Haiti's leader says it's clear to him that the 10 US Baptists who tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the quake-ravaged country "knew what they were doing was wrong".
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said some of the children have parents who are alive. The government is attempting to locate them. He says a judicial system needs to determine whether the Americans were acting in good faith – as they claim – or are child traffickers.
[...]
Aid workers who interviewed the children said that some of them have surviving parents and were desperate to be reunited with their families. The Baptists' "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" was described as an effort to save abandoned, traumatised children. Their plan was to take 100 children by bus to a hotel in Cabarete, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic. But they were stopped at the border for not having the right paperwork and were returned to Port-au-Prince.
[...]
Its spokesman, George Willeit, said workers were searching for their families. "One nine-year-old girl was crying, and saying, 'I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.' And she thought she was going on a summer camp or... something like that [when she was taken]," he said.
Words escape me.
If they were trying to do the right thing why did they lie to the children? If some of the children have surviving parents, why did they take them? Something doesn't seem right about this.
Update:
Well, children are quite an easy target for brainwashing, so there. Or perhaps there is something worse in the planning (trading children?). Or, perhaps they’re just too idiotic to even sign the legal papers for taking the children out from Haiti.