Has this whole spectacle of the New Lifer’s arrests in Haiti and the ensuing international incident taught the people involved any kind of lesson, led to any form of remorse (other than their remorse at being caught red-handed), or dissuaded them from their current intended course of actions?

Apparently not.

By way of keeping this post short and to the point, I’m going to focus tightly down to five quotes from two articles:

Baptist Pastor: We’d Do It Again in Haiti from February 2nd

and

Detained US missionary: I’d come back to Haiti which as I write this is less than 24 hours old.

You would think that sitting in a Haitian jail for a few weeks might help Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter pull their heads out of their collective asses as far as not becoming re-entangled in the complexities of child custody and the so called “orphan” trade and adoptions in relation to Haitian children, but no.

Not having the benefit of access to media in their cell, they apparently blithely want nothing more than to continue on with their adoption centered so called “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission” upon their release.

Laura Silsby (from here):

…she wants to go ahead with setting up that orphanage…

Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter (from here):

…both of us would come back to Haiti…

&

We would definitely come back to help them once this misunderstanding or whatever you want to call it is sorted out.

In light of such personal delusion and failure to comprehend that they have done anything wrong, if the Judge releases them, I suppose we can expect to see these New Lifers headed right back into Haiti for “orphans round 2” the sequel, instead of experiencing new lives behind bars.

Then you have we haven’t learned a damn thing comments such as the below from the assistant pastor of the church that used its tax status to collect money to send their members Silsby, Coulter, Carla Thompson (the church’s “missions director”) and others to Haiti.

(Again, I remain convinced “New Life Children’s Refuge” is best described as Central Valley Baptist Church’s Haitian “orphans” mission, it being an almost wholy owned subsidiary of CVBC and CVBC’s members. )

Central Valley Baptist Church’s assistant pastor Drew Ham (from here):

Based on the information we have, I’m not sure that we would do anything different. I think they did handle it in the best manner possible.

Which again, comes back to that “we’d do it again” aspect of  the article, but goes further implying they wouldn’t do anything differently if given the chance (other than of course, the getting caught part.)

So, the question becomes, just how serious is Central Valley Baptist Church about doing it again?

That’s not a question I can answer, but it is a question the Judge should weigh heavily as he contemplates releasing these child traffickers.

Finally, you have the adoption industry’s reaction and response to the New Lifers, and how much their actions threw a wrench into the industry’s ongoing demands that Haiti ‘open up and make adoptions easier,’ that were commonly heard long before the earthquake.

National Council for Adoption’s (NCFA’s) chief operating officer, Chuck Johnson (from here):

…calls the Baptist group’s actions a “critical mistake” that could undercut efforts to expand adoptions.

Yeah, you heard that right, Johnson and NCFA can’t condemn Silsby and the New Lifer’s actions, all they can do is bemoan how these rank amateurs got in the industry’s way, essentially getting underfoot and tripping up the industry’s best laid plans at export expansion.

They drew too much attention to the issue at exactly the point Haitian adoptions are currently going through the roof, making it a bit more difficult for the industry on the public relations front, even as the child exports continue.

So, lessons learned?

Hell no.

If anything, all four want to come back for more Haitian kids (each in their own way, of course.)

It takes sheer unmitigated gall to get caught with your hand in the cookie jar only to proudly announce and promise that the minute watchful eyes are taken off you, you’ll be getting right back in there, all over again.

I wanted to highlight a comment I just received to this post as it brings out some of broader themes I’ve been trying to find time to write to.

The Wall Street Journal article Teresa references below concerning Laura’s Silsby’s apparent previous attempt at building a complex in Kuna, Idaho for runaway youth via Idaho contractor Eric Evans has been a side saga all its own. In the wake of the article Eric Evans, the contractor the WSJ spoke to about the proposed complex back tracked and began a series of  denials almost immediately after the article hit.

Fortunately, another blogger followed up on Evan’s denial with the Wall Street Journal getting this response:

Robert Christie, Dow Jones & Co. Spokesman, speaking on behalf of the Wall Street Journal, confirmed to me “we stand by our story” referring to Eric Evans denial today in the Idaho Statesman of comments he made in a February 3 WSJ article.

Evans denial is not surprising considering how by early February, a number of people connected to Laura Silsby previously were distancing themselves just as quickly as possible.

The Evans side saga is but one of many such back peddles, but if true, Silsby’s earlier vision for an Idaho based facility would certainly be in keeping with broader trends in “runaway youth”, “orphan,” “maternity camp” and “troubled teens” containment, all growing segments of the christian child detainment industry.

Much as I was going to write about how Silsby fits well into the broader trend, my commenter, Teresa has done so with the clarity of her own first-hand experience:

Teresa Says:
March 2nd, 2010 at 6:34 am e

If I may, I would like to share a comment I posted last night on this blog (that is still awaiting moderation….)

http://www.newuniversity.org/2010/03/opinion/doing-good-badly-when-intention-matters/

I find your article insightful without a doubt. However, if you would allow me to bring up one point that I find the press and other writers are totally overlooking (or maybe purposely ignoring), it would be most appreciated. I see that your entire piece centers around this question: “Why did Silsby try to illegally smuggle Haitian children across the border?” The two answers you relayed were these: “out of duty to help the Haitian families”, and “to alleviate her feelings of helplessness”. I will agree with you on the latter as well, but not for the same reason as you.

Since the story of Silsby’s and her companions arrests, I have followed this drama closely. The reason behind this is because approximately 29 years ago, I was a resident of a fundamental girl’s home in Louisiana called New Bethany. The director of this place (who also ran a boy’s facility under the same name) would tour all over the United States with select “residents”, prompting them to sing like angels and give testimony to the congregations of the numerous churches they would visit. Then this man would solicit church members for a “love offering” in order to finance his operation. He would declare that his “homes” were supported only by donations submitted by church members or private organizations who had been blessed by the singing and testimony of “his” girls(made to feel the obligation). Little did these church members know that the parents of these same children were invoiced monthly for the schooling and boarding of their children. The director of this home would claim from whatever church pulpit he might be standing behind at the time that his “girl’s refuge” was a christian, love-filled place where girls were given the opportunity to have a good education, horse-back riding, swimming, and all number of recreational activities. Please, if you would, remember this part, as it is important.

A rough calculation had been done recently by another former resident who found that possibly THOUSANDS of children had resided under this man’s “care”. While we girls lived in a roach-infested dormitory, being fed starch-laden (and who knows what else) food, and made to bathe in and drink water so sulphur-filled that it smelled of rotten eggs, the director and his family lived on the same property in a newly-built, two-story brick house with a separate water supply.

To get to my point, when the Wall Street Journal article came out a few weeks ago about Silsby’s failed “pre-Haiti” plans in Kuna, ID with the following description: “Ms. Silsby had equally grand ambitions closer to home, according to a local builder. The Idaho plan called for a “multi-million-dollar complex” for runaway children on a 40-acre lot in Kuna, Idaho…… Ms. Silsby told him it would have an indoor swimming pool, tennis courts and dormitories for the children….”, the familiarity in this description jumped right out at me.

Considering all of Silsby’s failed “business ventures” in Idaho (one I’m sure being her “children’s home”) before her jaunt to Haiti, I most certainly can see how she might feel helpless, and even desperate in finding a way to validate herself from a combination of a “christian/BUSINESS” standpoint.

I won’t go into all the OTHER things that happened over the space of three decades at New Bethany. I have included the URL for the website for that. You can also glean a plethora of additional information by simply googling the name.

Lasly, I would like to add that there are MANY homes operating as mirror images of New Bethany in the United States as we speak. As a matter of fact, TODAY 3/1/10, if you google “Reclamation Ranch” you will find that the director of THIS place was scheduled to be in court in Blount Co. AL facing some pretty serious charges. He is also blatantly asking for “donations” to his legal defense fund.

My primary question about this whole debacle is: Considering that Kuna, ID appears to be a hotbed of fundamentalism, containing churches that support places just like the ones I described above, could it be possible that Laura Silsby knew of them? Or maybe even knew someone who formerly/presently operate(d)/(s) or was employed at such a place, and filled her in on how much money she could make if she opened one? I think if this question could be answered, then quite a few more answers regarding her true intentions would come to the forefront. Thanks for letting me post here.

I am all too familiar with such facilities. Frequently advertised in the back of christian and even secular magazines, promising a religiously based “solution” to “troubled youth” programs such as these, and their pregnancy industry cousins, the maternity camps dot the landscape. Some have roots going back more than a century, others have been formed far more recently. Kids are warehoused and left to endure all manners of “discipline” while the founders often live in relative luxury.

Sadly, with the popular trend in christians focusing upon “orphancare” both as a long term means for potential movement growth and in the more immediate time frame the as a funding stream for various child related programs, often via State and Federal “faith based” grants, facilities such as these are if anything becoming all the more common, not less so.

Thanks Teresa, for speaking out about your experiences and hopefully helping readers gain further insight into the industry to which the New Lifers hoped to become a part.

It has been apparent for some time now that  the “New Life Children Refuge” Laura Silsby and the teams in Haiti and the Dominican Republic were working on didn’t just magically spring into being.

It was a project built upon church networks, and supported financially by churches and the members thereof.

In this post, I’m going to focus on Central Valley Baptist, but obviously it represents only one of at minimum, five churches that had members either in Haiti or the Dominican Republic working as part of the “New Life Children’s Refuge” team:

• Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho (Laura Silsby, Charisa Coulter, Carla Thompson, Corinna Lankford, & Nicole Lankford)
• Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho (In Haiti- Pastor Paul Thompson, Silas Thompson & Steve McMullen and in the Dominican Republic- Matt Crider, Lora Crider &  John Requa)
• Paramount Baptist Church in Amarillo, Texas (Jim Allen)
• Bethel Baptist Church Topeka, Kansas (Drew Culbert)
• First Baptist Church in Andrews, Texas (see Bastardette’s post)

As I said some time back, prior to the (vastly premature) release of the 8 missionary scavengers, to even begin to get a handle on the scope of the effort, a thorough investigation would have to take place in at least three countries:

A full investigation would require information gathering in at least three countries at this point, the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti itself.

Sure enough, evidence of church financial involvement has begun to surface.

Take this document,  Google’s cache of Central Valley Baptist Church’s  Haitian “orphan” mission that had been on Central Valley Baptist church’s website.

CVBC’s Pastor Clint Henry describes 5 of the 10 who go on to be arrested in Haiti, including Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter as

our Haiti Rescue Team

as part of his plea to raise money for expenses relating to the team’s child collecting trip in Haiti.

Carla Thompson, herself one of those who goes on to be arrested in Haiti goes on to add:

We have sent a team to Haiti…

Carla Thompson is listed in the document’s sidebar as Central Valley Baptist Church’s Missions Coordinator.

Her arrest in Haiti as part of the child collection mission then must be viewed in full context, that of the CVBC Missions Coordinator arrested in the course of her missionary work on behalf of the church itself.

Silby’s New Life cannot be viewed as a distinct entity somehow separate from Central Valley Baptist Church, rather, it must be viewed as a project of the church, receiving direct financial support by way of Central Valley’s church tax status as donations to the New Life mission were explicitly being solicited for and collected by Central Valley under the umbrella of the church’s tax status. Again see the document from Google’s cache (emphasis is my own):

We need to raise $2,000 in the next 24 hours for our Haiti Rescue Team. We have already had $10,000 committed to this mission. Please help us! Call the church office and bring your gift in right now!

and

Finances:

*Support the Temporary Orphanage in Cabarete, Dominican Republic
*Support a Response Team to Dominican Republic $1500.00 each

Both of these are tax deductable donations that need to be given through Central Valley Baptist Church. Write on the Memo Line: Haitian Orphans.

Finances to support these on-going needs:
Needed NOW!

* Teddy Bears for a Traumatized child to hold New (or almost new)
* Non Latex Surgical Gloves
* Diapers & Pull ups
* Wet Wipes
* 100 Twin Sheets , 50 Full Size Sheets clean, (used ok)
* Baby & Toddler Formula
* Pediasure & Powdered Gatorade
* Powerbars
* Hand Sanitizer
* Hospital Soaker Pads, Surgical Masks, Gauze, Antibiotics and ointments
* Tylenol Liquid & Chewables, Deworming Medicine, Hospital Soaker Pads

Please bring these donations to Central Valley Baptist Church. A bin will be located in the Hall by the kitchen.

Central Valley was collecting (what it claimed would be) “tax deductable” donations on behalf of their team: Sislby and other “Central Valley Baptist Church team” members.

Once the request for donations went out, CVBC saw its members respond:

Before the Jan. 12 earthquake, two church members had started a charity in hopes of building an orphanage in the Dominican Republic for Haitian children. But once the magnitude of the devastation became apparent, Laura Silsby, 40, and Charisa Coulter, 24, accelerated their plan.

They asked the church’s missions program to help them get to the impoverished island nation as soon as possible and, according to family and friends, secured a motel in the Dominican Republic that could function as an orphanage. The congregation responded, Henry said. Stacks of donated goods began piling up in the church lobby.

The quote above from the L.A. Times makes it appear Silsby was the one requesting the donations, but as we see from the cached document, no less than CVBC’s Pastor, Clint Henry himself was asking his membership directly.

Money, as well as items came in according to Henry:

The 500-member church, where signs taped to large bins on Sunday read “Donations for Haiti,” gave several thousand dollars toward the mission, Henry said.

But even while employing language such as “our team” and using the church’s tax status as means by which money could be funneled to New Life, the church has attempted to create the fiction of a “separation” (emphasis mine:)

Henry told reporters Sunday that the organization and the mission is separate from the 25-year-old church, which has been involved in at least 100 different mission trips involving construction projects and assisting in medical relief efforts both in the United States and overseas.

Let’s be clear here, you cannot both collect donations headed for New Life and promise donors that their donations, funneled through your church will be tax deductable under the church’s tax status and then turn around and pretend New Life is somehow “separate” from the church.

While Laura Silsby (listed as “New Life Children Refuge Executive Director and Founder”) and Charisa Coulter (listed as VP and co-founder)  also headed up New Life, New Life cannot be seen as a separate entity from Central Valley Baptist Church.

New Life was, in effect was Central Valley Baptist Church’s Haitian “orphans” mission.

The media has a terrible habit of attempting containerize people and organizations, feeling that if they can be associated with one organization that somehow precludes involvement in another, as if church and ministry involvement for individuals is some kind of zero sum game. Yet clearly, Silsby, Coulter, Carla Thompson and others are better described as “both/and” or as wearing multiple hats at any one given point in time.

This has led to false impressions of Laura Silsby (who is let’s face it, is quite the unsympathetic character with a previous history of screwing over her own employees) as some form of evil mastermind with other ‘god fearing, do-gooders’ in tow, merely along for the ride, naive and innocent of any nefarious plans. In the pop perception Silsby alone bears their animosity, whilst the other team members actions are excused.

She makes a good ‘fall guy’ and allows American’s notions of the ‘nice church folk’ down the block go unchallenged.

These artificial barriers are useful not only to the media narrative, but certainly to the other ‘team’ members and churches as well.

Occasional blog posts such as Why is all the blame being put on Laura Silsby when her own pastor was involved? point out the foolishness of such container-i-zations.

Silsby AND the rest of the CVBC arrestees were working together on behalf of their church’s mission’s program. ALL bear responsibility.

Furthermore, Pastor Henry and those who wrote the checks that enabled Silsby and the rest of the Central Baptist team to do what they did may also bear some responsibilty.

The cached document that had been on Central Valley’s website lays out their team’s “plan” sumarized thusly:

Rescue Orphans from Port au Prince, Haiti

JAN. 22 (Friday/Saturday): NLCR team fly to the DR

JAN. 23 (Sunday): Drive bus from Santo Domingo into Port au Prince, Haiti and gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages, then return to the DR

JAN. 24 (Monday): Bus arrives in Cabarete, DR at New Life Children Refuge

Nowhere in that summary is there any mention of gaining permission from Haitian authorities. If anything, in the sidebar, under “prayer requests” the document ONLY makes mention of the role of the government of the Dominican Republic:

For God to continue to grant favor with the Dominican Government in allowing us to bring as many orphans as we can into the Dominican Republic

Note that this even goes beyond the 100-150 kids mentioned at various points, expanding the goal all the way out to an open ended “as many orphans as we can.”

As other bloggers and I have pointed out repeatedly, the documents the “team” had drawn up before leaving for Haiti, their mission plan were clearly known beforehand to at least some in the church structures. Note that this document, for example, has been, and continues to be available on the Eastside Baptist Church website.

This is my response to both Triona/73 adoptee’s post, “Compromising On Adoptee Access? The Foot You Shoot May Be Your Own”, and to those who have left comments on her piece. (Please read those prior to reading my response.)

I’m an Ohio Bastard from the black hole years. I am one of the people whose access was bargained away in a previous “compromise.”

I have nothing but contempt for these notions of “a little” civil, human, and identity rights.

“Partial” civil rights for a lucky few are not civil rights, they are mere state granted favors, given out to some through an arbitrary process, at a direct and lasting cost to others.

Once you grant the state the ability to pick and chose who it will grant these special privileges to, one should not be the least bit surprised to see access actually DECREASE, not increase, as once the state has been granted that power it tends to exercise it in accord with its own interests.

When you look at examples such as “birthparent vetos” it rapidly becomes clear just how much this gutting of our most basic human rights really is nothing more than a state granted favour granted to a select few.

It’s a not merely a favour, but a really special favour, a downright extraordinary favour being granted by the state in that establishes a prior restraint on our constitutional right to freedom of association not based upon behaviour (such an anti-stalking law would have its basis in), but merely upon our membership in a class of people, those adopted.

Beyond the human rights arguments, there are also very practical reasons to never settle for legislation that bargains people away.

Those who are willing to settle for ‘these now, don’t worry, we’ll come back later for the rest of you’ may have many years worth of having begged for those table scraps, but they may not have much insight into the larger picture of what happens in the wake of such legislative abominations.

Sadly, I’ve done precisely that work (in fields other than adoption) of trying to come back in in the aftermath of “compromised” legislation to try to get regain the pieces that were bargained away.

It doesn’t work.

For roughly the next 20 years after passing that kind of turning point legislation state legislators will tell whoever comes next ‘we just gave you X, we’re not going to go back and address those issues again.”

Try seeking out a sponsor for restoration legislation in the wake of a “compromised” bill, you don’t get anywhere.

Those bargained away are now a subset of a subset, “compromised” legislation decreases whatever small political voice they had access to in the first place.

Ultimately, we’re left behind.

Whatever political voice we do manage to construct tends to be a small gathering of those left behind, as in adoption more generally, many adoptees tend to care about records access as a political issue only until they manage to get a copy of theirs for themselves. A much smaller number continue to care about other adopted people’s access after they have their own, and of those still around, fewer still are willing to stand strong on a no-compromise position.

But no-compromise is, as Triona points out, the only way to ensure that after access is granted YOU won’t find yourself counted among the few whose access is Vetoed, Black Holed, or otherwise non-existent.

Do I understand the heartbreak and anguish of New Jersey? Of course I do.

Yes we are all getting older, and the lifetimes worth of missed opportunities that non-adopted people simply never have to give so much as a thought to can easily drive a Bastard or a Parent, (or sibling or other family member) insane.

But, and this is a dealbreaker of a BUT, I’m not willing to support any legislation that creates a “special” class of Bastards consigned to the “expendable” bin.

Because I live there.

I wouldn’t wish such a fate on anyone.

Huge story out of California yesterday.

See the LA Times for this story, Napa State Hospital chief is accused of molesting his adopted son.

Reporting from San Francisco and Los Angeles – The executive director of Napa State Hospital, a Northern California mental institution that houses mentally ill criminals, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of molesting his adopted son for more than a decade, authorities said.

Long Beach Police Department detectives took Claude Edward Foulk, 62, into custody Wednesday morning at the hospital after a lengthy investigation into alleged molestations both in Southern California and Northern California.

Los Angeles County prosecutors have charged Foulk with 35 felony counts, including 22 counts of forcible oral copulation and 11 counts of sodomy by use of force.

Authorities said they have evidence that Foulk molested at least five children — including some foster children in his care. But they said the statute of limitations in the other cases already has expired, so no charges could be brought.

Foulk used his position to gain access:

Long Beach Police Cmdr. Jeff Johnson said officials began building their case in September, when one of Foulk’s former foster children contacted them with details about abuse he allegedly had suffered decades earlier. The man, who is now in his 40s and lived in Long Beach at the time of the alleged abuse, came forward after learning that Foulk was now heading the hospital, authorities said.

Detectives believe that Foulk used his position working at mental facilities in Southern California to make connections with children. Johnson said Foulk also came into contact with alleged victims who lived in his neighborhood.

“He used his position of trust not only as a parental figure but as a healthcare professional to obtain his victims,” Johnson said. “He was able to not only use strategic threats of force or intimidation, but use monetary as well as other rewards to his victims and their caretakers to prevent discovery of his crimes.”

Detectives said the alleged victims came in contact with Foulk as far back as 1975, when he lived in Long Beach and other locations around the region. Johnson said most of the alleged incidents occurred before 1988, which is the cutoff under the statute of limitations.

The charges filed this week involve his adopted son, now in his mid-20s, who alleges that Foulk molested him from 1992 to 2006.

This piece from the Contra Costa Times, Official charged in molestation, contains  a  few more details:

The 62-year-old accused child molester was arrested at the hospital’s campus at 8:30 a.m. by Long Beach Police Department Sex Crimes detectives, said Deputy District Attorney Lesley Klein.

The former Executive Director of the hospital, who usually went by his middle name, was arrested on a $3.5 million warrant issued by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office Monday and was driven from Napa to Long Beach Wednesday afternoon. He is expected to be arraigned by no later than Friday, Robison said.

Robison said the victim was 10 years old when the alleged molestation began in 1992 and the abuse continued until 2003.

The article includes just a little more detail about the other alleged victims:

Investigators have found at least four other alleged victims with incidents dating back to 1975, said Sgt. Dina Zapalski, a Long Beach Police Department spokeswoman.

All the victims were boys, the sergeant said, and all but one were located in Long Beach. The only alleged victim not tied to Long Beach was molested in Rancho Murieta, a Northern California community, Zapalski said.

It is believed there may be additional victims who have yet to come forward:

And police said they are still searching for victims and urge anyone who may have been a victim to come forward.

“The investigators have reason to believe that there may be more victims we do not know about,” the sergeant said, adding that anyone who is a victim or who knows of a victim should immediately call the Sex Crimes Detail at 562-570-7368.

The hospital was quick to point out that none of the currently known set of victims were directly related to his work there:

Nancy Kincaid, communications director for the California State Department of Mental Health, confirmed Wednesday that Foulk was executive director at the state’s largest mental hospital until his termination Wednesday morning.

Kincaid said Foulk had worked at the Napa hospital since March 1, 2007.

She said the hospital was not notified of the investigation until Wednesday morning, when police arrived at the campus and arrested Foulk.

She also stressed that none of the victims were tied to his work at the hospital, which was confirmed by police.

Zapalski said all of the victims were known to Foulk, but none of them were connected to the Napa State Hospital.

Investigators, however, declined to release the exact relationship between Foulk and the victims or any further details about the case, Zapalski said.

also see Director of state hospital that treats child molesters accused of repeatedly raping foster child [Updated]

Prosecutors asked that bail be set at $3.5 million.

If convicted on all counts, he faces a maximum sentence of 280 years in state prison.

An appointee of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Foulk allegedly began molesting the then-10-year-old boy in the fall of 1992, shortly after taking him in as a foster child. They lived in Long Beach at the time, authorities said.

The molestation allegedly continued through 2003, after Foulk and the youth moved to Walnut.

Prosecutors said there are “numerous” additional victims “who fall outside the statute of limitations.” According to a statement from the Orange County district attorney’s office, they cannot pursue cases of molestation that occurred before 1988 because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

and Detectives believe hospital director molested at least five children

The arrested shocked some officials at Napa State Hospital, where Foulk has been director since 2007. Hours after his arrest, state officials announced that they had terminated Foulk’s employment.

and Claud Foulk, CA hospital head, arrested on 35 counts of molestation

Foulk was appointed director of Napa State Hospital in 2007. Hospital officials declined to comment.

“We did not know anything about this until Long Beach police came to the hospital and arrested him this morning,” said Nancy Kincaid, spokeswoman for the California Department of Mental Health.

She noted the alleged incidents predated Foulk’s arrival at Napa State Hospital.

“He was not in one-on-one contact with patients,” Kincaid said. “He had no clinical hospital privileges, so he wouldn’t have been offering treatment.”

Dr. Stephen W. Mayberg, director of the state mental health department, said Foulk had been fired.

This article also goes into some of his previous employment history:

Prior to taking the position in Napa, Foulk worked for the state Department of Mental Health as the Chief of Program, Policy and Fiscal Support, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported. Before that, he held positions as chief executive officer and chief operating officer of private community acute psychiatric hospitals, including CPC Horizon Hospital and Clinic in Pomona and CPC Alhambra Psychiatric Hospital in Rosemead, according to a Department of Mental Health news release.

Napa State Hospital is one of the largest state mental health facilities in the United States, with about 1,260 beds for patients. Many of the hospital’s patients come from the criminal justice system – including those found not guilty by reason of insanity. No juveniles or child molesters are treated at Napa.

I wish I had something more insightful to say about all this, but this morning at least, I don’t.

Obviously, these initial accounts don’t contain a great deal of detail (an aspect many people have commented upon.)

An important facet going forward will be learning about the foster boys left to his “care” and how he was given access to them in the first place.

Did any of these boys try to come forward before the statute of limitations expired only to be ignored?

It’s early, at this point, there’s simply too much we don’t know.

First, go read this introduction and this, Special Report: Puello Says Other Dominicans Helped Silsby written by Anne-christine d’Adesky on her Haiti Vox blogs.

***

Back on Feb 13th, on twitter I posted this intriguing observation from the linked article-

via @TriniWarao “He helped us find the lawyer we have now” Detained Americans seek distance from adviser. #Haiti http://tinyurl.com/y99vlf3

The article itself was ironically enough entitled Detained Americans seek distance from adviser. It spoke to how the New Life missionary team was at the time desperately attempting to distance itself from Jorge Puello. This was all happening just after the allegations of Puello possibly being a sex-trafficker hit on the 12th. Emphasis is my own:

They thought Puello, who is Jewish and from the Dominican Republic, was a good Samaritan and had no reason to doubt his intentions, said Lankford.

“He helped us find the lawyer we have now. He helped us gather evidence. Before him, we really were having a hard time finding anyone at all” to represent the missionaries in neighboring Haiti, said Lankford.

Sean Lankford of course, being the relative back in Idaho who most closely dealt with Puello on behalf of the missionary team.

Now, via personal email correspondence between Anne-christine d’Adesky and a person whom she believes to be Puello, she comes up with this quote (again emphasis is my own):

Puello: Sean, I am very sorry for all this troubles but G-d has a plan for this, I did not mean to hurt your people or family, and I never represented your people I always got Lawyers to do so, At the begining it was Mr. Patrick Laurant and after that it was Aviol Fleurant.

So let’s be clear here, this is someone claiming to be Puello claiming he got multiple lawyers, including Fleurant to represent the group.

Now let’s return to the article above in which Mr. Fleurant, the lawyer possibly arranged by Puello has this to say about Puello and the outstanding charges against him to the media:

“The Puello case has no relation to this one,” said Aviol Fleurant, who was hired last week to represent nine of the 10 Americans. “If Puello is wanted in El Salvador, that’s another case.”

At the time, none of the allegations in relation to Mr. Puello had been shifted off to the side as if they were in any way separate. It was Fleurant’s assertion that Puello’s pre-existing difficulties had nothing to do with the American missionaries that led to both the media and perhaps the court coming to view them as distinct.

Naturally Mr. Fleurant would want the charges against Mr. Puello kept at arms length from his current clients. Otherwise, people might begin to realize that a man wanted for sex-trafficking played a key role in connecting him to his current American missionary clients who were also facing questions pertaining to child trafficking.

The mind truly boggles.

It would seem the bare minimum the Americans would want would be a lawyer not connected with the likes of Puello. But no, here we are.

Rather than taking Mr. Fleurant’s word for it, and simply accepting that Puello’s troubles are somehow distinct, a simple re-examination of the facts to date show that even as the Missionaries were publicly attempting to distance themselves from Puello, they had come to rely upon the legal representatives that Mr. Puello had apparently arranged for them.

Once again, I’m still back on how the missionaries rejected the American embassy’s recommendations for counsel in Haiti and went with this cast of characters instead.

Seems like you scratch any one of a number of people in close proximity to the New Lifers and just below the surface are some terribly questionable associations.

In all the insanity surrounding the Haitian mess, I haven’t had time to really scratch the surface of the Jorge Puello story beyond the initial post I wrote as the trafficking allegations against Puello first came to light:

NYT- El Salvador Investigates Adviser to Detained Americans in Haiti (Jorge Puello)

While I’ve been following it closely, others have really taken the lead writing about it.

Fortunately, Marley over on her Daily Bastardette blog along with her wonderful set of commenters have been carefully sifting through the details and trying to form a coherent narrative concerning that angle on the missionary’s attempted child export fiasco.

You can see her Puello related body of work via a search on his name against her blog. Just look over the dates to read them in chronological order.

Be sure to read through the comments on these pieces as they provide many additional links and further information.

***

Also be sure to read her recent piece concerning additional members of the missionary’s effort in the Dominican Republic:

ANOTHER RABBIT HOLE: ADDITIONAL IDAHO BAPTIST AND ANONYMOUS TEXAS “MISSIONARIES” TIED TO LAURA SILSBY–STAYED IN DR

We already knew that Eastside Baptist Church members John Requa and Matt and Lora Crider remained at the “orphanage” while church pastor Paul Thompson, his son Silas Thompson, and member Steve McMullin crossed into Haiti….

…Now we learn that Nancy Rodriguez, wife of Paul Rodriguez, Magic Valley Baptist Association director of missions, and four “missionaries” from an unnamed group in Texas were also at the “orphan” hotel.

As I first reported here, there were additional team members working in the D.R. that were an ignored aspect of the child export effort. As they were not arrested, they have been all but ignored by most of the press. This means the team was comprised of not merely the ten arrestees, but now we’re up to at least 8 more people on the D.R. side of the border:

• John Requa
• Matt Crider
• Lora Crider
• Nancy Rodriguez
• and four other “missionaries” from an unnamed group in Texas

that were all directly part of the effort as well.

Again, be certain to read the comments on all her Haitian posts as many new details are emerging there.

(The following is simply my own personal summary, nothing more.)

Once again, South Dakota started its legislative session this year with clean bills in the House and Senate, each poised to restore the rights of South Dakota’s adult adoptees to their original birth certificates.

After last year’s premature victory celebration by certain out of state adoptees, last year’s bill sadly came up just short of passing.

This year also ended in a failure to pass adoptee rights legislation.

Despite the best efforts of South Dakota SEAL (Support and Education for Adoption Legislation,) and its allies Senate Bill 152 failed its floor vote 22 to 12 (with one member excused). Senator Adelstein announced his intention to reconsider the vote, but in the end it did not go up for reconsideration.

On the House side, HB 1223 started as a clean bill but as it passed through the Health and Human Services Committee two amendments were added including one moved by Representative Moser which subverted the intent of the bill and ensured some number of adopted people would be left behind had it passed.

The key sentence in the amendment was this:

“If a parent has indicated a no contact preference no original birth certificate may be obtained.”

This was (mis) described as a contact “preference” when the actual effect of the legislation would have been that of a disclosure  VETO.

This ‘preference definition creep’  is precisely what I have been warning about for some time now.

As Marley Greiner wrote in her letter the Representatives:

The bill was amended with a birthparent disclosure veto (under a false title of “birthparent contact preference,”) that creates a special right for birthparents to ban access–a special right that no other parent or adult has over the birth certificate of another person. This ban guts the purpose of the bill and creates more bureaucracy and government control over the lives of individuals and families in South Dakota.

Sadly the amendment was added in committee by a vote of 7 to 5 (with one member excused.)

Last Friday the House bill with the amendment on it came up for the full floor vote but fortunately failed to reach the 2/3 majority that was required due to the fee to the special fund.

The vote was 42 Ayes to 21 Nays with 7 Representatives excused.

In the end, Representative Moser voted against the amended version (a “Nay” vote) of the bill, apparently in opposition to ANY access for ANY number of adoptees.

While three of the bill’s cosponsors were excused, of the 17 remaining cosponsors of the original version, all but one voted “Yea” in favor of the amended version of the bill that would ultimately leave some number of adopted people behind.

As was noted in the Bastard Nation action alert linked above, there appears to have been some confusion:

It’s been very confusing. The bill’s sponsored who claimed to want a clean bill, voted YAY for the corrupted amended version and the sponsor of the corrupted version voted NAY against his own amendment!

At no time on the floor was there ever a vote to remove the odious amendment.

After the vote, the Lead Sponsor, Representative Bolin announced his intention to reconsider the vote. the reconsideration was originally scheduled for Monday (yesterday) but by early afternoon had been dropped.

While it was good to see the corrupted version of the bill go down to defeat, it was also heartbreaking, knowing that South Dakota adoptees had failed to regain their equality and would be forced to wait another year to try again.

It should be noted that SD SEAL stood strong and refused to accept a corrupted “compromised” bill. To their absolute credit, they held out for a clean bill. They understand the simple truth that lies behind “no one gets left behind or forgotten.”

That insistence upon a clean bill also led to Bastard Nation and other out of state allies (including myself)  to support  SD SEAL’s efforts. (SD SEAL had stated it welcomed out of state supporters.)

In a climate wherein so often we are forced into a defensive stance trying to hold off bad bills, for at least a brief moment, SD’s original bills this year were a proactive bright spot, (before the House bill was subverted.)

Hopefully, over the next year South Dakota adoptees and allies will continue the educational process and prepare for the introduction of another clean bill next year.

In the mean time, I urge those who contacted legislators to follow up with them and offer thanks to those who voted to support restored adoptee rights.

As regular readers of my blog are aware, this is a more or less “local” case to me here in Maryland.

I wrote a number of posts about Renee Bowman and the tragic stories of the three girls she adopted as the story broke  late in Septemeber 2008 when the final surviving girl essentially rescued herself by escaping her murderous and abusive adopter’s household.

As I wrote at the time, quoting a Washington Post article,

As for the seven year old who escaped with her life, she was a prisoner in her own adoptive “home”/hellhole:

“The investigation began Friday, after neighbors on Pawnee Lane found the 7-year-old who had jumped from the second-story window of the house on Buckskin Trail, a nearby street in the same subdivision. The girl was badly bruised and apparently beaten, authorities said today. Neighbors alerted the authorities, who transported the girl to Children’s Hospital and opened a child abuse investigation.

Some time later, Bowman came to the sheriff’s office after learning deputies had found her daughter. According to investigators, “she confessed to beating the victim with a ‘hard heeled shoe.’ ”

Authorities said Bowman told them the 7-year-old was rarely, if ever, permitted to leave the house. She was beaten “all over” and remains hospitalized, Evans said at the news conference.

Calvert authorities said there is no evidence that the 7-year-old was enrolled in Calvert County schools. Bowman does not have a criminal record and has not been accused of neglect or abuse in the past, they said.

Detectives obtained a search warrant for the house in an effort to find the shoe and other evidence. While searching the house, they found human remains in the freezer.

When found wandering the street, a neighbor asked the girl if she was alright, to which she responded:

“My mother just beats me. She just beats me to death.”

A later story went into further detail:

Bowman was being held yesterday on charges of child abuse in connection with injuries to the 7-year-old. The girl escaped from her locked bedroom Thursday by jumping out a window, police said.

Bowman admitted beating the girl with a “hard-heeled shoe,” the sheriff’s office said. The girl told police her mother beat her with a white shoe to the point that it was covered in blood, officials said.

The child had “extensive open infected sores and open lesions,” several injuries to her feet and knees, and ligature marks and extensive scarring on her neck, according to charging documents filed in court.

Once the girls had been adopted out of DC foster care by Bowman, no one came to check on them.

Bowman had claimed they were being “homeschooled” which enabled her to hide her long dead adopted girls over the course of at least three years.

Their names were Jasmine and Minnet. They were biological sisters.

As this Baltimore Sun article pointed out:

Minnet would have been 12 now, and Jasmine would have turned 11 on Tuesday.

The freezer that contained their bodies was moved multiple times as Bowman moved around the state, but never in any school district was it anyone’s job to ensure the girls were still alive.

Even as their bodies lay frozen in the freezer, and even as the third girl endured starvation, isolation and beatings, Bowman continued to receive adoption subsidies, $2,400 a month for the three girls, with no strings attached, not even something as simple as being required to prove the girls were still alive.

At the heart of this case, far beyond the particulars of any one “family” lies a broken system.

A system that enabled Renee Bowman to adopt these three girls in the first place despite red flags along the way, such as the misdemeanor conviction for threatening to hurt someone, then after the adoptions, the use of a false name to cover previous entanglement with the Maryland Child Welfare Agency.

A system that enables parents to hide dead children behind claims of “homeschooling”. And a system wherein checks are mailed each month without even the most basic of requirements, that evidence that the child still exists, as a precondition to state money being given over.

The final surviving girl testified in court against the woman who adopted her only to incarcerate her in her adoptive “home” and beat her with a baseball bat and hard soled shoe. Refusing to look at Bowman the girl referred to Renee Bowman as her “ex-mother.”

Would that she could “ex” the system that did this to her as easily. Would that Maryland and the federal government could.

But sadly, the odds are, this will be treated as a case in isolation, as ‘justice done, after sentencing we can forget about it.’

The Maryland legislature is currently in session, but no bills have been introduced to ensure that children that parents claim are being homeschooled be checked in on every so often.

There’s no bill to ensure that kids adopted out of fostercare (even if DC foster care) receive any form of follow up visit. No conditions are being placed on adoption subsidies. No cleaning up the issue of outsourced background checks to streamline the process to ensure all information about a would-be-adopter appears prior to adoption (in this case, a DC problem, yet a Baltimore agency, still a lesson to learn.) No post placement monitoring systems. No nothing.

No lessons from this case have been learned, and nothing is being set in place to protect against a ‘next time’.

Nope, once adopted, these girls became no one’s responsibility other than Renee Bowman, and clearly Bowman was anything but responsible with the girls entrusted to her ‘care.’

I delved into the issue of the subcontracted home study done by the “faith based” Board of Child Care of the United Methodist Church here earlier. It too, brings out uncomfortable systemic questions that have been swept aside as the case went forward:

As the District had outsourced the background check, they are now claiming ignorance of the misdemeanor conviction. This brings us to our next question, how many other people were allowed to adopt with prior convictions and what are the implications for the children they adopted?

Worse, they admit, they don’t even know whether or not the conviction would have disqualified her, or whether the adoptions would have gone forward anyway had they known!

As I continue to say, SYSTEMIC problems.

A big part of those systemic problems is that ultimately, the responsibility for ensuring the safety of the children post placement is not in anyone’s job description:

The real bottom line is that ‘the buck’ appears to have stopped nowhere.

After placement, apparently the job is done:

“Once the court decides a family is fit, once it takes place, that ends the jurisdiction of the state or D.C,” said Mayor Fenty.

In other words, a clusterfuck of no one stepping up to the plate to say ‘damnit, someone somewhere in one of these systems needed to step forward to say it WAS their responsibility or their departments’ responsibility to ensure kids are still alive post placement’.

I ended my initial post about this case with this, still sadly just as true today as the day I wrote it:

Whatever eventually happens to the Bowmans, we need to look at far more than one “family” and one house and instead work to create systems of prevention. Systems where the kids come first, not their abusers.

Going forward, it is vital this region, and this country learns the lessons inherent to this case, that this is not merely a case about individual failings and murder, it is a case that exemplifies the weakness of the current adoption system and how easily Renee Bowman exploited them

…what we do know is that unlike biological parents, Bowman went through a state-run (o.k. D.C, District run) vetting process, and was state approved to parent, not once by three times over.

That is what lies at the heart of this case

While the sentencing of Bowman may bring some sense of closure to some, unless and until the broken system is addressed and corrected, there will be no justice.

***

Again, for more on this case, please see my earlier posts on my Renee Bowman tag, start at the bottom of the page and read up to read them in chronological order.

By means of trying to get caught up on some of the stories that have happened while the Haitian mess has been unfolding, see Woman abandons boy at firehouse from back on February 9th:

A woman who abandoned her alleged 3-year-old nephew at a firehouse Monday night, told firefighters there she was in the military and on her way to catch a flight to Virginia.

and

She told firefighters the boy was her nephew and his mother–the woman’s sister–left the child with her three days ago and failed to pick him up, said Kubiak, citing a preliminary police report. The woman said her flight to Virginia was scheduled to leave at 11:30 p.m. Monday and she could no longer care for him, Kubiak said.

Under Illinois’ “safe haven” law, parents or guardians can legally leave a child up to 1 month old at a designated place such as a hospital, fire or police station–well under the age of the abandoned boy. Charges could be brought against the person who abandoned him.

Clearly, a three year old toddler does not qualify under Illinois’ babydump law which currently only accepts infants up to 30 days old.

Again, we have yet another example of why  emergency child care or temporary timeout alternatives to the dump bills are so vital.  Had the child’s mother had access to a longer term emergency child care facility geared solely towards the well being of the family and a support program aimed at taking care of her child until she was in the position to do so herself, she likely would not have abandoned the boy to her sister who was preparing to leave the country on Military service.

Now instead, we have a child abandoned twice in the course of a week.

The Aunt was forced into a position of dump the child or face a likely court martial for failure to appear for her call up for duty. Now, as she attempted to utilize the dump law, which the boy clearly does not qualify under, she may face charges.

The answer is not to age up the dump law as some of the commenters on the article advocate. Nebraska already tried that, only to age it back down to an age wherein the kids abandoned under Nebraska’s dump scheme cannot speak out or defend their own interests.

A real answer would involve building social support structures focused upon ensuring women have access to a genuine safety net with access to extended temporary emergency child care and counseling to help her through the immediate crisis, always focused upon the goal of providing the forms of support necessary to keeping this family intact.

Ultimately we have no idea what the nature of the crisis  that led the child’s mother to abandon the boy with the aunt was (could have been any number of factors or a combination of factors, economic, domestic violence related, etc.)

But charging the aunt or finding a new placement for the boy will do nothing to address the mother’s circumstances.

I am not familiar with what forms of crisis related child care services are or are not available in the greater Chicago area personally, but if such programs do exist (other than religiously motivated programs,) clearly the mother for whatever reason was either unaware of their existence or decided not to utilize them. She chose to leave her son with a relative rather than temporary foster care or other religiously based, religious conversion focused systems, perhaps out of fear of losing him permanently.

As for the kid, this piece,  Toddler abandoned at firehouse, has just a little bit more:

The boy was checked out at a local hospital and was “fine” but police had contacted the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services who would probably be taking custody of the child, according to the lieutenant.

Around the world, other countries address child abandonment more as a matter of economic disparity or as falling under the purview of mental health services or emergency crisis care.

In America it seems to fall under criminal law with the dump laws slapped on as an emergency pressure release valve designed to move kids into the adoption system.

Women, and their genuine needs are once again, left out in the cold.

Women need real options, not merely a false choice between permanently losing their parental custody or placing the child into a program aimed at religious conversion.