With the nomination of Haiti “orphan” adopter Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court, Haiti and Haitian orphans are back in the news–hot and sweaty with adoption mythology, white saviorism, and lots of political and religious bashing. If you are not adopted, the subject may not be important to you. If you are adopted, it is. Continue Reading →
This is cross-posted from my End Child Exportation and Trafficking in Haiti blog, a complete collection of my work on Haiti. Laura Silsby neared the three month mark this weekend, and the Central Valley Baptist Church wants to make sure you know it. Saturday afternoon they threw a We-heart-Laura rally at the Idaho Statehouse. About 100 attended, including her local gang of electric Kool-Aid (minus the acid, we think) testers. A Northwest Cable News-KBTV video of the event is posted at the bottom of this entry. Be sure to watch Nichole Lankford prostrate herself in prayer. Fellow pranksters Paul Thompson and Charisa Coulter are seen or interviewed and more TeamSilsbys were spotted. Coulter, ever loyal to her boss, declared: She is always on mind. It’s a roller coaster. You have highs and lows but our hope is not in government and officials. It is in God. But so far, God seems perfectly happy to keep Silsby in her own private Haiti Hilton. “We want people to know that there still is support for her, organizer.’”Randy Jackson said. “If you pay attention to the media, sometimes it seems like there’s a lack of support for her. There’s still la lot of Continue Reading →
This nugget slipped through my fingers earlier this week. As far as I know, no one has picked up on the significance I think it has. Haiti judge quizzes US missionaries over child case was published February 3, 2010 by the BBC. The article includes an interview with Hal Nungester, director of HIS Home for Children which underwent a babylift I wrote about earlier. (You need to see the video from the link above. The full length article that you click on at the bottom of the video has a greatly edited version that excludes Nungester as does the article.) BBC: The director of this orphanage was contacted by the American missionaries but was suspicious. Nungester: We’re very cautious about anything that could even appear like traffiicking–child trafficking–and it just smelled like child trafficking to me. The same day CBS News correspondent Bill Whittaker also interviewed Nungester: CBS News has learned the Americans contacted at least two orphanages in Port-au-Prince after the quake. The director of this one turned them away and warned what they were doing was wrong. “They were looking for 100 orphans to take to the DR, the Dominican Republic,” Hal Nungester, with the H.I.S. Home for Continue Reading →
Reuters and other news sources are reporting that a band of 10 US evangelicals with Idaho-based New Life Children’s Refuge were arrested at the Malpasse border crossing (above picture in better days) trying to take 33 undocumented Haitian children into the Dominican Republic. The five women arrested were from the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, and the five men from the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls (new reports indicate a couple men were actually from out-of-state). The 10 are currently housed in what I assume is the extremely unpleasant Haiti Judicial Police headquarters. I have pulled quite a bit of information on New Life and the child smugglers, and intend to write about this incident at length tomorrow. I don’t want to put out wrong information so, I need to clarify some of the documents I’ve collected. In the meantime, I’ve thrown a little bit together to get the word out. Here are the relevant parts of the story as published so far (my emphasis): Authorities said the Americans had no documents to prove they had cleared the adoption of the 33 children — aged 2 months to 12 years — through any embassy and no papers Continue Reading →
To read my pieces on Haiti, please go to Haiti: Women’s Health Care: “All About Abortion;” Solar Powered Bibles in the Food Line American Life League Says No to Condoms and Contraceptives for Haitians Bastard Nation’s Statement on Haitian Adoption and Babylifts Operation Pierre Pan Postponed; Politicians Pander Haiti Child Evacuation: A New Operation Pedro Pan (my keystone Haitian entry) Haiti: Misc. Updates on Adoption and Pat Robertson Pat Robertson and Adoptee Rights Yesterday I participated in a 2-hour government teleconference held by the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) Office of Public Engagement and International Division “to outline Haitian adoptions policy and address questions and concerns.” Partners in the teleconference were the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of State, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection. (The alphabet soup is actually bigger than that in terms of smaller divisions working in the mess that is Haiti, not to mention Pentagon operations which have largely been ignored by the press.) There was an extensive Q & A session. I never made it through, but someone asked a similar question that covered some of it. At the end of the session there were about 40 callers left Continue Reading →