I'm not sure what to think of this, because an argument can be made both ways, but at the end of the day these people still belong to Haiti.
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quote:But some of the children had living parents, and some of those parents said that the Baptists had promised simply to educate the youngsters in the Dominican Republic and to allow them to return to Haiti to visit.
This kind of makes me mad. Taking children to orphanages outside of the country when they still have parents who are alive is wrong. I understand that these people are trying to give the children a better shot at life but you don't just take people, especially children with families, outside of the country without permission. The icing on the cake is how the missionaries claim they didn't know this was illegal until after they were detained.
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posted
I'll repost some of the info from the surrogate thread.
quote:The Dominican consul general Wednesday rejected the claim from an American church leader that she thought her paperwork was in order when she attempted to take 33 Haitian children out of the country, saying he had told her it was not.
"I warned her, I said as soon as you get there without the proper documents, you are going to get into trouble, because they are going to accuse you, because you have the intent to pass the border without the proper papers and they are going to accuse you with kids trafficking," Carlos Castillo said he told the group's leader, Laura Silsby, during a meeting Friday.
Four hours later, Silsby and nine other Americans were turned back from the border. They were arrested and taken to a jail in Port-au-Prince.
"This woman knew what she was trying to do was not legal," Castillo said.
A CNN reporter attempted to get reaction to Castillo's comment from the jailed Americans, but they would not discuss the matter, responding to questions by singing "Amazing Grace" and praying.
quote:But even before Laura L. Silsby and seven other Idahoans ended up in a Haitian jail accused of trafficking in children, Silsby had a history of failing to pay debts, failing to pay her employees and failing even to follow Idaho laws.
Silsby has been the subject of eight civil lawsuits and 14 unpaid wage claims. The $358,000 Meridian house at which she founded her nonprofit New Life Children's Refuge in November was foreclosed upon in December. A check of Silsby's driving record revealed at least nine traffic citations since 1997, including four for failing to provide insurance or register annually.
It turns out, that it seems that this rather morally dubious person represents an upper bound on how 'fine' Christians can be
quote: Clint Henry, pastor of Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, where five of the Americans charged in Haiti attend services, said Ms. Silsby had attended his church for about two years.
“You wouldn’t find any finer Christian people than these people,” Mr. Henry said in an interview earlier this week.
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