It’s taken me a few days, but this post has been brewing for some time now.

Baby Jean or Baby Jenny’s journey makes for a kind of a real case study in just how much of the South Florida child care system has been outsourced to a variety of religious subcontractors, and how despite how these Haitian children have been assumed to be “orphans,” family reunions are sometimes possible, when attention and resources put behind efforts to reunite them.

That said, she is but one of many kids, “unaccompanied minors” who have traveled from Haiti.

Clearly these other kids, by and large glossed over in the media accounts, and unlikely to have such resources brought to bear on their cases may not be so fortunate.

So let’s look at her case. While all the focus has been on her journey and eventual reunification, very little attention has been given to the fact that from the moment she landed in the Florida system, she was being dual tracked, in other words, aim for a reunion if possible, but simultaneously she was tracked for adoption.

I first reported back on January 27th on the plight of the “unnamed Baby Girl” found in the rubble in Haiti, and taken by an ABC News journalist to a field hospital. Thereafter, she was taken out of the country on to the U.S. for the necessary medical care. See my post  Adopting kids out of Satan’s Haiti, the For His Glory kids & the slowing of child export flights.

She was described in this article at the time as:

…the first survivor of Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake to enter foster care in Florida. A Miami judge ordered the baby — who is being claimed by a family in Port-au-Prince — into the custody of state child welfare administrators.

As I emphasized this piece of the article at the time, Florida DCF:

…asked Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri Beth Cohen to place the infant under the state’s care while investigators try to determine whether she has family in Haiti.

Cohen asked the agency to look “diligently” for the girl’s family, while at the same time beginning efforts to place the girl up for adoption in Miami should no family be found.

“We want to help,” Cohen said in court. “We don’t want to further traumatize this family. We must make sure we work very diligently to find her family. That is very, very important.”

The baby girl, whose name remains unknown, is believed to be the first child brought from Haiti to enter foster care in Florida. Another child may have been sheltered by federal immigration workers last week, Colyer said.

I noted:

So in Miami at least, they’re dual tracking those kids coming in under medical necessity; search for family, BUT AT THE SAME TIME begin adoption proceedings.

Yet another tale of yet another kid not in any adoption mechanism pre-quake undergoing at least the preliminary steps towards an American adoption now that they’re on American soil.

The article continued:

While the infant was recovering at JMH last week, her identity a mystery, a man and woman who thought their baby daughter had died in the rubble got word that their child had been found and flown to Miami.

A journalist working for ABC News who was passing by the rescue took the baby to a field hospital in Port-au-Prince and later returned to the crumbled home to find the family.

There, a relative gave her contact information for Junior Alexis and Nadine Devilme, who believe the baby in Miami is their daughter Jenny. Alexis, 24, had searched for the baby for days after the quake, which knocked Devilme, 23, unconscious.

The couple moved to a camp in front of the Canapé Vert Hospital.

Last week, they told a Miami Herald reporter that they had no proof that the baby in Miami was theirs. But Alexis said he was prepared to take any test necessary to prove fatherhood.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was contacted by officials at the hospital as well as the journalists who brought the baby to the triage center in Haiti.

Workers with the organization in Haiti have been trying to get in touch with the couple, according to the Red Cross.

“Baby Jenny’s” case was spotlighted across multiple news channels. Here’s just one of many such typical pieces, Haitian Baby Isn’t Orphan, After All. Once again, we see all those assumptions about how these children somehow must be “orphans.”

She was dubbed “Haiti’s miracle baby” and used as an archetypal metaphor for Haiti’s children surviving in the rubble and remains. She has in effect, been turned into a poster child of sorts, despite the extraordinary circumstances surrounding her rescue, news crews seeking her parents out etc.

Florida’s Department of Children and Families placed her in fostercare with a lay guardian at His House in Miami Gardens, where she’s been for the past two months as both efforts to reunite her with her family and place her for adoption have continued as she underwent physical therapy. (We’ll get to “His House” down below.)

After weeks of news crews following each twist and turn in the “Baby Jenny” saga, last Tuesday news finally came of a DNA match between the child and her mother.

A match: DNA in Haiti leads to infant in Miami (see link for pictures of the girl’s parents.)

Junior Alexis and Nadine Devilme are still sleeping in a tent in Haiti’s crumbling capital, but on Tuesday, the couple’s lives improved dramatically:

An infant — known in Miami courthouse records as “Unnamed Baby Girl” — was identified by DNA as their missing daughter.

The infant, found by an ABC News crew under the rubble of the couple’s Port-au-Prince home shortly after the earthquake, was whisked to Jackson Memorial Hospital by a University of Miami medical crew, and is recovering from life-threatening injuries at a Miami Gardens shelter.

Though recent DNA tests confirm the infant’s identity, Devilme said Tuesday she still had not been given the news.

Devilme provided DNA samples to the International Committee of the Red Cross earlier this month, and the samples matched those of “Baby Jenny,” sources told The Miami Herald Tuesday. Alexis did not provide a sample.

Red Cross workers drove Devilme and Alexis to their offices for an important phone call Tuesday, Devilme said, adding that the call did not come.

Meanwhile, here in America,

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman, who has been overseeing Jenny’s odyssey in child welfare court, will be given the test results at a hearing at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Eunice Sigler, a spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade courts, wrote in a brief statement Tuesday afternoon.

Jenny was flown to Miami by doctors with Project Medishare, who began treating trauma patients in Haiti almost immediately after the magnitude 7.0 quake on Jan. 12.

Though Jenny has been under the supervision of the Florida Department of Children & Families for only two months, child welfare administrators and children’s advocates already see the girl as a relatively rare happy ending — both for Haiti and the state’s child welfare system.

At a hearing before Lederman last week, the infant’s court-appointed lay guardian and her attorney said she was recovering remarkably well, and meeting all the developmental milestones one would expect from a 4-month-old.

But this article also makes small mention of what is in fact the larger story here (emphasis added)

Olga Miltcheva, spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Port-au-Prince, said Tuesday that the agency is following 70 cases of unaccompanied children as a result of the earthquake. So far, they have assisted in four family reunions.

“We have a lot of children that were brought out of the country just after the earthquake,” Miltcheva said.

Despite the attention spent on this one case, there are in fact, a number of children who have been removed from Haiti.

Without the glare of the cameras, it remains to be seen whether these other kids cases will receive the attention, the DNA testing, and other such measures towards reunifications. Those who landed in Miami for example may be somewhere in the course of the dual tracked system, resulting in reunions for some, but potential eventual adoptions or foster care for others.

Miracle Baby’s Fate Decided Today

The results of a DNA test on the unidentified infant who became known as Baby Jean or Baby Jenny will determine whether she’ll return to the parents in Haiti who have claimed her.

A family court judge will make the announcement during a 9:30 a.m. hearing.

In this one high profile case though, DNA testing was done.

Baby Jean, at just two months old, was found buried under rubble, covered in dust and maggots and clinging to life a day after the Jan. 12 earthquake hit in Port-au-Prince. She taken in by UM doctors and flown to Miami, where she was quickly nursed to health by doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital and dubbed “Haiti’s Miracle Baby.”

Thought to be an orphan, Jean has remained in South Florida until parents Junior Alexis and Nadine Devilme came forward.

The DNA test confirmed Jean belonged to Alexis and Devilme, and now legal procedure is all that stands between them and their miracle baby.

Most of the attention, even in this case has been put on the ‘rescue’ aspects, ignoring the feelings of the parents, searching through the rubble for their child who had been taken out of the country:

Back when the story first broke, a lawyer involved in the case talked about the agony of a parents not knowing the fate of their child.

“I try and put myself in the position of a parent frantically trying to find their son or daughter only to find they have been taken to another country, Jesse Eaves said.

After Wednesday morning’s hearing, it was determined the child would be returned to her parents. See  Next for miracle Haiti baby: reunion with parents:

Junior Alexis and Nadine Devilme, a couple in Port-au-Prince who lost their infant daughter during the deadly Jan. 12 earthquake, were told Tuesday that the girl recovering in a Miami Gardens shelter is, indeed, their daughter. Devilme had provided a DNA sample that was tested against the DNA of “Baby Jenny.”

Florida utilizes a “Guardian-ad-litem” system of volunteers (“faith based” or otherwise) to aid in making decisions on behalf of dependent kids (often victims of abuse or neglect) allegedly based on notions of the child’s “best interests”:

Donald “DJ” Cannava, an attorney for the state Department of Children & Families, delivered the news in court Wednesday morning that many in both Haiti and South Florida had been anticipating: “I am happy to report that, within a 99.9 precent chance of certainty, Mrs. Devilme is the biological mother of the child.”

As Cannava spoke, Jenny’s court-appointed guardian-ad-litem, Gail Appelrouth, clapped her hands quietly. “Yay!” she said.

Baby Jenny has become a kind of touchstone for the hopes of Haitians, Haitian-Americans and well-wishers who see her journey as a blueprint for the embattled island nation.

It appears her parents will receive humanitarian parole status for the time being, in part so the girl can continue therapy relating to her long term recovery:

A spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the agency could not comment on the couple’s status or travel to the United States because of privacy laws. But Cannava, as well as attorneys for both Jenny and her parents, told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman Wednesday that federal immigration authorities had agreed to provide Alexis and Devilme humanitarian parole so they can reunite with their daughter while she continues to receive therapy in Miami.

“I’m happy that it’s finally known that it’s our baby, even though I have always known she was our baby,” Alexis said Wednesday in Port-au-Prince.

Not surprisingly, her mother has expressed her desire to remain in the States:

Devilme said she would like to stay in the United States with her baby.

“We lost everything,” she said. “Haiti is not safe for a baby. The doctors are dead, the teachers are dead and a lot of great people are dead.”

Sure enough, just as I’d suspected, the article confirms the role “His House” christian orphanage and academy has been playing in Baby Jean’s case:

Jenny — who was taken by an ABC News crew to a United Nations triage hospital shortly after workers freed her from the rubble of her parents’ home — is receiving occupational and physical therapy at His House children’s home while she recovers from her trauma, said the shelter’s lawyer, Liz Anon.

I’ve been working on a longer piece about His House in Maimi, but a number of the Haitian kids being brought into the south Florida system are being entrusted to it.  You can find a brief characterization of it here, in this important piece pertaining to how the history of Korean American adoptions holds important lessons pertaining to the current situation, Korea to Haiti: Lessons in Overseas Adoption Corruption:

Lessons from Korea further suggest that the best interests of the child need slower and thorough consideration rather than giving into the religious zeal of missionaries whose real purpose “is religious conversion. Some families have taken four or five children. Certainly, the literature of His House, a large Christian orphanage in Miami which is coordinating adoptions, says it aims to turn children into ‘Christ-like beings’ ”.

Returning to the Miami Herald piece:

“We want to make sure the baby’s best interests are protected, and the family is reunified as soon as possible,” said Markenzy Lapointe, a private attorney who is representing Jenny.

At the end of Wednesday’s hearing, the judge said the state will not need to oversee Jenny’s care after Alexis and Devilme arrive because “these parents are clearly good parents, which is not something you see here often” in Miami’s child welfare court.

Interestingly, the lawyers are talking about a return to Haiti even as her mother, Nadine speaks of her desire to stay in the States:

After the hearing, Lapointe told reporters that he and Bob Martinez, the attorney representing Devilme and Alexis, informed the parents in Port-au-Prince Tuesday of the DNA match. “Of course, they always knew that,” he said, “but they were absolutely ecstatic. They look forward to seeing their child.”

Eventually, the two lawyers said, both Jenny and her parents will return to Haiti. But first, Lapointe said, “I want to make sure she gets a full, clean bill of health.”

Even the University of Miami physician who made the decision to send Jean to the United States cannot frame her flight and medical care as anything other than a useful christian parable:

Dr. Arthur Fournier, a University of Miami physician who was working in a field hospital in Haiti when the critically injured baby was brought in for care and made the decision to fly her to Miami, said he was thrilled that she would be reunited with her parents.

“Easter is coming,” he said. “This is death and resurrection. This child was dead and she’s rising up again and her family’s rising up again.”

New Jersey’s horribly botched bill S799, (formerly A752, which I blogged about last December, New Jersey- let A752 die: the conflation of family medical history with authentic restored access, white outs, and preemptive restraining orders among other nightmare senarios) is scheduled to come before the New Jersey Senate on Monday (March 22nd, 2010.)

See the full Bastard Nation Action Alert for details and legislator contact information:. (I have also added the alert to my right hand sidebar.)

STOP NEW JERSEY S799. SENATE VOTE SCHEDULED FOR MONDAY

Contact the members of the NJ Senate and urge them to VOTE NO ON S799.

New Jersey has been struggling to pass a bill to restore access to adult adoptees OBCs for literally, decades now.

Sadly this latest piece of legislation is just another piece of crap marred by a number of fatal flaws including;

• disclosure vetoes (which will leave a number of adopted people behind, I’ve written about such repeatedly, here’s a recent example relating to the mess in NJ.)
• conflation of original family’s confidential medical history into the bill (a potential HIPAA violation)
• and it would seal by default all “safe haven”/baby dump kids information from them, despite boarder babies being routinely folded into the “safe haven” statistics and the kids having identified and identifiable parents, in essence, this would retroactively delete information pertaining to these kids that the state already had.

The Bastard Nation action alert goes into to far more detail, so I won’t attempt to replicate their useful backgrounder on the bill.

New Jersey needs a real bill, not yet more trash heaped upon the pile.

Really makes you wonder what part of simplicity in legislation in relation to restoring adoptee’s right to access our own documentation is so darn difficult to get one’s head around.

The kids the New Life missionary scavengers attempted to bus from Citron and  Calebasse to the Dominican Republic have been staying in an SOS Children’s Village  since January 30th, the day after the aborted child export attempt on Jan 29th.

Today news came that the kids will be returned to their families. According to the release from SOS the verification process to ensure those claiming them are indeed family has been part of the reason the kids have no returned before now.

The children arrived on 30 January, when SOS Children’s Villages was assigned the task of taking care of them temporarily by the Haitian child welfare authority IBERS (The Institut du Bien Etre Sociale et De Recherches), following the arrest of a group of ten US nationals who had tried to take them out of the country under dubious circumstances and without proper documentation.

Following a lengthy process of family verification handled by IBERS, the children, aged four months to twelve years, can now return home.

“It has turned out that all of the 33 children have parents. SOS Children’s Villages is convinced that in most cases, the best place for a child to be cared for and protected is within the family. In any case, poverty and lacking resources must not be allowed to be the cause for separation. We are therefore very supportive of the decision of the Haitian authorities to reunite these children with their biological families,” says Celigny Darius, national director of SOS Children’s Villages in Haiti.

During their stay, all 33 children participated in the daily life of the SOS Children’s Village and have each been integrated into a household. Siblings and cousins lived under the same roof and all received medical care and professional help from psychologists and SOS social workers.

“I have made some good friends here and enjoyed playing football, but I miss my mother and now it will be nice to go home,” says 9-year old Michael.

The return of the kids is far from some ‘end’ to the story though, as the release points out, the climate of desperation that led to these kids being placed on the New Lifer’s bus is every bit as present today (if not more so) than it was back in January:

“This case has highlighted the risks of separation in emergency situations, when destitute families see no other way than to give up their children. Even before the earthquake many families in Haiti were at risk of being separated due to poverty. Unfortunately, as access to medical care, food, water, shelter, and other services continues to be more limited than before, the situation still puts children at risk. It is essential that relief efforts focus on preventing separation by ensuring that families have access to basic necessities,” Celigny Darius says.

The voices of the kids have been largely absent from the coverage though this piece, The child snatchers: Special report from Haiti on the U.S. missionaries accused of ‘stealing orphans’ and why – most shockingly of all – their parents say they would give them away again in the (odious tabloid) Daily Mail UK does a better job of profiling the kids themselves than most.

For example, it makes the rare mention of the anger at least one of the boys has expressed towards his mother who “gave him away:”

One boy has told staff he will never go back to his mother because she gave him away. Another girl talks repeatedly about the bus journey, before bursting into tears. As for Benatide, a lot of the time she stays silent and deep in thought. Every day, she begs to make a call to her brother.

We have read very little about the families and parents other than portraits such as the below in this article, AP finds all Baptist group’s ‘orphans’ had parents:

One mother who gave up her four children, including a 3-month-old, is in a trancelike depression, occasionally erupting into fits of hysteria.

Her husband and other parents in Citron said they relinquished their children to the U.S. missionaries because they were promised safekeeping across the border in a newly established orphanage in the Dominican Republic.

Clearly part of the “pitch” the New Life team used to gain the kids was fear based, rooted in providing that mythical “better life” we so often hear about in adoptionland, after all, how can an apocalyptic landscape of rubble and promised “epidemics” compete with the New Lifer’s full colour brochures featuring a former hotel and its swimming pool?

Silsby had been working since last summer to create an orphanage. After the quake, she hastily organized a self-styled “rescue mission,” enlisting missionaries from Idaho, Texas and Kansas.

She was led to Citron by Pastor Jean Sainvil, an Atlanta, Georgia-based Haitian minister who recruited the 13 children in the slum. Sainvil had been a frequent visitor to the neighborhood of unpaved streets and simple cement homes even before more than half of the houses collapsed in the quake.

“The pastor said that with all the bodies decomposing in the rubble there were going to be epidemics, and the kids were going to get sick,” said Regilus Chesnel, a 39-year-old stone mason.

Chesnel’s wife, 33-year-old Bertho Magonie, said her husband persuaded her to give away their children — ages 12, 7, 3, and 1 — and a 10-year-old nephew living with them because their house had collapsed and the kids were sick.

“They were vomiting. They had fevers, diarrhea and headaches,” she said, leaning against the wall of the grimy two-room hovel the couple shares.

Later, after coming to the realization that they might never see their children again (and that the missionaries pitch was a patchwork of lies) one of the mothers was profiled thusly:

Under one of the blue tarps sheltering the Chesnels’ homeless neighbors, 27-year-old Maletid Desilien lay Saturday on a bed of two soiled rugs. Only her eyes peered out from under a bedsheet.

“She has been like that ever since someone told her she will never get the kids back,” said her husband, Dieulifanne Desilien, who works in a T-shirt factory.

That was eight days ago. Most of the time she lies catatonic, he said, warning a reporter not to go near because she periodically has fits.

“She would get up, take her clothes off and run around pulling her hair out,” Desilien, 40, said of his wife. “She would jump up from sleep and say, ‘Bring me my kids.'”

He said she only calms down and is able to sleep after speaking by phone with her children, who are at an orphanage in the capital run by the Austrian-based SOS Children’s Villages charity.

The day they arrived, orphanage officials said, the Desiliens’ 3-month-old daughter, Koestey, was so dehydrated she had to be hospitalized. The other children are ages 7, 6 and 4. Their father — but not their mother — has visited them.

Desilien said a police commander has assured him that he will get the children back. The Social Welfare ministry, however, has yet to decide whether some or all of the 33 children will be returned to their parents.

“My wife is sick so I have to find a way to get the children back,” Desilien said.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC’s) Foreign Correspondent programe did a special report on corruption in American adoptions from Ethiopia last Autumn which featured Christian World Adoption Agency (be sure to note that CWA’s Founder, Tomilee Harding, is a former President of the Joint Council of International Children’s Services):

Fly Away Children, Broadcast: 09/15/2009

In Australia, due to the country’s history pertaining to adoption (which is well beyond the scope of this tiny post, but by way of one starting place, you can read about the Parliamentary Inquiry and Australia’s Origins work here,)  inter-country adoptions are run solely by the government instead by private agencies as they are here in the United States.

Yet clearly, that supposed ‘safeguard’ built into the Australian system has failed to prevent precisely the sorts of child-trafficking so common to inter-country adoptions.

Instead of providing any form of a ‘safeguard’, the ABC has obtained a document in which:

A parent of an adopted child implicates Australia’s representative in Ethiopia in the child trafficking racket.

Which is to say that rather than thwarting the system of bribes and lies, it appears Australia’s representative simply moved right into the vacuum or niche in the adoption ecosystem left when no private agencies are able to work there.

As a result of the broadcast, yet more families have come forward to share their stories, and so earlier this month, the ABC ran a follow up piece which I feel is in some ways stronger than the initial report:

Fly Away Home Broadcast: 03/02/2010

Both video segments are rooted in a consumer protection model focusing on the ‘wronged’ adopters, who are dismayed that the children they adopted were not as advertised. Though both segments also go well beyond such, by spending some time on both the Ethiopian mothers and the voices of some of the Ethiopian kids, and thus touching on the human/identity/heritage/cultural rights aspects of these abuses.

For example, viewers once again hear the all too familiar refrain of how the “adoptee” was told they would be going to the United States by way of an educational opportunity, that they could go home to see their families, etc.

Naturally, once they arrive here in the states, they find themselves in a completely different situation, that of now being expected to live up to the role of, as well as legally now the new child to the the family that purchased them, unable to return to their country of origin until after they reach the magic age of 18.

Both programes offer up the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption as if it were some form of solution to adoption corruption when clearly, it is by its very nature, not.

The ABC has also done a number of pieces, such as this, “Adoption Special,”  Australians caught in Ethiopian adoption nightmare, added today.  Be certain to explore the sidebars and supporting documents, such as this letter from Against Child Trafficking (ACT) which was accompanied by ACT’s collected evidence.

This is all set against the backdrop of Australia’s Ethiopia adoption ban having just been lifted:

The Attorney-General’s Office said the program would resume on April 6, 2010.

To the ABC’s credit, they are doing a genuine service by raising the issues involved, providing a broader microphone and audience to voices almost never heard, and doing real educational work before the new adoptions start up again. This is a crucial period in which opposition must be heard.

The decision to reopen Ethiopian adoptions is not grounded in evidence of the situation improving, nor of the human rights situation actually changing, if anything, the gold rush mentality is on in Ethiopia, just as it has been in country after country.

Take the American inter-country adoption suspensions track record for example:

Americans rushed in to grab whatever kids they could in Romania until adoptions were suspended in June 2001.

Next to suspend was  Cambodia in December 2001.

Then Georgia, in August 2003.

Followed by Azerbaijan in May 2004.

Belarus suspended in October 2004.

Then Guatemala, December 2007.

Next came Vietnam, September 2008.

and more recently, Kyrgyzstan, September 2008.

Haiti suspended all but adoptions already in process (although there are questions about how thorough that suspension is in practice at the moment) back in late January.

At the beginning of March, Swaziland just suspended all U.S. adoptions, pending an investigation by the Department of Social Welfare reviewing its adoption procedures. No date has been set for completion of the review. In the mean time, only adoptions already underway are being completed.

You would think certain lessons might be learned from that litany of suspensions, but nope. When a country like Guatemala closes, hotels near the airport in Ethiopia begin filling up with would-be-adopters in the next destination du jour.

Those of you who have been following along on my twitter, have likely seen a number of articles I’ve been pulling relating to the Ethiopian mess, such as this misnamed piece, Adoption watchdog suppresses Ethiopia findings.  Horribly misnamed, in that the Joint Council of International Children’s Services, or JCICS is anything but a “watchdog” group, it is an adoption industry trade lobby.

Core to it’s very function is to fight off industry regulation by falsely positioning itself as an advocate working on behalf of children. The industry cannot, by definition, “watchdog” itself.

As I mentioned on my Twitter, how bad has it gotten? Apparently bad enough for the industry trade lobby to suppress its own report on how bad its gotten.

The Joint Council of International Children’s Services (JCICS) says it has completed its probe, but to release its conclusions would not be “appropriate”.

In”appropriate” only in that releasing said findings might just mean a one one ticket to having to find themselves new jobs.

Well that, and for what their own report might reveal concerning Christian World Adoption and former JCICS President Tomilee Harding.

Prominent adoption reform advocate Maureen Flatley claims JCICS is stacked with adoption agency figures and does a poor job of self-regulating.

“We’ve really let the fox guard the henhouse,” she said.

“They are the ‘big tobacco’ of adoption. They are a trade association that nominally espouses the highest standards but which is harbouring the very people who have been involved in some of the biggest abuses in adoption – and they haven’t laid a hand on them.

“The JCICS has one goal and one goal only, and that is to avoid federal regulation of adoption.

All of this is the big picture.

But at the end of the day, what the international community should be listening to are the voices of the mothers, the families, and those subjected to these adoptions themselves, particularly those few old enough to speak out on their own behalf:

Tonight Foreign Correspondent exposes more cases, including that of Journee Bradshaw, who claims CWA told her she was heading off on a study trip to the US, only to learn after her arrival that she would not be returning to Ethiopia.

“I didn’t know that I’m going to stay here,” she said.

“They never told me that I’m going to have a family I’m going to stay with and I’m supposed to be their daughter. They never told me that. I just find out when I got here.”

(Blog housekeeping note- Doing multiple posts today, please read down through my previous post as well.)

She is already facing kidnapping and criminal-association charges stemming from the New Lifers’ January 29th attempted child export trip that ended in ten members of the team being arrested. (At least seven other team members were on the Dominican Republic side of the border at the time of the arrests.)

Judge Bernard Saint-Vil has added a new charge of “organization of irregular trips.”

As explained in this article, Haiti judge: New charge for US missionary leader:

Saint-Vil has added the new charge of “organization of irregular trips,” from a 1980 law restricting travel out of Haiti that was signed by then-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.

The judge said Friday he has until early May to decide whether to release Silsby or order a trial.

The new charge stems from the trip the 10 missionary scavengers made 3 days before, on January 26th.

Assumedly this would pertain to the bus trip with 40 kids that a Haitian police officer put a stop to, telling them what they were doing was illegal, and that they could not go about it that way before offering to help them.

Importantly ten missionaries were on the bus at the time the officer stopped them and told them their child export attempt was illegal.

Whether or not those were the same ten who were then arrested three days later, or merely a subset of that group filled out by others who were on the Dominican Republic side of the border at the time of final fateful trip and arrests is unknown. But in light of the incident with the police officer on the 26th, to later claim they were unaware they didn’t have the appropriate paperwork certainly rings hollow.

I wrote about that trip on February 9th, in my post Thwarted by a police officer in an earlier attempt 3 days before their arrests to export 40 *Other* kids- more on Silsby and the Scavengers. The post and my comments contain links to the initial reporting I was able to find on that previous child procurement trip the New Lifers’ made in to Haiti.

This is why I have repeatedly referred to the child victims of the New Lifers’ child trafficking attempts as at least “73” not merely the 33 from the attempted trip on the 29th.

To date we know of at least two attempts by the New Lifers at child trafficking. It is unclear as to whether or not there were any other additional or previous attempts.

What we can piece together by way of a very bare bones sketch with just a few details added begins to look like this:

• January 12 was the earthquake
• January 22, we have this report telling the story of the children on the New Lifers’ final bus trip and their families from Calebasse (a rare bit of useful reporting from the otherwise tabloid rag, the Daily Mail UK.) The piece includes a number of details pertaining to the New Lifers trip to Calebasse marketing their “orphanage” and attempting to collect kids:

…”ten days later when the U.S. Baptists arrived at Calebasse and began knocking on doors. They handed out flyers saying they wanted to ‘help children who have lost their mother and father in the earthquake or have no one to love and care for them’. The flyers said, inaccurately, that the group had the Haitian government’s permission to take 100 children abroad to the Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti.”

• January 26th, was the foiled attempt to move the busload of 40 kids out of Haiti from which, assumedly the latest charge stems
• January 29th, (a week after marketing in Calebasse) the final attempt to take the Calebasse kids out of Haiti, which eventually results in the arrests of the ten missionary scavengers.

Clearly the New Lifers were in Haiti as early as the 22nd, the question remains whether they only attempted two trips, or whether there were other trips or attempts in that week that have yet to come to light.

The article pertaining to the new charge describes the trip on the 26th as a:

newly discovered, alleged attempt

Despite the fact that the articles I found at the time mentioned the officer who stopped their bus on the 26th and got the 40 children out MAY HAVE already been questioned by the court in relation to the incident (although it is unclear, the two articles I was able to find here and here, may be speaking of separate officers. If so, the New Lifers would have had multiple Haitian officers trying to help them export the kids. As I have been trying to piece this together from secondary sources, I am unfortunately unable to clarify that point.)

Perhaps by “newly discovered” they mean by Judge Saint-Vil, as the CNN piece refers to:

The Americans, who were interviewed Wednesday by Judge Isai Jean Louis, are to appear Thursday before the attorney general, who is handling the case, lawyer Edwin Coq said.

(Coq is no longer representing the missionaries, it is unclear the extent to which information did or did not travel between the two Judges as the case moved along.)

All we can hope is that a case is being carefully constructed and that the additional jail time will provide additional time for further details to come to light and some clarifications.

See Southern California child molester faces new charges in Florida

Members of the media watch a Florida FBI videotaped interview from March 8, 2010, of Jackie Zudis, an alleged victim of George England, as she describes living and being abused by England for over 20 years, Thursday, March 11, 2010, in Santa Ana, Calif. (AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Ken Steinhardt)

George England:

A convicted California child molester who was set to be released from prison was charged today in Florida with using a girl he bought in Vietnam as a sex slave.

The U.S. attorney’s office in West Palm Beach, Fla., charged George England, 65, with transporting a minor across state lines for sexual purposes. He is also charged with having child pornography on his computer.

The girl, Jackie Zudis, never underwent a formal adoption process, but was made to live out the role of being England’s “adopted daughter” throughout the period he allegedly sexually abused her.

Prosecutors said he purchased a girl from her mother in Vietnam in 1972, pretended she was his adopted daughter and molested her for years starting when she was 5. They lived in California in the late 1970s before eventually moving to Florida.

While he was sentenced to four consecutive terms of one year to life behind bars, he was up to the edge of being released after a mere 3 years.

In the 1977 case, England was granted bail after being convicted of molesting the three girls. He was supposed to settle his affairs before going to prison. Instead, he fled and was a fugitive for nearly three decades before being arrested in Florida for passport fraud then returned to California in 2006.

He was sentenced that year to four consecutive terms of one year to life in prison. Because the crimes fell under the laws of the 1970s, England was eligible for parole after serving three years.

The district attorney’s office said England and girl from Vietnam lived in a motor home where England urged her to invite girls from school or the neighborhood.

While on bail, England coached and threatened the girl to deny any sexual conduct with him, authorities said.

After the first 8 years of abuse, she found herself pregnant by England, just as she would have been hitting puberty.

Prosecutors said the girl became pregnant from the sexual assaults at least eight times, starting at age 13. That time she had a baby that was given up for adoption. Other pregnancies were aborted.

The sexual assaults ended at age 16 when the girl threatened suicide, and at 21 she got married and moved away, according to the district attorney’s office. She has said she didn’t leave earlier because she had nowhere to go.

This article, Prosecutors: Man kept girl as sex slave for more than a decade, from the Miami Herald contains more details.

For one thing, we learn that initial pregnancy only came to full term due to England discovering it too far along, after birth, the baby boy was placed for adoption.

(Yup, some adopted fellow out there somewhere has one heck of a shock in store for him, if anyone ever bothers allowing him access to the truth about his origins, that is.)

It would certainly be interesting to see the original birth certificate on that one, does she list a “father’s” name?

As she was a minor at the time, would England have signed the paperwork?

He sexually assaulted three of her young friends, authories said.

He skipped out of sentencing and lived for years in South Florida using the fake name of a dead baby.

And he kept raping the girl, as often as five times a week, impregnating her more than a half dozen times, prosecutors said.

Clearly the mere three years served was seen by at least some as completely inappropriate:

On Thursday, a Southern California prosecutor called a news conference to express his disgust that England, the beneficiary of more lenient 1970s sentencing standards, was about to walk out of prison.

But an aide pulled Orange County, Calif., District Attorney Tony Rackauckas aside to say that wasn’t going to happen.

California prosecutors said the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office were filing an arrest warrant Thursday in Palm Beach County for crimes England allegedly committed against Jackie Zudis in Florida.

The article also hints that they traveled cross country, so the possibility of other details from other states along the way are perhaps a possibility:

England never was charged because Zudis didn’t report him until she was an adult, long after California’s statute of limitations had expired.

She has waived her right to anonymity under California privacy laws to protect sexual assault victims “to publicize the crimes committed against her by England and the danger he poses to society,” the District Attorney’s Office said.

On Oct. 21, 1977, England was convicted in California of three felony counts of child molestation.

Three of Zudis’ young friends said England had sexually assaulted them when they spent the night at his house after Zudis had fallen asleep.

England persuaded a judge to let him remain free to settle his affairs before sentencing. He then removed Zudis from protective custody and fled, prosecutors said.

Over the next year, the California authorities said, England moved with Zudis throughout the United States, finally settling in Florida.

He obtained a birth certificate, social security number, driver’s license, and passport under the name of Stephen Arthur Seagoe, a child born a year after him but who died at 11 months in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Records show addresses for him in Palm Beach Gardens in 1988 and in Riviera Beach dating back to 1993, as well as in Key West and Fort Lauderdale.

But, naturally, there’s even more to story still, it turns out he may be a citizen of another country:

“I have been dealing with the consequences of this monster’s lewd acts for over 30 years,” one victim wrote California prison officials last year. “[He] has not even acknowledged the wrongfulness of his victimization.”

Rackauckas said federal officials had been considering deporting England to Canada, where he claims to be a citizen, before learning of the Florida charges.

“This man spent a lifetime using young girls for his own perverse sexual gratification and never showing any remorse for the emotional and psychological baggage he left his victims to carry. I am sickened that my Office has been denied legal recourse to keep this child molester locked up away from children,” Rackauckas said in a statement.

“Had he been convicted under the law today, England would be spending the rest of his life in prison. That’s where he belongs, not on our streets and in our neighborhoods.”

Adoption secrecy may have played a role in how easy it was for England to pass Zudis off as his “adopted daughter.”

As his procurement of her took place in Vietnam in 1972, one has to ask, was he there as a soldier, and if so on which country’s behalf?

How did he manage to transport her to the United States?

Did he acknowledge her Vietnamese origins, (and to what extent was she able to) and if so, what was that like for her, a mere five year old at the time with the Vietnamese war still ongoing through that early period, and the social stigma thereafter? The Vietnam Babylift came later, in 1975.

One would think that a single male running around with an Asian appearing five year old through this period might have attracted at least someone’s attention.

Single father adoptions weren’t exactly an everyday occurrence back then… .

The more we learn about George England, the more questions the entire mess raises.

As always, beyond the microcosm of the individual, many of those questions relate to the macrocosm of adoptionland.

How have the ways in which adoption is practiced in the United States and how adoption is so often laden with assumptions of altruism, (and thus adopters themselves are assumed to be wonderful or even ‘saintly’ people) played into enabling monsters like England to get away with what he, up until now, by and large has?

Yet still more Alerts and notices from the U.S. State Department concerning Intercountry adoptions.

Ongoing corruption and falsified paperwork in Nepal, a suspension, pending a review of adoptions from Swaziland, and child buying and selling, errrr “media reports alleging direct recruitment” in Ethiopia.

Nepal Alert

Caution About Pursuing an Adoption in Nepal March 4, 2010

The U.S. Department of State strongly discourages prospective adoptive parents from choosing Nepal as a country from which to adopt due to grave concerns about the reliability of Nepal’s adoption system and the accuracy of the information in children’s official files. The Department also strongly discourages adoption service providers from accepting new applications for adoption from Nepal until reforms are made, and to be vigilant about operating in an ethical manner under the current adoption system.

the Alert continues (emphasis original to the document):

The Hague Conference on Private International Law recently released a report on its Intercountry Adoption Technical Assistance Program, based on a visit by a delegate from the Hague Conference’s Permanent Bureau to Nepal in November 2009 (http://www.hcch.net/upload/wop/nepal_rpt09.pdf). This report is the result of an independent analysis of Nepal’s intercountry adoption system under the new Terms and Conditions put in place in 2008. The report details a number of weaknesses in Nepal’s current adoption system, including the falsification of documents, improper financial gain, and lack of a child protection system.

Based on our own observations and experience with adoption cases in Nepal, the U.S. Department of State shares many of the concerns outlined in the Hague report. In one of the first cases processed by the Government of Nepal after the revision of the Terms and Conditions, the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu found that the adopted child was not a true orphan and that her birth parents were actively searching for her.

We encourage parents who have filed an application with the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare (MWCSW) in Nepal, but have not yet been matched with a child or received an Adoption Decree issued by the Government of Nepal, to consider a change of countries. The Department of Homeland Security, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), allow one change of country to be made in connection with one’s I-600A application without fee. A request to change countries should be made in writing to the USCIS Field Office where the I-600A was originally filed. (Any subsequent request for a change of country would require a fee.)

Swaziland Alert

Adoption Alert March 1, 2010

On February 24, 2010, the Deputy Prime Minister of Swaziland informed the U.S. Embassy in Mbabane that it will not process intercountry adoptions cases while the Department of Social Welfare completes a review of its adoption procedures. Only cases that were already with the Swaziland High Court will be processed during the review. The U.S. Embassy in Mbabane has not been provided with an expected completion date of the review.

Ethiopia Notice

Change in Processing Timeline for Adoption Cases March 5, 2010

The Department of State shares families’ concerns about recent media reports alleging direct recruitment of children from birth parents by adoption service providers or their employees. In response to these reports, the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa has implemented some changes to adoption visa processing.

Oh you mean pesky little allegations like this or this about the apparent lies offered up by Christian World Adoption Agency.

Child buying and selling apparently only merits a mere “Notice” (as opposed to an alert.)

Naturally, these promises of an education, of families of origin being able to regain their children, etc should be all too familiar to anyone paying attention to the Haitian adoption mess. It’s the standard pitch. This is what inter-country adoption relies upon to extract kids.

Naturally the CBS piece is more concerned with the families who adopted the kids, not the families left behind.

The Notice continues:

If families have concerns about their adoption, we ask that they share this information with the Embassy, particularly if it involves possible fraud or misconduct specific to your child’s case. The Embassy takes all allegations of fraud or misconduct seriously.

The best way to contact the Embassy is by email at ConsAdoptionAddis@state.gov. Please include your name, your child’s name, your adoption agency, the date of the adoption (month and year), and, if possible, the immigrant visa case number for your child’s case (this number begins with the letters ADD followed several numbers and can be found on any document sent to you by the National Visa Center). Please let us know if we have your permission to share concerns about your specific case with Ethiopian government officials.

We strongly encourage you to register any complaint that you may have about an adoption agency in the following ways:

*You may file a complaint with the state licensing authority where your adoption agency is licensed and conducts business. The Child Welfare Information Gateway, which is maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services, provides such a list at the link below: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/reslist/rl_dsp.cfm?rs_id=15&rate_chno=AZ-0008E

*You may also file a report with the state’s Better Business Bureau. Following is the link to the Better Business Bureau’s website where you may file a complaint on-line: https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/getstarted.aspx

*If your agency is a Hague-accredited adoption service provider, you are encouraged to file a complaint on the Hague Complaint Registry located at the link below. This information will be used by the accrediting entities to evaluate the agency in connection with the renewal of its accreditation status. http://adoption.state.gov/hague/overview/complaints.html

The U.S. Embassy continues to work with the Government of Ethiopia to ensure that appropriate safeguards exist to protect prospective adoptive children, their birth parents, and prospective adoptive parents. Please continue to monitor adoption.state.gov for updated information.

Just how bad have adoptions out of Ethiopia gotten?

Bad enough that one of the industry trade lobbies, the Joint Council of International Children’s Services (JCICS) has decided to supress its own internal report on the situation in Ethiopia. (Note that JCICS is not and should never be described as a “watchdog” as the industry is by definition, unable to “watchdog” itself.)

Christian World Adoption belongs to both of the major trade lobbies. It is both a National Council for Adoption (NCFA) and Joint Council member agency.

Readers may also want to read across to the CWA page taking note of for example, the agency’s political connections:

Our director was former president and liaison between the JCICS and the U.S. Congress concerning adoption legislation.

As I wrote last Friday, see Charisa Coulter’s release papers signed, Silsby becomes a useful scapegoat, it was clear her release would most likely happen today.

Not exactly surprising, especially considering her medical condition.

(How insane do you have to be to be diabetic and yet run off to a post earthquake disaster zone where access to electricity and access to refrigeration is marginal at best?)

In any case, she was released this afternoon and taken to the airport by U.S. Embassy staff.

See Haiti frees US missionary; group leader still held

and American missionary held in Haiti released

Silsby answered questions in Saint-Vil’s office Monday. Later, she refused to comment on what the judge asked her, but she said she was happy Coulter had been released. She added that she expected to be released soon.

Silsby repeated comments denying she’d done anything wrong and said she was still in custody “because I’m the leader.

Saint-Vil said that he has some additional questions that he needs answered but that he expects to make a decision about Silsby’s detention by the end of the week.

While Laura Sislby is listed as the New Life Children’s Refuge “Executive Director and Founder” Charisa Coulter was certainly more than merely Sislby’s live in nanny.

Coulter was listed in the Central Valley Baptist Church online marketing material for the mission as New Life Children’s Refuge “VP and co-founder.”

Been meaning to mention this here for a few days now.

By way of a brief refresher overview on the Rendells’ Raid, readers may want to refer back to this piece from my earlier post Haiti series- “It is madness. It is insane…” Bribes, Bullies, and Traffickers extract kids, Part 4: Kids not in an adoption process being exported, bullies and bribes & the Rendells’ Raid.

Now, at the beginning of March, the cost to taxpayers is finally coming to light, see Gov. Ed Rendell’s trip to rescue 54 Haitian orphans cost taxpayers after all

Gov. Ed Rendell has described his January rescue mission that brought 54 orphans out of earthquake-ravaged Haiti to Pennsylvania as one that cost taxpayers nothing.

But the state plane log for January shows there was a cost to taxpayers after all.

The state Department of Public Welfare was charged $5,578.29 for use of the state plane to transport the governor and the state’s first lady, Judge Marjorie Rendell, to and from Pittsburgh. Once in Pittsburgh, they then boarded a privately-funded plane to travel to Haiti.

At the time Governor Rendell had insisted:

“This trip cost the taxpayers of Pennsylvania nothing,” Rendell said after the trip to Haiti.

His spokesman, Gary Tuma, was quick to excuse Gov. Rendell’s lie as only pertaining to the U.S. to Haiti leg of the trip, which yes, was by way of a private flight:

“I’m sure he interpreted the questions about cost to taxpayers to mean the trip from Pennsylvania to Haiti.”

However, this spun narrative also ignores the fact that the kids, (some of whom were not matched to any American would-be-adopters,)  left Haiti on an American Military flight, which again, also would have also come at a cost to the taxpayers.

Once in Florida, the group left the military flight and reconnected with their private flight for the final leg back to Pennsylvania.

The welfare department was billed for the cross-state flight because of “the children and youth function related to these kids,” said Stacey Witalec, a department spokeswoman.

Let’s get this straight,that $5,578.29 came out of the Pennsylvania welfare budget so Governor Rendell, and his wife, Marjorie O. Rendell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit could fly cross state to meet the private flight that took them, Representative Jason Altmire, and a number of Doctors and Nurses on to Haiti.

In essence, he’s arguing his cross state flight to meet the plane that would take them on to Haiti was PART OF the ‘humanitarian aid’/child extraction related trip.

Pennsylvania’s first family flying across the state, the first leg of their trip, had nothing to do with kids. There were no kids on board.

Simply put, there was no “children and youth function related to kids” about the Governor flying cross state to meet a flight, but if you think he’s going to own up to that fact and restore the money to the state’s welfare budget, think again:

Rendell has no plans on reimbursing the department for the trip, Tuma said.

But wouldn’t you know it, this gets even worse, because Tuma goes on to argue the flight billed to the taxpayers was to “assist the McMurtrie sisters….”

Ali and Jamie McMurtrie work with the BRESMA orphanage in Port-au-Prince, an explicitly “faith based” christian “orphanage.”

Donations to BRESMA are funneled through the  Keystone Center of Life Church in Pittsburgh (see link).

Now in the aftermath of the quake, donations are coming at a rapid pace for the destroyed “orphanage:”

Donations continue to pour into the Keystone Church of Hazelwood on behalf of an orphanage that is uninhabitable,…

So what we’re really talking about here is Governor Rendell flying cross state and charging $5,578.29 to the Pennsylvania state welfare budget and then saying that cross state flight was somehow in support of an explicitly religious based ‘child saving’  mission (yes, complete with all the christian implications of “child saving” you might envision. ) Emphasis added by me:

He said the governor’s cross-state travels were not merely to help out foreign kids, but also to assist the McMutrie sisters and to fly medical supplies and a team of Pennsylvania medical personnel to Haiti.

“Considering the benefit to the 54 orphans, to the two native Pittsburghers needing assistance in Haiti, and to the Pennsylvania citizens who made up the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center humanitarian relief team, the cost of several thousand dollars is not unreasonable,” Tuma said.

Such can only be portrayed as “reasonable” if you have first bought the notion that the state should exist in order to come to the church’s aid in times of the church’s need. For those of us who reject such theocratic poppycock, we think it’s time that $5,578.29 went back into the welfare fund for impoverished Pennsylvanians, for starters.

Even wingnuts like Matthew Brouillette of the Commonwealth Foundation recognize the public relations mess Governor Rendell’s trip has created and, never one to miss an opportunity to bash Democrats, is quoted in the article  as finding  Governor Rendell’s (who was the general chair of the Democratic National Committee during the 2000 Presidential election) trip “disturbing:”

But Matthew Brouillette, president of the conservative-leaning policy center Commonwealth Foundation of Harrisburg, found the governor’s statement disturbing.

Naturally, Brouillette would rather see the cross state trip be privately funded:

Brouillette suggested that perhaps the medical center should pick up the tab for the good public relations they derived out of this trip.

Paul Wood, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center vice president for public relations, said the medical center has no intention of reimbursing the state for any cost taxpayers incurred. He said he was unaware there was a cost.

Instead, it appears the state will end up simply eating the cost, putting further strain on a state welfare budget already underfunded and facing demands from every direction imaginable:

This is a difficult time for Pennsylvania and many of its residents. The state barely slid through last year’s budget crisis, revenues are still not what had been expected, the federal stimulus money is going to be drying up, long-term transportation funding is uncertain and the pension crisis is about to hit.

Meanwhile, unemployment remains high and the demand on social services is only increasing.

Nothing like taking from the poor to buttress child evangelism efforts.

Now, just when you think this mess has gotten about as twisted as it possibly can? Along comes Governor Rendell’s own policies regarding travel by state personnel and attempting to curtail even in state travel when possible as a cost cutting measure (which should be more than enough to break anyone’s irony meter permanently.)

As Patriot-News Capitol Bureau Chief Jan Murphy reported Sunday, in the nine months after state workers were banned from traveling outside of Pennsylvania, there have been 5,482 trips across the state border.

Of those, 4,893 trips costing more than $1.8 million were under Gov. Ed Rendell’s jurisdiction. And it was the governor who on Sept. 16, 2008, said that in light of the state’s mounting budget deficit he was prohibiting out-of-state travel by commonwealth employees, board members and commissioners.

Apparently the Governor feels budget cutting in relation to travel is for other people, not for him or his family, and their religiously based extra curricular “orphan” collecting activities.

Charisa Coulter’s release papers have been signed, but for lack of the official stamp, she will remain in jail until Monday at the earliest.

Laura Silsby remains in the Haitian jail pending further investigation.

The Daily Bastardette post pretty much says all I would, and contains the pertinent links:

SAINT-VIL: SILSBY HELD FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION; COULTER HOME SOON

I have very little to add beyond how deeply disgusted I am that it appears the responsibility is being artificially narrowed down to land on Laura Silsby when clearly her actions would not have been possible but for a long chain of responsibility and culpability, the actions of many people, firmly rooted in the Baptist church networks that financed, enabled, and gathered the raw personnel for the “mission.”

There’s plenty of blame to go around, from Central Valley Baptist Church using its tax status to collect funds for the scavenger team (the New Life Children’s Refuge team itself was split across the two countries some in Haiti others in the Dominican Republic also see this link for more on the D.R. side of the team) on through to those that enabled the New Life team on the ground in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

If Laura Silsby alone is held responsible for the actions of so many, she would likely be held up as little more than a symbol used to signify that some semblance of law does still exist in Haiti.

Not surprisingly, the Prime Minister has made it clear he considers the focus on the child scavengers a “distraction.” Haiti would no doubt be content to utilize an unsympathetic character the likes of Laura Sislby as a personification  or personal embodiment of what went wrong here.

But as I’ve said before and will continue to point out, she did not act alone, nor does she alone bear responsibility.

Around the time of the initial release of the first 8, I wrote two pieces:

The 73 Haitian kids deserve genuine justice, not a premature release of the scavengers

and

Haiti fails its children, releases 8 Child Scavengers on nothing more than their (worthless) word

Both of which are worth revisiting at this juncture as I find much of what I’d have to say, I’ve already written. I consider the initial release of the 8 not merely premature, but a basic failure of Justice.

Adding Charisa Coulter, the “VP and co-founder” of New Life Children’s Refuge to that tally of what I can only view as releases prior to a full investigation (which would have to take place across three countries at this point, the United States, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic) leaves  Laura Silsby in the role of “fall guy” (or gal,) for an effort she clearly, provably at this point, was but one part of.

Yes, as I wrote earlier today in a comment at the Daily Bastardette, it seems everyone would love to get this over and done with, get it behind them so as to go on about the many things they are already doing.

Haiti has far too many minute to minute life and death real world problems to handle.  The situation is simply dire. The rains and the flooding are what matters here, not some idiot from Idaho and her buddies whining about only getting one meal a day, usually chicken while Haitians starve.

The United States has been perfectly content to fly the other 8 home on a military flight at taxpayer expense and then let them fade quietly back into the American landscape. While Silsby, again, might make a useful scapegoat when and if she makes it back to U.S. soil she certainly did not do any of this all by her little lonesome. At this point, she’s more likely to face an American court over her back wages owed former employees than for attempted child trafficking in another country.

The adoption industry both here in the U.S. and around the world would like nothing better than for the entire world to suffer collective amnesia concerning both the New Lifers and the issues raised in terms of what terminology such as “orphan” and “orphanage” can mean in practical application.

But as for Bastard Bloggers and others who actually care about the kids, their families of origin (who were clearly lied to, and therefore any ‘consent’ they may have given was based upon those lies), and importantly, the NEXT batch of kids someone’s going to try to traffic into intercountry adoptions somewhere down the line?

We want to see Justice done.

Genuine Justice, not symbolic justice, not Laura Silsby being made a singular and personal example of, as if she herself was a mere aberration.

Actions such as these by the New Lifers and those who made their “mission” possible, when not met with swift and harsh consequences, are all too often repeated.

Child scavenging in the wake of national cataclysm should be met with the harshest of sentences, not media puff pieces about “good intentions” or military flights home to staged ‘heroes’ welcomes.’

Child traffickers are human scum, not heroes.

They should be penalized and ostracized, not idolized.