PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The new lawyer for 10 American Baptists charged with child kidnapping said Monday he believes they had paperwork to take 33 children out of the country after Haiti's devastating earthquake.
Attorney Aviol Fleurant's remarks came as investigators questioned the Baptist group's leader, Laura Silsby, who insisted she is innocent of any wrongdoing.
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At least 20 of the 33 children had living parents. Some of those parents told The Associated Press they gave the kids to the group because the missionaries promised to educate them at an orphanage in the Dominican Republic and said they would allow parents to visit.
"Many of the parents who had the opportunity to speak out declared, in good faith, to have given their children to the Americans," Fleurant said.
"I also believe, really believe_ and I don't want to break the gag order from the court — that the Americans have a document, from somebody, an authorization to take the children with them."
Man it's like you can't even illegally take children to another country these days or something!
Just kidding. That was seriously a joke so please nobody start arguing with that, especially since as the article states, at the moment it isn't even clear if they had the authority or not (and they actually might).
The reason this is a problem is because Haiti kind of has a history of kids being abducted and used as slaves or worse (or sold to other families) and so there were fears that shady individuals would use the chaos from the earthquake to more easily take children out of the country in the name of humanitarian aid. Obviously I don't think these missionaries were doing that, but they got on the wrong side of those fears.
Anyway prayer would probably be good for them, I think. They had the right idea but may have been misguided, or they may have just gotten unlucky with some paperwork being lost or misdirected. Either way I'm sure it's tough for them.
