to prosecution in return for the freedom of their followers
a selfless act to make peace with all sides is both noble and divine and only good can come from it

[Dorian Gray]

11. This whole story bothers me on many levels

Circumventing legal avenues to "rescue" children as they are claiming is so spotty and stupid. Even if we were to give their intentions the benefit of the doubt, which I find extraordinarily difficult to do, ignoring legal avenues to "rescue" the children deserves complete and total prosecution. In a country where things are so chaotic and horrible, they should be spending time there, helping the people there. Not spiriting children away through illegal means.

And doing so really doesn't speak well of their intentions.

I just find the whole story sordid and horrible.