American detainees: We tried to save kids

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Ten U.S. Baptists detained trying to take 33 children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti without government permission say they were trying to do the right thing, applying Christian principles to save children.

But their “Orphan Rescue Mission” is striking nerves in a country that has long suffered from child trafficking and foreign interventions, and where much of the aid is delivered in ways that challenge Haiti’s own rich religious traditions.

Prime Minister Max Bellerive on Sunday told The Associated Press that the group was arrested and is under judicial investigation “because it is illegal trafficking of children and we won’t accept that.”

The Americans are the first people to be arrested since the Jan. 12 quake on such suspicions.

The government and established child-welfare agencies are trying to slow Haitian adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold. Without proper documents and concerted efforts to track down their parents, they could be forever separated from family members able and willing to care for them. Bellerive’s personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.

The orphanage where the children were later taken said some of the kids have living parents, who were apparently told the children were going on a holiday.

The church group’s own mission statement said it planned to spend only hours in the devastated capital, quickly identifying children without immediate families and busing them to a rented hotel in the Dominican Republic without bothering to get permission from the Haitian government.

Whatever their intentions, other child-welfare organizations in Haiti said the plan was foolish at best.

“The instinct to swoop in and rescue children may be a natural impulse but it cannot be the solution for the tens of thousands of children left vulnerable by the Haiti earthquake,” said Deb Barry, a protection expert at Save the Children, which wants a moratorium on new adoptions.

The church members, most from Idaho, said they were only trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children.