Ha ïtiaanse kinderen in de verkoop

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Het wordt me groen voor de ogen. :(

Groet / Cees

PS. Dit is in korte tijd de 2e keer. Eerder al die Fransen in Kameroun!

February 3, 2010
Parents Tell of Children They Entrusted to Detained Americans
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/world/americas/03orphans.html
By GINGER THOMPSON and SHAILA DEWAN

FERMATHE, Haiti — Guerlaine Antoine pushed aside a tub full of laundry,
wiped her soapy hands on her T-shirt and rushed barefoot to bring out
photos of the 8-year-old boy she entrusted to 10 American Baptists.

“Do you think I would give this child away?” she said, opening a grade
school yearbook to show her son, Carl Ramirez Antoine, in cap and gown,
at his kindergarten graduation. “He is my only treasure.”

As a Haitian judge on Tuesday questioned five of the 10 Americans who
were detained after trying to exit the country illegally with 33
children, the questions swirling around the case threw this town high in
the mountains overlooking Port-au-Prince into confusion.

It is home to many of the children the Americans said they had planned
to raise at a new orphanage in the Dominican Republic. The Americans
said that the children had been orphaned in the earthquake, and that
they had authorization from the Dominican government to bring the
children into the country.

But it became clear on Tuesday that at least some of the children had
not lost their parents in the earthquake.

And while the Americans said they did not intend to offer the children
for adoption, the Web site for their orphanage makes clear that they
intended to do so.

In addition to providing a swimming pool, soccer field and access to the
beach for the children, the group, known as the New Life Children’s
Refuge, said it also planned to “provide opportunities for adoption,”
and “seaside villas for adopting parents to stay while fulfilling the
requirement for 60-90 day visit.”

An empty house in an unfinished subdivision in Meridian, Idaho, is
listed on the nonprofit incorporation papers filed in Idaho for the
organization. The address was listed in November on papers Laura Silsby
filed to establish New Life as a nonprofit. Two days after the papers
were filed, records show, Ms. Silsby sold the house at a substantial loss.

Signs in front of the house on Tuesday offered it for sale as a
foreclosed property.

The missionaries’ account of their activities in the Dominican Republic
was hard to verify. They said they had been in the process of buying
land and building a complex in Magante, on the north coast of the country.

Mayor Aniceto Balbuena said that he had been approached by two women
about building an orphanage, but that the idea had fallen through
because of a legal entanglement.

In Fermathe, where most of the children were born and raised, it was
clear that while their homes were woefully lacking in many ways, some of
the children — and perhaps many of them — were not orphans.

Kisnel and Florence Antoine said they sent two of their children with
the Baptist missionaries because they had offered educational
opportunities for the children in the Dominican Republic. Ketlaine
Valmont said she had sent a son.

They showed school photos and academic awards to demonstrate that they
had not selfishly sent their children away to lighten their load.

In a country where more than half of all children come from families too
poor to keep them in school, the parents said that the Americans’ offer
of an education seemed like a gift from heaven.

They also wanted to give opportunities for something better to their
children. They said that the missionaries had promised they would be
able to visit their children in the Dominican Republic, and that the
children would be free to come home for visits.

“If someone offers to take my children to a paradise,” Mrs. Antoine said
of Carl and her daughter Jenisa, “am I supposed to say no?”

Several parents denied accusations that they had been given money for
their children, or that they wanted their children to be put up for
adoption.

They trusted the Americans, they said, because they arrived with the
recommendation of a Baptist minister, Philippe Murphy, who runs an
orphanage in the area. A woman who answered the door at Mr. Murphy’s
house said he had gone to Miami. But she also said that he did not know
anything about the Americans.

Ms. Valmont wondered whether her trust in Mr. Murphy had been misplaced.

“I just wanted him to have more than I have,” Ms. Valmont said of her
6-year-old son, Darwin. “What future can I give him here?”

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