END CHILD EXPORTATION AND TRAFFICKING IN HAITI

Tonight on CNBC: A Secret Flight to Freedom. A documentary on Operation Pedro Pan

2010-05-27T11:40:00.045-04:00

Tonight CNBC will broadcast Escape from Havana: A Secret Flight to Freedom, an original documentary on Operation Pedro Pan, which I wrote about earlier. Under Pedro Pan, between 1960-1962, a little over 14,000 children, were airlifted out of Cuba and sent to the US to "save" them from communism. The Secret Escape to Freedom covers the stories of six Pedro Pan evacuees .

I admit I'm not impressed with the show's description:

It was at the height of the Cold War when Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. It was supposed to be a democratic revolution, but Castro soon turned to communism and dictatorship. Rumors began to spread among the elites and middle class that Castro would take their children away. Throughout the island, parents panicked. Then, the U.S. offered a way out: it would conduct a secret airlift of Cuban children and bring them to America – without their parents. It was an unbearable choice between raising their children in the oppression of Castro’s Cuba, or setting them free to live in the land of freedom, never knowing if they would reunite.

which fails to mention that Pedro Pan was a component of Operation Mongoose, a covert CIA operation designed by the JFK administration to undermine the Castro government. It included using refugees, particularly children as propaganda objectives. In this case, CIA operatives in Cuba created forged documents clandestine radio broadcasts, rumours to spread fear amongst anti-Castro Cubans that the government planned to terminate their parental rights and send their children to Soviet work camps. Ostensibly run by the Miami Diocese, the Pedro Pan childlift was, in fact, a joint effort of the Catholic Church and US government to purposefully break-up thousands of Cuban families to undermine Cuban culture in a PSYOP against communism. That's the real story.

The inclusion of Maria de Los Angeles Torres, childifted by Pedro Pan at age 6, suggests we'll get some of that real story. de los Angeles Torres, a political scientist and director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Chicago is the author of The Lost Apple: Operation Pedro Pan, Cuban Children in the US, and the Promise of a Better Future. She has been in a prolonged legal fight with the CIA over release of documents and is highly critical of the Pedro Pan evacuation.

A Secret Flight to Freedom will air tonight at 10:00 pm edst.

Even Haiti Doesn't Want Her: Laura Silsby to Return to Boise Today:

2010-05-18T11:37:00.016-04:00

Laura Silsby is scheduled to return to Boise around 2:00 PM today. She was released from the Haiti Hilton yesterday after being convicted of "arranging unlawful travel" and sentenced to time served. Obviously, the Haitian government just wants this albatross off its neck and around the necks of the Idaho courts where her ever-expanding business and personal problems have roosted. Better Idaho than us.

As much as I'd like Silsby to spend a lot more time in the slammer, I am not surprised at the release. After all, the Haitians have more dire things to worry about than Bible Barbie. What did surprise me was Charissa Coulter's appearance in court with Silsby. I had to play the tape back to make sure I heard right.

One of Silsby's other partners-in-crime Jean Sainvil, a Haiti-born "pastor" in Atlanta is being tried in absentia, and his status is unknown.

Silsby (showing some leg in court) told the AP "I'm praising God" and apparently made no further comment until she was interviewed at the Port au Prince airport before clearing security. Megan Mattson, spokeswoman at the U.S. State Department, told the press Silsby was looking forward to returning home to her own children. Is that's what known as a "Freudian slip?"

Central Valley Baptist Church is supposed to release a statement, but I can't find one so far.

I don't have any time this morning to comment further, but the video below from KTVB-TV (aka the Official Laura Silsby Fan Club) says more than I could write in the next 12 hours.

Once the legislative season is over, I'll have more to write about Team Silsby and Yoram Puello. I have a lot of material I've not been able to put together. It will be fun. And maybe a partial antidote for the miserable deformist crap that passes for "adoptee rights" we've seen so far this year.

Celebrating Laura Silsby

2010-04-26T12:52:00.003-04:00

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 people who support her and want this whole ordeal to be done and for her to be home with her family. (NOTE TO RANDY: Supporters are not posting many supportive comments in the Statesman.)

Charisa Coulter's best friend and avid Silsby fan Sue Pearce gave us the QOTD:

Laura is a mother. She has three children. She needs to come home and I can't wait to go meet her at the airport when she does."

We have no memory of Silsby evincing concern for her children since her arrest. If she had, she might have come across a tad more sympathetic. Silsby, in fact, didn't show much concern for her children before her arrest either as reflected in her financial and business shenanigans and her dream trip to Haiti.

Speaking of Silsby's children...another Silsby lawyer has thrown in the towel.

The Idaho Statesman reports that Robert Williams, who's been representing her in "child custody issues" filed a motion to withdraw. He joins Gerald Husch, Silsby's Personal Shopper attorney who bolted in March. Williams says he has been unable to communicate with his client. He probably wouldn't have gotten paid anyway.

Silsby's ex-husband Terry Silsby (right) has sued for custody of their two children, living with him since the ex's trip south. She has an adult son who is married.

There are few details, but the Statesman reports that Judge David E. Day ruled on several custody-related issue brought by Terry Silsby. Mr. Silsby asked that the court hold the children's passports out of concern that Laura would take the children out of the country if and when she ever makes it back to Idaho. Day ruled that Mr. Silsby's lawyer Matthew Bohm should hold the passports for now. He also granted Terry authority to register the children for school in his own school district.

More Silsby Drama: Dropped Charges Not Dropped

2010-04-17T11:02:00.017-04:00

Mainstream media reported Thursday that charges against nine of ten TeamSilsby members have been dropped. Then the Haitian Attorney General said, hmmm...no, they haven't.

I'm working on other projects and don't have the time to comment. Baby Love Child, though, has. Her Charges not dropped against American Baptist missionaries despite Thursday's reports reviews the latest Silsby (in this case government-media complex) faux pas.

You'd think by now the State Department would figure out its not the arbitrator nor interpreter of Haitan law. Since MSM, does believe State is, however, reporters failed to follow a very basic rule: verify verify verify. And so did TeamSilsby and its legal team who rushed to their keyboards with the great news.

BLC's blog includes a link to Topeka Silsbyite Drew Culberth's 14 minute TV interview made after he got the good news, but before he got the bad news. The interview doesn't reveal anything new about the group's venture in Silsby's heart of darkness, but it is valuable in detailing their jailhouse life.

Culberth still doesn't "get" that the group did anything wrong. They just wanted to give "orphans a better life." Still drinking Silsby's kool-aid, Culbreth says there will be no closure until Miss Laura, who "deserves to have her name cleared" is released.

No regrets. No questions about the note slipped to MSNBC; No opinion about Silsby's stateside "problems." But nobody really asked either.

Laura Silsby: Will God Overcome All This?

2010-04-08T11:30:00.012-04:00

I'm in the middle of real Work Hell at the moment and am weeks behind on my Haiti work. I did want to post this recent quote from Silsby, though:

God will release me. I'm confident that God will overcome all of this and ultimately enable me to be released," Silsby said during the interview that was taped several days before Easter.

So what does this do to Silsby's faith if God doesn't "overcome all of this?" Does this mean that Judge Bernard Saint-vil and the Haitian courts, even in shambles, are more powerful than God? Or will she blame it on Voudou?

Clueless in Boise: Charisa Coulter Still Doesn't Get It

2010-03-16T21:43:00.029-04:00

The last few days, I've been having difficulty writing about TeamSilsby. The subject has grown cumbersome, and any subset soon takes on a life of its own, then collapses in its own immensity. As a result. I've got several disjointed pieces that go together in some way, but have no logical transition, and grow more complex each time I try to de-complex them. It's enough to give me writer's block.

So, I'll take the easy way out for now and just throw some thoughts out. I'm still working on Part 2 of Haiti Earthquake Glorifies God; Also a piece on the Pickett family. But for now, here's a bit on Charisa Coulter's return.

Charissa Coulter has returned to Boise (via Miami) tearful and Jesused-up. According to news reports she was met by about 30 adoring fans at the airport, including five of her six Idaho cellies (Paul Thompson went missing). Central Baptists and friends after a brief prayer huddle burst into Amazing Grace upon her arrival. Of course, the real welcome will be for Mrs. Silsby. From the looks of the comments in the Idaho Statesman, though, (any article on TeamSilsby will do), when and if she's released, CVBC will be forced to use more than a choir to fend off locals wielding pitchforks and torches. Curiously, the latest version of the church's webpage makes no mention of its wandering member.

Coulter's statements to the press on her arrival in Boise are disturbing. She showed an incalculable amount of arrogance, ignorance, and selfishness about TeamSilsbly's "orphan" mission, the group's flaunting of Haitian law, and the hideous consequences of their actions. Not to mention how the average person anywhere in the world feels about them. Coulter’s “it’s all about loving children” translated into "it's all about me." But as long as it’s "me" that God is calling, it's OK. I guess.

And what about those 33 + a possible other 40 kids you were busy moving around during your phone calls with The Diety? Any care about them and their families?

Several news videos are up of the homecoming. This KTVB-TV report is the most detailed.

Unfortunately, it replaces an earlier video that captured some "interesting" comments from Coulter that were disappeared in the update. Luckily, I transcribed the most egregious parts of the unsanitized version (some of which remain in the current video) below.

Q: What’s your take on what’s going to happen? Any idea at this point?

CC: No, it’s all in God’s hands. I don’t know. We’re just gonna sit
back and we’re going let him do his job. and when he wills she’ll be back. She’ll be here with us.

Q: Are you worried about the charges at all?

CC: We don’t have to worry. It…it’s, ’s like I said, it’s in God’s hands and he wants us to trust him. We are 10 Christians who obeyed God’s calling. And we went to help the nation of Haiti and their children and for reasons unknown to us, it did not go the way we planned, but we realize that God is in control, and that this was what He wanted. It’s hard to understand there’s so much…there’s so much going on that we can’t see.

Q: Do you have any idea of the timeframe of when Laura will come back.

CC: No. I’m not going to speculate. It’s, their processes is different that ours and so we’re just going to let the judge and all those involved work it out

Repeat: We are 10 Christians who obeyed God’s calling.

Apparently:

*** coercing poor, traumatized and desperate parents--survivors of the worse earthquake in modern history--out of their children with promises of child resettlement to upscale living quarters, a pool, soccer field, and school (none of which exist except in TeamSilsby's head) and parental access to the kids via the Internet (!) ; that is, until the kids are adopted and spirited away by total strangers in the Great White Protestant North.

*** sneaking through back alleys and banging on orphanage doors with an entrepreneurial sociopath who can't even pay her own employees and mortgage;

*** lying to Haitian, Dominican, and US government officials about your activities;

*** collecting money through legally questionable fund raising procedures back home;

***diverting attention and funds from a massive humanitarian crisis to feed your specialness;

***and mucking up genuine material aid and medical treatment for thousands of homeless and injured and dying people

qualifies as "God's calling."

Repeat: And we went to help the nation of Haiti and their children and for reasons unknown to us, it did not go the way we planned...

Incredibly, Coulter told KIVI-TV's's Jackie Orozco that she hopes to return to Haiti to "to help in the future."

Homecoming photo from The Idaho Statesman

An Old VIdeo: TeamSilsby: The Ten Musketeers

2010-03-15T18:12:00.020-04:00

KTVB-TV has disappeared one of the videos I embedded in the blog I'm finishing right now. While looking for it, I found this BONUS VIDEO: a February 9 interview with Charisa Coulter's father, Mel and Eric Thompson, husband of detainee Carla Thompson. A serious luv fest for Haiti.

Thompson assures us that he loves Haiti--or rather "those people"-- and prays for the government every day to do the right thing by his wife who only wanted to "help children." Nothing about praying for the families his wife helped break up or mention of the illegal activities she engaged in to do it.

Coulter opines that it's "unethical" to separate Silsby/Coulter from the other eight since the lawyers were hired to represent all of them. They went in "ten as one" and they need to come out as one. Gee, funny how Jim Allen claims those lawyers never represented him. And he got out "as one" while the rest of them were left to stew.

Reporter Ysabel Bilbao closed her report saying the men believe that "the country is better because of the group."

I've played the tape several times and don't hear them say that, but it sounds like something they'd say. Or maybe Bilbao was getting her own snark in. If anyone wonders how the Haiti earthquake could have been made any worse than it was, the answer isn't far way.

Laura Silsby to Remain in Haiti Jail at Least Until May?

2010-03-12T18:41:00.003-05:00

Looks like Laura Silsby won't be coming some soon. No details yet, but according to the Associated Press:

Judge Bernard Saint-Vil says Laura Silsby has been charged for a newly discovered, alleged attempt to bus child earthquake survivors to the Dominican Republic on Jan. 26.

She already could face trial on kidnapping and criminal-association charges from her group's attempt to take 33 children across the border without permission three days later.

Saint-Vil has added the new charge of "organization of irregular trips," from a 1980 law restricting travel out of Haiti that was signed by then-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Could this be the 40 kids who went missing on the earlier aborted attempt?

Or were there other attempts we don't know about yet?

How much you wanna bet CVBC and its minions play this: God has placed Mrs. Silsby in her cell of affliction as a witness of His love for the Haitian people, to harvest their souls for His glory. Or this: she's taking Haiti's sin on to herself; Haiti's suffering is her suffering. Or some variation.

Addenda: Baby Love Child has posted a detailed commentary on this new event with background on the gone-missing 40. , Haiti: New charge brought against Laura Silsby Organization on Irregular Trips

Haiti Earthquake Glorifies God: Part 1: Laura Silsby

2010-03-11T21:44:00.008-05:00

Slaps forehead!

I should have looked for this earlier. TeamSilsby's friends have established a Facebook support page: Bring Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter Home!

This is taken from the page information:

A little administrative note: those who join this group with their own personal axes to grind will not be accepted. Those who post strong negative comments will have their comments removed. This goes against the mission purpose of this group...a positive prayerful supportive group for Laura, Charisa, and their families. There are plenty of opinions surrounding this case. The negative opinions and statements don't belong here. By joining this group you are agreeing to abide by the above statements. Thank you.

That means most of the world isn't welcome to their Kaffeeskltsch (or is that Tea Party?) As of this writing, they've gathered only 129 Friends. One dropped off while I was writing this.

FB Friends include former detainee Paul Thompson (private page), his wife Renee Culberth Thompson (private page) and a few people who might be relatives. Also Silsby's sister and fellow New Life Children's Refuge incorporator, Kim Barton (private page).

All comments are valentines to Miss Laura or ponderous scripture. Here, for example, is the latest posting from page creator Esther Hardman, in which she frames Silsby's incarceration as a sacrificial conversion technique (my emphasis):

Lord, we don't know what's going on in Haiti the last couple of days, but you do. Please care for Laura, send her encouragement. Help expedite the court proceedings. Please move in the officials' hearts. Help Laura and the other native Christians around her use this opportunity to glorify your Name. Please send her comfort, food, healing,wisdom, and encouragement today. Help Charisa, and both Laura's and Charisa's families today as they await further developments in this case. Encourage them as well, help them to feel your love in a special way today. In Jesus Name Amen.

Another FB Friend, not doing irony too well, posted:

"He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn, and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun." Psalm 37:6- Father God, I pray this over Laura.

No prayers yet for the children and families TeamSilsby exploited and coerced, the chaos the group created with legitimate relief efforts (including the possible deaths that resulted from their bad behavior) , the PersonalShopper.com employees and creditors Silsby stiffed, and her own left-behind children.

Another FB page: Pray for the 10 Americans in Haiti was set up a few days after the arrests. It has 533 members. No one has posted on its wall since February 19 when all but Coulter and Silsby were released. Go to the Friends List and you'll find many of the detainees with links to their FB pages. Do the comparative membership numbers between the two pages indicate suspicion or mistrust of Coulter and Silsby amongst a majority of Team Silsby FB supporters? Do they care?

NOTE: I'll be posting a second part to this shortly. It didn't mesh well, so I've separated them.

More Intrigue in Port au Prince: More Trouble Ahead for Laura Silsby?

2010-03-07T01:54:00.002-05:00

KATU-TV Portland (Oregon) reports tonight that Laura Silsby may be in for more trouble.

At first I thought this was a re-hash of Friday's's story, but unless I missed something, this is a new detail regarding the reason she continues to be held:

The judge is looking over new documents that could link the two women to possible illegal travel in addition to other allegations of kidnapping after the two led a mission to take 33 children out of Haiti to a Dominican Republic orphanage. Haiti's investigation determined none of the children were orphans.

One of Silsby's lawyers, Louis Ricardo Chachoute, denies there's a problem. "Our clients are innocent because the documents are real there is no criminal conspiracy, no kidnapping."

BTW, how many lawyers does this woman have, and who's paying or them? And who says this is about documents?

TeamSilsby's to-and fros on both sides of the island in the few days they were free to roam are confusing, and I don't even want to try to set out a scheme here. (I've considered trying to work up a timeline).

Anne-christine d]'desky outlines a lot of curious details involving Silsby and DR officials in her Special Report update. The "illegal travel" could be related to them--her suspected helpers in high places.

Or maybe more missing children. d'Adeksy mentions that Judge Saint-Vil was also investigating a separate case of the alleged movement of 200 Haitian children into the DR. I'm having trouble locating the original source on that, so I can't link it directly. You can find it in her report linked above.

And whatever happened of those 40 other children anyway? The ones Silsby picked up early on and was barred from taking into the DR? Where did TeamSilsby get them and where did they go? So far, the only people who seem to be interested in that answer are bloggers and web sleuths.

We'd sure like to know why the Criders, John Requa, Nancy Rodriguez and the anonymous Texans from the Andrews First Baptist Church got out of Dodge so fast. too.

There's enough mysteries here to keep Ellery Queen busy for the next six years.

It's pretty clear the Haitian government wants this mess to go away so it can get back to the real business of putting the country back together. But, I have this growing feeling that the delay in Coulter's release and the continued incarceration of Silsby is about much more than what Americans might consider the eccentricities of the Napoleonic Code and Haitian law. Are Saint-Vil and the prosecutor just sticking it to Silsby and Coulter, or are they playing good cop-bad cop dragging out the case while US authorities built a case stateside just in time for the release(s)? Certainly Silsby's involved in enough shady dealings to pique the curiosity of law enforcement and the IRS. Or maybe there's other reasons.

Saint-Vil: Silsby to be Held for Further Investigation; Coulter Home Soon

2010-03-05T20:21:00.012-05:00

Here I go pandering to Laura Silsby again!

Reuters reported about an hour ago that Judge Bernard Saint-Vil signed a release order for Charisa Coulter' today, but will hold Silsby for "further investigation. "(No details yet. Maybe he's reading Baby Love Child or Haiti Vox or me!)

Unfortunately for Ms Coulter, an "administrative glitch" will hold her in Haiti until Monday:

Coulter was returned to custody on Friday because court administrators could not find an official stamp necessary to validate the judge's signed order, Sainvil said.

"I already signed the release order. All that is left now is to seal it but they cannot find the official stamp," he said.

There was no chance that Coulter would be released before Monday, chief prosecutor Joseph Manes Louis told Reuters.

"I returned the order to the judge because there is an administrative problem. Once the problem is solved I will proceed according to the law," he said.

KTVB-Boise reports that the two prisoners met separately with Judge Saint-Vil today for about two hours each and gives a few additional details.

Waitng for God: Silsby and Coulter Still Waiting; Groupies Fume Over UNICEF

2010-03-04T03:02:00.009-05:00

A mistaken attribution fixed from Randy Bohlener to DownshoreDrift)

God continues to stick it to Laura Silsby and her combination cellie and live-in nanny Charisa Coulter. One or two more days in jail.

Various news sources (I'm mostly using AFP via Raw Story, Verdict on US missionaries in Haiti imminent: US official with a little backup from the AP's Haiti judge not ready to release 2 US missionaries), report that Judge Bernard Saint-Vil has heard testimony from his three unnamed witnesses (Why do we know who they are, but the MSM won't name them: Hildago, Chenvert and Sanvil?) and now needs only to send the evidence to the prosecutor general's office for a final go-over.

"The final decision is mine," Saint-Vil said. And from all accounts, the dynamic duo intend to be home soon.

According to the AP:

The two women were in good spirits while waiting for the hearing, dressed in casual shirts, shorts and sandals, chatting with members of their legal team and eating sandwiches. Afterward they filled out U.S. Embassy and court forms before boarding a Haitian police truck that took them back to jail.

"We're waiting on the judge's decision and on our God," Silsby told reporters as they left.

Silsby, wearing her customary well-scrubbed and blissed-out exburban Baptist face, flashed her Bible to reporters, reciting Psalm 33:20: "Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield."

In a separate AP article Tuesday, Detained, US missionary: I'd come back to Haiti, Silsby absurdly declared her desire to return to Haiti, presumably while she thinks her iron is hot:

Oh yes, both of us would come back to Haiti because there is so much need here, especially for the children," Silsby told an AP reporter at the airport-side police station where they are being held.

"We would definitely come back to help them once this misunderstanding or whatever you want to call it is sorted out."

Whatever you want to call it?

We realize that Silsby hasn't the amenities she's accustomed to at the moment, like Google. She might want to type her name in when she gets back to the US.

And, hold on to your hats:

The missionary said she wants to go ahead with setting up that orphanage, taking in both earthquake victims and the children of Haitian migrant sugarcane cutters in the Dominican Republic.

Those orphans and cane cutter kids will have to stand in line behind about $2 million worth of creditors and a lot of ungrateul former employees eager to steal the food out of the mouths of children. Those no-pays are probably a misunderstanding or whatever you want to call it.

I'd like to point you to Baby Love Child's Central Valley Baptist Church used its tax status for Laura Silby's New Life mission, too. Looks like there was a little misunderstanding or whatever you want to call it about the New Life Children's Refuge tax status and fundsraising practices. This is a big story we hope (dare I say it?) the IRS picks up. It could be just a matter of the church acting as fiscal agent, but why do I think it's more? BTW, why does Sean Lankford insist that he never paid Jorge Torres Puello a dime, when there is ample evidence to suggest that a lot of money was wired to DR?

******

I really feel for TeamSilsby's State Department handler, Charles Luoma-Overstreet, spokesman for State's Western Hemisphere Affairs, who is stuck with rationalizing the unrational and pretending he cares what happens to the "missionaries." Presumably he gets paid good money, maybe hazard pay, for this unpleasant task. Luoma-Overstreet removed the clothespin from his nose long enough Tuesday to tell the press:

We're looking forward to a decision from the judge. This is a sovereign decision of the Haitian government,"...We are in touch with the authorities here and we'll be looking for that decision, hopefully soon.

...There are complicated issues in play here"...

..."It's not an easy question when we're talking about minors and orphans, welfare and disasters...

...We need to be very actively involved in seeing that all the procedures that are in place to protect the welfare of minors are followed to avoid confusion and misunderstandings," he said.

Then, he really went into diplomatic overdrive:

He explained the media attention the missionaries' case had generated in the United States was educating the US public about the issues involved in adoption outreach in disaster-struck countries.

Unfortunately, instead of visiting the State Department's Adoption Disaster Teleclassroom, Team Silsby and hundreds of other DIY orphan savers took up the cross of disaster evangelism and have converged on Haiti since the earthquake, in person or vicariously via the Internet. Instead of doing something useful, like helping to keep a family together or building a bathroom, they spend a lot of their time blogging and tweeting about how UNICEF and its "anti-international adoption agenda," is not only responsible for TeamSilsby's arrest, but strongarms governments to keep their children at home when they would much prefer to export them to far away places with strange sounding names.

Of course, this really isn't about UNICEF and adoption (even if it is). It's about Biblical American hatred of the god-hating UN which, depending on how far you've fallen off the meter, is run by Communists, Jews, Muslims, atheists,Freemasons , bankers, the Illuminati, eugenicists, or worshipers of Zeus. Or a mixture. That's a topic for another time, but here is a random page of anti-UN blathering, and it's one of the saner ones. Here's one of the more insane.

There are a lot of adoption disaster busybodies clogging up bandwidth. Their adoption theology is complicated, goes beyond The Great Commission, and and difficult to grasp without a lot of history and context, which is beyond the scope of this blog. Without that context, I almost hesitate to post some of their Haitian thoughts, but I think it's important to read the mentality we are dealing with. I've downloaded a lot of their pontificals. Here's a few examples:

Doug Phillips: Doug's Blog. Doug manages (why not?) to link sound trauma treatment and best practice child welfare to abortion:

On the ground in Haiti, Christian orphan relief workers and missionaries are experiencing opposition from UNICEF, an international abortion provider, and formal opponent to American adoptions of Haitian children.

Step One in UNICEF’s anti-adoption strategy was to attempt to confound the huge outpouring of compassion and adoption interest by the international community, by voicing their concerns and opposition. Step Two was to politicize the capture of ten American missionaries transporting Haitian orphans over the border to the Dominican Republic, by mounting a media campaign to raise concerns about sex trafficking. Given the tremendous financial input of the United Nations, and their massive presence in Haiti, it is understandable why the Haitian government has often been in lock-step with UNICEF priorities.

Mommy Blogger and serial Haiti adopter Watching the Waters: Mrs. Waters moans over the Haitian requirement that each child scheduled to be shipped off for adoption needs her or his case investigated and then to be approved individually by the president, not shipped off on the next plane by collectivist roundup.

UNICEF continued to push their anti-adoption agenda on the Haitian government, until the government insisted they needed to approve each child on a case-by-case basis. Now, I am 110% in favor of ensuring that each child coming out of Haiti actually be eligible for adoption. But this is not what this is about. These families, who have now been sleeping on the floor of the US Embassy in Haiti with their children for days, have paperwork proving that they have adoptions in process. But UNICEF feels that Haitian children should stay in Haiti. That it is better for a child to stay in the country that they were born in, even if it means they are raised in an orphanage. And the Haitian government is being cowed by the pressure.

Randy Bohlender serial adopter, cultural imperialist, and intercessory missionary (i.e.,unemployed; please send donations) and founder of the adoption ministry Zoe Foundation (not to be confused with the other odious Zoe's Ark): Redeeming Orphans: (For a more extensive look at Randy go here.) Randy calls UNICEF's "anti-adoption" promotion nothing more than "nation pandering" and thinks Haitian and other Third World people are just too dumb to know what's best for themselves.

What would UNICEF do? In their perfectly ordered world, an orphan child would go through a process to verify that it’s an actual orphan. Then, they would try and match that child with an aunt, uncle or some other family member. If that fails, they look for another family in the country. If none shows up, they would look for a foreign national living in the child’s country of origin. If they can’t find a foreign national, then begrudgingly, they might be in favor of that child moving across a national border to a loving family.

I'm not sure what’s at stake here…the best interest of the child or the nation-pandering that UNICEF needs to engage in to keep this charade alive.

Finally from DownshoreDrift

The UNICEF perspective is that children in poverty-stricken condiitions are better off if they stay in orphanages in their native culture than if they leave their native culture and go to families in other countries. You can debate this all you want, but that is what is behind the fact that Haitan orphans are not being allowed to leave right now. UNICEF saw an opportunity to spread their philosophy to Haiti and they have a lot of money that the Haitian government needs. At least that is the story that is being reported by people in Haiti who are in the know.

God, probably distracted momentarily by a same sex marriage announcement in the New York Times or a San Berdoo bastard's unsealed birth certificate, put scads of children in the wrong tummies, and now people like the above gang and Silsby have to clean up the mess. What would God do without his helpers?

******

Finally a short update on Paul Thompson, returned hero pastor of the Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls. Thompson (who I'll write about in a backburner blog soon) preached his first sermon since his return from jail, and it was covered by the Twin Falls Times-News. The important part of the article comes toward the end where Thompson frames the TeamSilsby arrests and incarceration as a stage for evangelism and conversion as in Rahm Emanuel's "You never let a serious crisis go to waste""

He spoke during prayer of a Haitian guard who approached the group, asking to be converted to Christianity.

Lord, that’s the kind of displays of our lives that we want to the watching world,” he said.

There is much more to write about. I've got several half-written entries, which I hope to get up soon. Of course, there's always new news pouring in.

2010-03-01T20:07:00.001-05:00

This is not about Haiti, but it could be. Scott and Karen Banks and Focus on Children are just another example of the corruption that is international adoption. I seldom do petitions, but this story is so outrageous that I'm posting it here. The story needs to get out. The petition is circulated by PEAR: Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform

PLS SIGN THIS PETITION Monday, February 22, 2010 Call for Full Investigation into Amelya Frances Kirkpatrick's Adoption in Utah

According to a court document obtained by PEAR, on February 9, 2010, Scott and Karen Banks, former owners of adoption agency Focus on Children, were allowed to adopt another child, originally from China. The Banks were indicted on 135 Federal counts in 2007 for a fraudulent adoption scheme in Samoa. In 2009, they pled guilty to Aiding and Abetting the Improper Entry of an Alien in a plea deal made with the US Attorney's office in Utah. They were given a sentence of five years probation during which time they are forbidden to participate in the adoption business and are required to make payment into a trust for the victims.

The recent adoption occurred after evidence of their illegal activities with their Samoan adoption program were put on record in Utah courts. Also supplied was information regarding the Banks two previously adopted Romanian children.

According to numerous media sources and their now-adult Romanian daughter's own affidavit, this child and her sibling were flown to Samoa by Scott Banks and left without legal documentation in 2000, leaving these adoptees in a legal limbo. In addition, according to an affidavit given by their caregiver in Samoa, the Banks have had no contact with either child since their arrival, nor have they supported the children in any way since abandoning them in Samoa.

Furthermore, a third child of the Banks, suffering from cerebral palsy and also adopted from Romania, has been alleged in various documents to have been severely neglected in their home. This child was placed in a group home in Utah.

PEAR believes that anyone convicted of crimes involving children should be barred from the possibility of adopting any other children. We also believe that any parents convicted of or with a history of legitimate allegations of child abuse and neglect should be barred from adopting children.

PEAR opposes any practice that does not protect the rights of the child to live a life free from abuse and neglect with qualified and loving adoptive parents. To not hold these rights paramount in an adoption proceeding undermines every moral and ethical standard that each child deserves.

We are sponsoring a petition to be sent to the Governor of Utah asking his office to open an investigation into how and why this family was allowed to adopt another child given their dubious history. If you agree with the statements made please take a moment to sign the petition.

The petition can be found at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/utahadoption/

Measure passed by PEAR’s board 2/19/2010

Running on Empty: Two Snips from the Lives of Team Silsby

2010-02-28T03:10:00.002-05:00

I didn't plan to post anymore on Team Silsby tonight, but then I got a couple news stories that just struck me as...well, you'll see.

Felicia Middlebrooks from WBBM-AM Chicago is in Haiti and tracked down Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter in their inconvenient jail cell. Go here and listen to it. Much of Middlebrook's report is her own complaints about the conditions. Holy Jorge Puello! There's no air conditioning...and..and...and....it's 90 degrees...and...and...and... there's no eletricity...and...and...and...there's no plumbing or at least the kind American ladies and gentlemen use willingly.

Middlebrooks fails to mention that Team Silsby has a roof over its head, unlike hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in tents and streets. They have real homes to return to when they get out, even if Silsbuy's been foreclosed. Homes with air conditioning, electricity and plumbing

Then there's Drew Culberth, the Kansas firefighter and youth minister who got roped into child snatching by his brother-in-law Eastside Baptist Church pastor Paul Thompson who got roped into child snatching by Central Baptist Church patron Laura Silsby. Seems Drew, Pastor Thompson, and detainees Silas Thompson and Steve McMullin had a little party at the Bethany Baptist Church in Topeka before the latter three headed back home to Twin Falls, Idaho. The party was reported by their lawyer and hatchling right wing pol, Caleb Stegall who tells us:

they feasted on pizza and Mountain Dew, reconnecting and sharing stories as Drew Culberth's four children ran through the halls, happy and excited to be reunited with their dad.

EWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The fuel that youth ministries run on.

Small Update on Silsby and Coulter

2010-02-27T12:07:00.005-05:00

Here's a small update on Silsby and Coulter's newest hearing that I posted earlier. Reuters reported last night that the dynamic duo's hearing will drag on for a few more days, so it appears that the orphaholic martyrs will be buried in their well-deserved jail cell until midweek. Hopefully longer.

Investigative judge Bernard Sainvil said that before freeing Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter he wanted witnesses that he had already examined in the Dominican Republic to give their testimony in Haiti. "The Americans will have to stay in jail while I hear those people ... the hearings will take place Monday and Tuesday, and they won't be released before I finish," Sainvil told Reuters.

In case you haven't seen this video of Silsby and Coulter going to court the other day....note that Ms Coulter's lack of charm school training is showing.

Bad News for Laura Silsby

2010-02-25T18:19:00.004-05:00

No details yet, but the New York Times reported minutes ago that Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter will not be released until next week. It looks like Judge Saint-Vil is trying to nail down Rob Chenvert, Jose Hildago, and Jean Sanvil. Does anybody know if Isaac Adrien has been called on the carpet yet?

My emphasis:

Judge Bernard Saint-Vil tells reporters that he has asked two real estate agents and a pastor from the Dominican Republic to testify in Port-au-Prince about property the missionaries rented to set up an orphanage.

That is expected Monday. If they do not show, Saint-Vil says he still expects to rule next week.

2/26/2010: Tiny Update: A report from the European Press Photo Agency (in Spanish) says that "persistent" comments by defense attorney Aviol Fleuernt regarding the the exact release date of Silsby and Coulter put Judge Saint-Vil in a "delicate position with respect to the release:

Sin embargo, fuentes judiciales sostuvieron que las persistentes declaraciones del abogado Aviol Fleurant sobre la fecha precisa de liberación de las dos misioneras que permanecen detenidas, colocó al juez en una "situación delicada" con relación a su decisión de poner fin al proceso.

I've gotten behind in my reading. Has anyone heard from Larry, Curly and Moe recently? It sounds like Judge Saint-Vil doesn't expect them to show up. If they don't show, Silsby and Coulter should not be released. But then none of those so-called not-adopted pipeline kids should have been sent to the US and other points either.

A little R& R at the New Life Children's Refuge, Cabarete

Laura Silsby's Texas Missionaries Revealed

2010-02-24T16:36:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about four unnamed and heretofore unpublicized missionaries who stayed in the Dominican Republic to ready the orphan hotel while Laura Silsby and her child snatchers went into Haiti to gather up the swag (left). I have now identified the church: The First Baptist Church in Andrews, Texas.

My information is from the February 2, 2010 CBS 7 (Odessa) News, Andrews connection with American missionaries accused of kidnapping. Go to the right of the screen and click on the video (couldn't find a separate link) and check out old pictures of the luxurious hotel that is in real life is no longer luxurious. These pictures no doubt were used to spirit the kids away from their families. (I'm working on a separate blog on that)

The news report places the First Baptist Church, on the ground floor of Larua Silsby's pre-quake orphanage scheme. It also places Silsby's Central Valley Baptist Church as an active sponsor of the orphanage and the trip to Haiti , despite various church self-reportings to the contrary (my emphasis):

Pastor Jeff Donnell of First Baptist Church in Andrews says the Central Valley Church in Idaho contacted them well before the earthquake to build an orphanage.

The church contacted us needing help that was just a natural fit for us,” Pastor of First Baptist Church in Andrews, Jeff Donnell said. “We could do that, we could go.”

The earthquake however inspired a sense of urgency.

No missionary tourists are named in the newscast, and the church's webpage is clean of all Haiti/DR visits. This is what we learn of the "missionaries' activities from the report:

“While they were tending to the actual children we were going to ten [sic] the building to get it ready” Donnell said.

They left for the Dominican Republic last week to help turn a 45-room hotel into an orphanage unit. This unit was supposed to house 150 children, including the 33 children the Haitian prime minister claims was kidnapped.

“We never went into Haiti. Our friends did and they spent a week working with the authorities before the accusations were made” Donnell said.

The pastor says they thought everything was in the clear to receive the children.

“Its our understanding all the paper work had been done, that every had been in order.” Donnell said...

...Now the all church can do is pray for their friends in Haiti and children still with out a home.

“We've communicated to Central valley church,” Donnell said, “And gave our support and prayers for them.”

The First Baptist Church bills itself as a mission giving church, donating 11% of its budget receipts to the ultra conservative Southwestern and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminaries. The church has led missionary tours to Trinidad, Belize, and Armenia (which, btw, adopted Christianity as its state religion in 301 AD) and helps support fulltime missionaries Crystal and Chad Reynolds. Numerous photo albums of church and mission work are posted on the church's webpage, but none from the recent DR incursion. For those interested in evangelical arcana, check out the Joshua Project People Group flowchart and The Unreached People Group of the Day" on the front page of the church's homepage. This will take you directly to the Haiti People Group, which inexplicably, if I'm reading it correctly, features French Jews (or the French and Jews are lumped into one People Group.)

Oh the Audacity! Jorge es Inocente.com

2010-02-23T23:57:00.000-05:00

Giving new meaning to the word chutzpah. Jorge Torres Puello has just put up a webpage: Jorge es Inocente.com. It includes his biography, legal documents (including a certificate of good conduct), audio tapes, videos...and Martha Stewart!

Many of the videos show the release of the "missionaries" and their return to Idaho. Apparently Yoram doesn't realize that these are some of the most hated people in the US today, and that most of us think they belong in jail right next to Dick Cheney and Tim Geithner. To win friends and influence people he does not want to take credit for that.

The page is in Spanish, and I need to go through it yet. The audio didn't work, but I trust that will be fixed soon.

The reinvention begins!

Down the Rabbit Hole: Additional Idaho Baptist and Anonymous Texas Missionaries were in Dominican Republic with Silsby

2010-02-22T19:51:00.020-05:00

Most of the discussion on Haiti can be found on my main blog The Daily Bastardette.

The Twin Falls Times-News today reports that more New Life "missionaries" than previously known were in the Dominican Republic preparing the so-called "orphanage" while Team Silsby was busy gathering up the boodle.

We already knew that Eastside Baptist Church members John Requa and Matt and Lora Crider remained at the "orphanage" while church pastor Paul Thompson, his son Silas Thompson, and member Steve McMullin crossed into Haiti. (I thought I had already posted about Requa and the Criders, but they are in an unfinished blog that I hope to get up soon. Baby Love Child, covers them here.)

Now we learn that Nancy Rodriguez, wife of Paul Rodriguez, Magic Valley Baptist Association director of missions, and four "missionaries" from an unnamed group in Texas were also at the "orphan" hotel. This makes (so far) 17 onsite New Life adoption traffickers recruited by Laura Silsby. According to the News-Times:

The plan had been to gather up orphaned children and take them across the border to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. Eastside members Matt and Lora Crider and John Requa were joined in Haiti's neighboring country by Nancy Rodriguez - wife of Paul Rodriguez, director of missions for the Magic Valley Baptist Association....

...Requa arrived in the Dominican Republic on Jan. 28, with the Criders following the next day. They busied themselves working with another group from Texas to get the hotel that would serve as a temporary building ready for the children.

The Criders and Requa cut bait and returned to the US on Janaury 31, and the unnamed Texans the next day. The article doesn't say when Nancy Rodriguez arrived and left DR. I have been unable to determine what church the Rodriquezes belong to.

Talk about the sounds of silence!

Paul Rodriguez posted a message (undated) linking MVBA to the prisoners, but he fails to say that his wife was working at the "orphanage" when the arrests happened. The message begins (my emphasis):

It has been too many days now since our people were arrested and are still imprisoned in Haiti. Please do not grow weary...

There is also a picture of the MVBA's Disaster Relief Team (undated) that appears to be taken back in Twin Falls, not in the middle of an earthquake or any other disaster. Members are not identified, though someone who looks like Paul Rodriguez is the 3rd from the left, last row. I do not know what Nancy Rodriquez looks like. If MVBA sent its relief team to Haiti, I can find no record of it.

It gets more interesting. In addition to today's article, a search through the Twin Falls Times-News indicates that Paul Rodriguez was referenced three times (and Nancy none) in the paper's coverage of the arrests of the Eastside Baptist Church members. In none of them did Rodriquez mention that Mrs. Rodriquez was part of the gang. Maybe it has something to do with the crossed T's and dotted I's he mentions.

February 7,2010: Fellow Baptist pastors defend Thompson against Haiti charges

Paul Rodriguez, director of Magic Valley Baptist Association, said he’s “very disturbed” that Thompson is being held on the criminal charges.

With Thompson in Port-au-Prince is his 19-year-old son Silas, and Steve McMullin, both of Twin Falls and also members of Eastside Baptist Church.

Paul Thompson is known for working closely with the youth in his church and was concerned about homeless children being on the streets, said Rodriguez, who’s known Thompson for about 20 years. Thompson often encouraged families to accept foster children into their homes.

“This thing about trafficking and kidnapping — not Paul. Not Paul. Without a doubt, he had no intentions of trafficking or kidnapping children. Something arose, something went wrong,” Rodriguez said....

...This should be a lesson learned for other congregations, Sjostrom said. Churches should take the time to study and plan before jumping into relief efforts.

“I think they were foolish in moving so quickly just because of the earthquake,” he said. “I think it was done with the best of intentions, but that isn’t going to cut it. … They should have planned better. There needs to be checks and balances.”

Rodriguez concurred. “This is a lesson that we need to learn very well,” he said. “We need to be more prepared in the future, and make sure that our T’s are crossed and our I’s are dotted.”

February 21, 2010: McMullin welcomed home:

Steve McMullin (right) arrived to the warm embrace of family and friends Saturday at Joslin Field, Magic Valley Regional Airport.

McMullin, a member of Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, arrived to the airport at about noon.

His arrival was announced only to family and friends, said Paul Rodriguez, missions director of the Magic Valley Baptist Association....

...Rodriguez said McMullin didn’t say much about his ordeal, but he had something to say to McMullin.

“I said, ‘Steve, good job. Good job.’ He said, ‘I didn’t do anything.’ But he did,” Rodriguez said. “He handled himself in a very Christian way through all of this.”

After a while the group at the airport broke out singing “Amazing Grace,” Rodriguez said...

...Rodriguez said he did not know when Thompson would arrive from Kansas, where he’s staying with family.

“They want to stay there for a little while. That’s what I heard,” he said.

Really interesting is the February 1, 2010, KMTV news video on the arrests that includes Paul Rodriguez silent on his wife's involvement with Silslby.

Now what about the Texans? I went back and looked at numerous news reports that referenced Texas in the New Life saga. There are no Texans in the plural. Only Jim Allen.

Allen, who IS from Amarillo, has said nothing about meeting up with any other Texans at the "orphanage" before he went into Haiti and was popped with Team Silsby. He has maintained that he was recruited by his cousin Eastside Pastor Paul Thompson (later detained in Haiti) and had about 48 hours turnaround time on the trip. He says he had no prior knowledge of Silsby and, in fact, met her for the first time at the Miami airport. So far, I've seen no reason to question that scenario. His church, the Paramount Baptist Church, makes no mention of a Haiti trip,though it does have a "disaster relief team." (As much as I've written about the churchy folks elsewhere, I've never heard of individual church disaster teams until now. I suppose that has something to do with the de-professionalism of the Protestant missionary industry.)

So we now have another mystery. Who are the Texas missionaries and why have they disappeared from the Silsby story? We'd really love to hear more from Nancy Rodriguez, too.

Just how many people were in on this little junket down to Haiti?

Thanks to Daily Bastardette commenter Robin for finding this article so quickly this morning!

CORREC TION: I was just over at websleuths and someone pointed out I had possibly mislabeled Paul Rodriguez suggesting he and Nancy were in the front row on the far left holding hands. I checked, and by golly, I believe they are correct. My eyes just glazed over them.

Jorge Torres Puello speaks - 1 & Introduction

2010-02-19T00:41:00.002-05:00

This evening I received a series of posts to The Daily Bastardette from "Yoram" purporting to be Jorge Torres Puello. I have verified that the posts came from OneMax, an ISP in the Dominican Republic, which one of our commenters determined earlier was connected to Torres Puello. My Site Meter also indicates the posts came from DR and the time matches perfectly with the posting times. Since these posts were intended to be comments, I will post them as comments, but am also posting them here in separate blogs--one for each post. I am releasing them in the order they were sent (1-7 top to bottom.) These "comments" will also be posted on my other site End Child Exportation and Trafficking of Children in Haiti.

What I find so..well, interesting about these posts is that 95% (or more) pertain to the writer proving his Jewish, not his innocence of the crimes for which he is accused.

I will comment on these later, but I wanted to get them up now.

Below is post #1.

Message 1: February 18, 2010 4:55:09PM

Yoram has left a new comment on your post "WHO IS JORGE PUELLO, PT 2: JUMPING DOWN THE RABBIT...":

I am open to answer any question you have on me about my Yiddishkite, or anything
my e-mail is sephardicjews@gmail.com , I am not affraid to answer all you question and give you proof!!!!

Posted by: Jorge Torres Puello | February 18, 2010 at 02:32 PM

1. My Mothers mother is Swiss, her name is Miriam Rosental. And during the Shoach she moved to the DR and her name was changed by Trujillo for political reasons to Maria.She married my Grand Father Mannuel Puello a beirut Jew who moved to the Dominican Republic.

2. My family never practice Jewdaism and I never went to Jewish school BUT I WAS A JEW BORN TO A JEWISH MOTHER. (MEMBER OF THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE SYNAGOGUE SHEARITH ISRAEL IN MONTREAL)

3. After all my troubles I decided to do Baal Shuva and with the Help of a Montreal Rabbi I returned to the Jewish Community.

4. I never choose the life I had, I never made any money with any B´nei Anous, the story that you dont know is that I Gave more than US$600,000 to help others return to Judaism. ALL MY MONEY.

5. In Canada while working undercover for the US Gov. The government never told the Canadian that they were conducting an investigation ilegaly inside Canadian Soil, I get trap in to this mess. I WAS RELEASE AFTER BEEN ILEGALY DETAINED IN PRISON FOR AN EXTRADITION TO THE U.S.

http://www.jugements.qc.ca/php/decision.phpliste=43347653&doc=40ED16F07C55B420380442E250FA4EAA52DAB6E15F36E99CF79158890E924272&page=2

http://www.jugements.qc.ca/php/decision.php?liste=43347653&doc=40ED16F07C55B420380442E250FA4EAA52DAB6E15F36E99CF79158890E924272&page=2

read it your self.

My mother has never been religious and she married on her secon marriage a chatolic man. (That don´t take away my jewishness)

The reason Rabbi Perlman and Isaac Rudman don like me is because they dont like poor jews, and the b´nei anous had no money. (Like Hashem choosed only rich people when our father Abraham Abinu times)

The Mohel who did my sons bris was an ultra orthodox jew ISRAEL HELLER from New York, some one recomended by Rabbi Perlman´s boss Rabbi Zarchi from Chabad Puerto Rico.

Kulanu never sent me a dime, if you go to their web site in the news letter you will find more news about the community, and the forest foundation send some help for Chanukka when I built the biggest Chanukkia in dominican history.

As for the charges in El Salvador I am being extorted, I was not even there when in the span of the time when the crime was committed.

If you need more let me know

JORGE TORRES PUELLO (YORAM)

P.S. Yoram is in the book of Kings. Not a new israeli name.

Jorge Torres Puello Speaks - 2

2010-02-19T00:40:00.002-05:00

Message 2: February 18, 2010, 4:58:30PM

Yoram has left a new comment on your post "WHO IS JORGE PUELLO, PT 2: JUMPING DOWN THE RABBIT...":

Sorry for the link it wont work that way

http://www.jugements.qc.ca/

use this one and tipe my name

JORGE TORRES

or

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA VS JORGE TORRES

read it below

SUPERIOR COURT

CANADA

PROVINCE OF QUEBEC

DISTRICT OF
MONTREAL

No:
500-36-003375-048

DATE:
June 9th, 2004

______________________________________________________________________

PRESIDING:
THE HONOURABLE
Mr. JUSTICEJ. FRASER MARTIN, J.S.C.
______________________________________________________________________

TORRES, JORGE ANIBAL

Petitioner

v.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Respondent

And

LE DIRECTEUR DU CENTRE DE DÉTENTION R.D.P.

Third party
______________________________________________________________________

JUDGMENT
______________________________________________________________________

[1] I am inclined in particular circumstances of this case to take a rather restrictive view of article 69 of the Extradition Act.

[2] There is one thing that is clear. This is intended to be an expeditive procedure, the act is drafted in that fashion, delays are set out and the delays stand to be respected.

[3] There is no doubt that to some considerable degree Mr. Torres is the author of his own misfortune, in view of the (numerous, huge) number of letters that have been sent on an ongoing argument at various dates to the Ministry of Justice but that does not excuse for one second the Ministry of Justice.

[4] The Minister has his obligations under the Act, the Minister has the obligation to act in one way or another and it is totally unacceptable that the Minister's counsel, paralegals or everybody else put off under the guides of incorporating this into a final submission to the Minister that would be given at some elastic date on the future without having regard for any of the delays that are set out in the Act that somehow or other somebody be kept incarcerated for months on end.

[5] Giving this the most charitable interpretation that it can be given, from the point of view of the Minister of Justice, Mr. Torres has one way or the other been detained illegally since the 13th of March because he was entitled to do a decision by that date at the very least. (2003) (YEAR ADDED BY ME)

[6] As I say, not for me to speculate on the consequences but I read discharged out of custody to mean discharged out of custody purely and simply and I am cognisant that Mr. Justice Hébert has already declined to grant a stay of proceedings in this matter, so that I should not be interpreted the same that the order that I am rendering today intended to be interpreted in that sense. Not at all.

[7] I am interpreting section 69 to mean that he should be discharged from custody awaiting the decision of the Minister and it is not for me to specify as of today within what delays the Minister should act. That is up to the Minister to determine and to act accordingly.

FOR THESE REASONS, THE COURT:

GRANTS in part the Petition and

ORDERS the immediate release of Mr. Torres from custody.

Mr. Torres:

The conditions for your release are the following:

a) To keep the peace and be a good behaviour and to attend to Court when required;

b) To reside at [...], Granby and not to change your address without the authorization of the Court;

c) To remain within the territorial limits of the Province of Quebec;

d) To abstain from applying a passport and I note that your two passports, one which is for the United States and the other for Dominican Republic have been surrendered;

e) To report to the RCMP at Granby between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm and signed the register once a week on Friday, beginning on the 11th of June of 2004 and to report to the RCMP within 24 hours of receiving the Minister's decision with regard to surrender;

I take that these conditions will be respected

George Torres Puello Speaks - 3

2010-02-19T00:38:00.002-05:00

Message 3: February 18, 2010 5:00:52PM

Yoram has left a new comment on your post "WHO IS JORGE PUELLO, PT 2: JUMPING DOWN THE RABBIT...":

If you want a letter of my sinagogue in canada I will send it to everyone, I BELONG TO THE OLDEST SYNAGOGUE IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES, even before all this Sphardic hater Kuzzars came to america. We are the true jews the Jews from the Arab Countries and Sepharad. The Ramban, Rambam, Rashi, Onkelos, Don Senior etc. Are all Sephardic. You don´t see any Auskenazim. or Black Hats or Schreimers in during the golden age of Judaism. It makes me sick that all this Kuzzars whant to step over our sages decision.

<<>> [ויקרא-Vayikra. 26:44]

Jorge Puello Speaks - 4

2010-02-19T00:35:00.004-05:00

Message 4, February 18, 2010, 5:01:54PM

Yoram has left a new comment on your post "WHO IS JORGE PUELLO, PT 2: JUMPING DOWN THE RABBIT...":

<<>> [יִרְמְיָה, Yirmĭyahu. 31:37]

<<>> [סנהדרין‎-Sanhedrin 44a]

- Hide quoted text -

<< (According to Kings 19:18, there were 7,000 faithful Israelites who) “have not bowed to Baal, we did not see that it occurred to any of our Sages that our forefathers who betrayed God, rebelled against Him and denied Him should be called ‘complete gentiles’ or ‘worse than gentiles,’ and that their sons who repented and worshipped God should be considered proselytes >> [R. She’ adyá ben Maimon ibn Danan, Khemdah Genuzah, 15a]

In views of Divine, Prophetic, Talmudic and post-Talmudic understanding, an apostate Israelite is still an Israelite. It follows that an Anous, who was forced into avoda zara / foreign cult, and their children who are born in a state of duress among non-Jews, are also Israelites:

<< (the children of Anusim), who have never seen the light of the Torah, are no different from Jewish children who have lived as prisoners among non-Jews or with Karaites (Israelites who do not believe in the authority of Oral Torah), even Maimuni, Hiljot, Mamrim III, 3, had compassion on them, and treated them lightly. >> [R. Abraham de Aboab – year 1694 -- Deber Shemuel, No. 45(S. 18c f.)]

It hardly ever occurred to the Sages of Israel in the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Algiers, Morocco, Amsterdam, London – in fact every where the most brilliant luminaries of our tradition flourished – to call Anusim “gentiles” much less “proselytes”. Because, as received in the mouth of Rabbi Samuel de Medina from his teacher R. Taytazak, as confirmed by Gaon Zemah, in relation to the Anusim:

Jorge Torres Puello Speaks - 5

2010-02-19T00:34:00.001-05:00

Message 5 February 28, 2010, 2010 5:03:42PM

Yoram has left a new comment on your post "WHO IS JORGE PUELLO, PT 2: JUMPING DOWN THE RABBIT..."

<< . . . if anyone brought up the question about the possibility that the child is from a non-Jewish woman, might answer would be that UNLESS THERE IS PROOF TO THE CONTRARY, we take as fact that the child is from a Jewish woman. Furthermore, we assume that all Marranos are descendants of Jews . . . and just as we assume the father of the Marrano is Jewish, we give as fact that each mother of the Marrano is Jewish >> [Responsa III, 112]

In other words, the proof for the matrilineal descent lies with the accuser . . .

Not with the alleged victim. Why?

In the Mishna – the compilation of Oral Torah – we find an injunction that says:

<<>> [Kiddushin 4:10]

In another responsum, now in regards to the Anusim of Ashkenaz (Germany) in the 12th c., Rabbi Salomon bar Simson said:

<<>> [Geshichte der Juden in Deutschland a.a. O. p. 29, Bernfeld a.a. O.S. 192.]

Why? Very simple, to speak wrongs on Israel leads to impiety, as exposed by Maimonides, of blessed memory:

<<>> [Iggeret ha-Shemad, Halkin’s translation, (Philadelphia, 1993) p. 17]

Now I am also held accountable.

The very claim of the Anusim carries authority, and establishes the main reference point for rabbinical defense.

The Rabbis dialogue underneath the voice of the Anusim.

We hardly find any actions to the contrary. And since it is in the majority of opinions to consider Anusim as part of Israel, it follows that it is treated with the utmost respect and care.

Therefore, there should be to no one’s amazement to see R. Aaron Soloveichik response when he says:

Jore Puello Speaks - 6

2010-02-19T00:32:00.003-05:00

Message 6: February 18, 2010: 5:04:23PM

Yoram has left a new comment on your post "WHO IS JORGE PUELLO, PT 2: JUMPING DOWN THE RABBIT..."

Again, I must go back to the few Rabbis who are aware (not even knowing) the legal precedence on Anusim, and yet have to conform to the Status Quo to avoid any problems. Yet, let it be known they are not obliged and loop wholes can be found within the system.

In all fairness, you must understand that the whole issue of “conversion” is abhorred in the minds of some Anusim.

They have every right to think so.

We know that some people demanded also conversion from Yemenite Jews decades ago, yet the Yemenite community stood on its feet and fought their way through. How does one Jew have the right to invalidate the other’s lineage? Anusim lack the communal aspect, and as a result they cannot defend themselves jointly.
By all that we know on Anusim, no ceremony of “conversion” was ever performed and neither a certificate was ever issued.

Can anyone bring me the Responsa from 1400’s to 1800’s that explicitly show how this was ever done? For all we know, Anusim were treated on the same footing as it is done with any Jew today who did not grow up in the ways of tradition.
For all that this is worth . . . 761 years ago, the monastic orders in Spain set out to preach to Jews in their synagogues and convince them to conversion; 611 years ago the violent persecutions and conversions began in Seville; 515 years ago the longest, the most organized machinery for the destruction of the core of Israel (their soul) was founded.

The Inquisition aim was to eradicate the Jewish soul from the conversos, believing in the Christian doctrine that through Jesus everyone forms parts of the Church’s body and are no longer their former selves, and Judaism corrupts that “Body” , therefore we had to be treated as a disease that ultimately was cured with fire.

This is what happened to the community that revived Hebrew in its spoken and written forms, whose communities gave us the Codifiers of our Law, the liturgical poems most respected in our traditions, the Science and Translations that spread through the Civilized world, and a good name that speaks of elegance, mutual respect, and brilliant wit; whose descendants opened the doors again to France and England, and the New World .

Giving into Giur l’humra represents inversely the recognition that the Church achieved its aim.

Anusim are no longer Israel . . . Anusim are Aliens to be “newly” adopted into the house of Jacob.

is this how Jews today pay respect to tradition and the berit?

Thank you,

Sincerely,

yoram Torres.

Posted by: Jorge Torres Puello | February 18, 2010 at 03:06 PM

Every one concentrates in what I did WRONG (NOT FOUND GUILTY YET), and don´t even mention that I risk my life for other

Jorge Torres Puello Speaks - 7

2010-02-19T00:30:00.002-05:00

Message 7: February 18, 2010 5:04:44PM

Yoram has left a new comment on your post "WHO IS JORGE PUELLO, PT 2: JUMPING DOWN THE RABBIT...":

<<>>

For Judaism to be operative in what we call the “chain of tradition”, the full force the Written and Oral Torah, the commentaries of the Talmud, and the post-Rabbinic tradition as deposited in the Responsa have to operate hand in hand.

To render any of these useless, renders the whole “chain” inoperative. For this reason, Maimónides in his Mishne Torah – who in the name of the Sages – says:

<<>> [MT Hilkhot Mamurim, II.2]

Because it is certain that we all are dwarfs in the presence of the luminaries of the tradition, and when will it happen for us to surpass them? Let me let you into a secret: Never.

And how can anyone explain to the Anusim – with the full use of Halakha – how these most central matters on Israel’s identity do not come violated to its very core through the use of Giur?

Is this perhaps a joke? Can Israel be Israel without what the Sages have known for all times? And how can one invalidate the lineage of another Israelite without first bringing proof? And borrowing an expression from Maimonides, to make Anusim (coerced Israelites) into Gerim (adopted into the house of Jacob) is a “ranter of nonsense.”

Since when is permissible to take advantage of the innocent’s ignorance?

It is certain proving the Ignorance of some individuals through the Anusim filter.

And how we prove their ignorance? Ask them how many Rabbis decreed in favor of Anusim; Ask them for how long this went on; Ask them to prove you how their decision to make a Ger from an Anusim validates tradition.
They shall remain speechless for they have not been taught; yet they do not seem to have the responsibility to explain themselves either. As Maimonides lamented over 800 years ago:

<<>> [Iggeret ha-Shemad, Chp I]
Yet, ignorance by itself is not a sin.

Under all this, Anusim have every right to resist a “conversion” as understood in the sense of “adoption”. On the other hand, in no way they can, as with any Israelite, remove themselves from practicing Judaism . . .

Giur may be the “only” way as offered by some today, yet I cannot see how this is the correct way.

Is Jorge Torres Puello Really Jewish?

2010-02-15T03:50:00.004-05:00

Accurate personal info, including the religious affiliation, of Jorge Torres Puello is scarce so far, but the question has caught on in the blogosphere: Is Torres Puello really Jewish? Although the relevancy of this question has nothing to do with adoption, the subject of the Daily Bastardette and End Child Exportatinon and Trafficking..., I'm going to take it on.

No reference is made to Torres Puello's religion in the interview with his mother and stepfather in the Miami Herald (registration required) or CNN. I've heard nothing to suggest he was born Jewish. Puello isn't a Jewish name, but Torres is. His father is reported to be Puerto Rican and if he were Jewish, it wouldn't make his son Jewish by birth. There are a couple media references saying that Torres Puello is a Jewish convert, but I've not seen any genuine documented source on that. If it is true, when did he convert and who did he convert under? Nobody has come forward to claim him.

We only "know" Torres Puello is Jewish because (1) he says he's Jewish and (2) he wears a kippah and talit. I have a talit. Does that make me a Jewish man?

When Did Jorge Torres Puello "Become" Jewish?
We know from various sources including Puello's mother Ana (Solead) Puello that her son skipped around a lot: the US, DR, Puerto Rico, El Salvador and Canada. (There are now sketchy reports that he spent 18 months in a Canadian jail waiting for extradition to the US and was finally released). Puello and his mother further claim that he spent a year in jail in 1998 for handling funds from drug trafficking (he denies the drug charge) and was jailed briefly between 2001-2002 for a parole violation. I don't know about the 1998 or Canadian raps, but the 2001-2002 time was not a parole violation,. He pled guilty to attempting to negotiate a stolen Treasury check for $66,000 in Philadelphia using the name George Boyd, Jr.,verified in the February 1-15, 1999 Fraud Awareness Newsletter and his failed appeal for sentence reduction before the 3rd District Federal Court of Appeals.

To makes things more curious, according to CNN (above link):

both his mother and Torres Puello say he served briefly in the U.S. Army in a military intelligence unit, and Torres Puello said he also worked undercover with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

Given Torres Puello's penchant for lies and quick change identities, I have my doubts this is true. But if it is, that could explain his relationship with fellow trafficker Pablo Nasser (how would a cheap con artist and common criminal like Torres Puello meet up with the Deputy Director of Immigration?) and open up a whole lotta mess for a whole lotta people.

We know that Torres Puello lived with his first wife Valerie in Plantation, Florida, and that after his 2005 common law marriage to second wife Ana Rameriz, lived in Puerto Rico. He seems, in fact, to have had several "legal addresses" in the last few years, and judging from the picture of his La Liberdad home, he wasn't hurting for cash.

Harry Ezratty places Torres Puello, aka Jorge Yoram Torres, in Santo Domingo in 2005, where he self-identified as an American Orthodox Jew and ran an internet cafe, though that is information probably furnished to Ezratty by Puello Torres. I have no practical way to research the alleged business.

We know that Torres Puello founded the DR Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Community in 2007, the Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Council of El Salvador in 2008, and the for-profit Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Council of America in Florida in 2009, ostensibly to establish synagogues, perform religious marriages, conversion, certify kosher slaughter, etc. If and what these organizations did is so far unknown.

We know that there is Internet speculation that Torres Puello used the Chabad network to move his traffick. The Awareness Center: International Jewish Center Against Sexual Abuse/Assault posted the following yesterday:

According to reliable sources Jorge Torres Orellana davens (prays) at the Chabad in the Dominican Republic.

No details were offered. Read Twelfth Bough's thoughts on the subject here. There are a couple entries.

We know that the DR's small Jewish community is distancing itself from Torres Puello, claiming they never heard of him.

All of these "knowns" bring up the question: Is Jorge Torres Puello really Jewish?

If Torres Puello were a devout Orthodox Jew (by birth or conversion; Dominican or American), wouldn't he have sought out the tiny Jewish community in Santo Domingo? Wouldn't he have attended Santo Domingo's Centro Israelita de Republica Dominicana? Or Chabad? That didn't happen. Or at least that's the official story. According to Dr. Ezratty :

Obviously being Jewish, it was inevitable that someone would approach him [Jorge Yoram Torres]. It wasn't one of the members of the island's two tiny Jewish communities, but a Dominican who claimed a crypto-Judaic heritage.

By October 2006 when Dr. Ezratty met Jorge Yoram Torres, he had established his Jewish creds and was supposedly "advising" up to 3000 Dominicans who were or believed they were of Crypto-Jewish heritage and holding Jewish services in his backyard. The day Ezratty arrived in the DR, so did a mohel from Brooklyn to perform a bris on Torres Puello's son. Clearly he'd established his "Jewishness" well before that date.

I can't imagine that Santo Domingo's Jewish population was unaware of these backyard activities or other claims and fabrications:

They [Torres Puello's "congreation"] rallied to purchase a building with a sanctuary, classrooms and dormitories for men and women so that they might observe the Sabbath without traveling. For Hanukah Torres successfully petitioned the government for permission to erect a huge menorah in one of Santo Domingo 's busiest intersections. Torres didn't stop there; he got the government to donate land for a synagogue, a Jewish cemetery and a Jewish hospital. A rabbi has consented to help bring them back to Judaism and possible aliyah to Israel .

Just like there is no Laura Silsby-built New Life Children's Refuge, there are no Torres Puello-built sanctuary, dorms, or schools. There is no Jewish hospital. There are only two Jewish cemeteries in DR, one in Santo Domingo and a small cemetery at the Sosua Community. Neither of them are new.

Wouldn't the Jewish community have acknowledged the sudden appearance of a giant menorah in downtown Santo Domingo courtesy of Torres Puello? And who is the rabbi who "consented to bring them back to Judiasm and possible aliah to Israel?"

Isaac Rudman, president of the Israelite Center of the Dominican Repubic told David Gauthier-Villars in the Wall Street Journal that Torres Puello, whom he met two or three years ago under the name Jorge Torres, had "grandoise plans to build a hospital and a Jewish city close to Santo Domingo's airport, but nothing came from these plans."

This recollection, coming from Rudman, a prominent member of Santo Domingo's Jewish community, suggests that other Jewish leaders were also aware of Torres Puello and were put off by his "conflictive" Messianic complex. Or they thought he was a phony or a nut. Or maybe they weren't so much. Rudman's comment calls into question Chabad Rabbi Shimon Pelman's (right) claim that he's never heard of Torres Pulleo, especially when it's been reported from a source the Awareness Network trusts, that Torres Puello davens at Chabad:

I don’t know any Jews by that name,” said Rabbi Shimon Pelman, head of the Chabad Lubavitch of the Dominican Republic. “The only Jews community in the Dominican Republic is the chabad community or the Centro Israelita community. I know everybody and he doesn’t exist.

Something is up. Maybe Pelman doesn't know any Jews named Torres Puello because Torres Puello isn't Jewish. Maybe it's cover your ass.

Given Torrres Puello's self-aggrandizement and grifterness (not to mention other worse behavior), I think there's a good argument that Torres Puello's Jewishness is just another scam. with or without a strategic purpose. (And if it is "real" it's a prop and still a scam.) Like putting on a new name or moving to a new country. It's about delusion, reinvention and money. Why would DR's 400 Jewish citizens need a Jewish city, or another school? Planting synagogues sounds a lot like evangelical work, not what Jews with rap sheets do. And what happened to Torres Pulleos "congregation"and members of the Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Community? Who are they? There is no indication that they've come forward to defend their "adviser." Did he try to scam them and they bolted? Or did he scam them and bolt to El Salvador with the loot? Or do they even exist? It's looking pretty much like Jorge is alone under that bus

The purpose of the Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Council of America (and I'm guessing the Puerto Rican, and Salvadoran organizations, which I can find no legal documents for, and the DR organization whose papers the New York Times has seen) is interesting because it seems charitable, though it is registered as a for-profit. The council would:

Represent the Sephardic Jewish communities in the Americas, and establish synagogues and performing religious marriages, conversion, kosher certification, Rabbi appointment and kosher supervisors, arbitration and mediation services.

It sounds like the "grandoise plan" for the Jewish city was getting a paper makeover to look legit and rake in the dough. Or something. Why was Torres Puello incorporating in Florida while allegedly running an international sex trafficking outfit is anybody's guess. Maybe he was building cover and if so why? Sex trafficking or something bigger? Maybe he suffers from multiple personality disorder. Maybe he's stupid. Maybe all of them.

A couple of small points
One of my anonymous posters on the Daily Bastardette points out that on the now defunct Puello Real Estate, (cache) the Besiyata Dismaya is misplaced; though I think this could be a computer problem:

Besiyata Dismaya," the Sephardic/ Aramaic version of "Bet Hay/ B'ezrat Hashem" (with the help of G-d) is supposed to be on the upper right hand corner of the page. It precedes any written or printed word. His web page has it in the wrong place. Not a biggie, but an observant Jew with an Orthodox education would know that.

Also, would a devout Orthodox Jew have a common law wife? I thought the Talmud forbade that or at least greatly frowned on it.

Who's scrubbing wiki:
Somebody has been busy scrubbing references to Jorge Torres Puello off of wiki. As I noted Sunday, the reference to "Jorge Yoram Torres" disappeared in midstream on the wiki entry for "Luis de Torres." Now, he's gone from wiki's "History of the Jews in El Salvador." The Sephardic Orthodox Council of North America has gone missing from "History of The Jews in the Dominican Republic"

As of this writing:

Wiki caches referencing Torres Puello on "History of Jews in the Dominican Republic," "Spanish and Portuguese Jews," and "Luis de Torres" are wiped clean.

Jorge Yoram Torres, remains in this cache from "Spanish and Potuguese Jews" under the "Other permanent personalities" list.

The reference to The Sephardic Jewish Orthodox Council of El Salvador remains on the Spanish and Portuguese page.

I don't have time right now to try to figure out who's cleaning up Jorge's mess.

******

Jorge Torres Puello is a creature of his own creation, reinvention, and destruction. The question of his religion is irrelevant and a distraction from the real issue: the trafficking of women and children for sex, servitude, and adoption and the part he plays in the Silsby setup. (Nothing turns on a Baptist woman more than trying to convert a Jewish man). But it is also relevant, if he is using his "religion" to con rip-off and exploit his victims, co-religionists, and the rest of us, and is using a corrupt network to move his "goods." If he is indeed using the Chabad network to smuggle people, (I just don't see enough evidence right now, but I am convinced there are many layers of corruption here, it it can get legs) then we are sitting on a big big story that goes deep into all kinds of governments and black ops. Torres Puello's alleged work with the DEA and Homeland Security, if true, puts a whole new spin on things that leaves the Silsby Gang in the dust.

I don't believe for one moment that Torres Puello is Jewish. But I do believe he is quite capable of "being Jewish," (like someone is capable of being Catholic or being Norwegian); that is, deconstructing an identity and building a new persona for a big haul. It's play acting. It's fun. Why he would pick Judiasm, I have no idea, but as another commenter pointed out tonight, "Perhaps he passed his time in jail reading about Judaism, and decided to grow a beard and buy some Kippot/ Yamelkahs to assume a new identity." I was thinking that myself. I know someone who did that in prison, only he actually converted and became a huge pain.

Whatever is going on is messy. It's about money. And it reeks.

Who is Jorge Puello? part 2: Jumping Down the Rabbit Hole

2010-02-14T15:42:00.002-05:00

INTERPOL: WANTED
JORGE TORRES ORELLANA (Jorge Pulleo)
CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN, PEOPLE SMUGGLING, TRAFFICKING & ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Thanks to everyone commenting and sending tips. They are tremendously helpful. Tomorrow I plan to sit down and go through them carefully. "Plan" being the operative word. The way the story is moving it won't surprise me if Jorge Puello is picked up in Andorra by then. In the meantime, it's impossible to keep up and comment cogently on breaking Puello events. The best way is to break the story into chunks, although with so much new news, old news gets tossed aside, at least for now.

Today I'm writing about Jorge Puello. Next, unless something big breaks, I'll give an update on the New Lifers.

*****

On February 11, 2010 ((New York Times) we first learned that New Life Children's Refuge "legal adviser" Jorge Puello, may not be who he claimed to be. As I determined earlier, and the New York Times verified, Puello is not a licensed lawyer in the Dominican Republic. In fact, he's not a lawyer anywhere. How Puello became the group's "legal adviser" is still unknown. Updates on that situation will appear in another entry.

The article said Jorge Callegas, head of the Salvadoran Border Police, told the Times that he was investigating accusations that a man with a Dominican passport under the name Jorge Anibal Torres Puello, worked a human trafficking ring that recruited women and underage girls to El Salvador with the promise of legitimate work. They were then sold into prostitution there and in Nicaragua, and DR. The sex ring was broken up when three prisoners, 14, 15, and 16 escaped from the house and went to police to report they had been forced to pose naked to promote the sex business. Multiple passports were found in the house, including one in the name of Jorge Torres Orellana.

Callegas, after seeing pictures of "legal adviser" Jorge Puello on television in Haiti, believed that "Jorge Puello" and "Jorge Anibal Torres Puello" and "Jorge Torres Orellana" were the same man. A February 12, article in The New York Times gave a few more details about the case, saying that suspect Puello had worked the ring with Ana Josefa Galbarina Ramierz Orellana, identified elsewhere as suspect Puello's Salvadoran common-law wife. Ramierz Orellana (currently in jail) and Pablo Nasser, (right) former deputy director of the Salvadoran Immigration Service. Last April, just before his arrest, Nasser attended a course on fraudulent document detection sponsored by the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE) in collaboration with the Forensic Document Laboratory of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE/Homeland Security) and the Salvadoran government. This opens a new set of questions and issues, which need to be discussed, but not in this entry.

In response to the first Times article, "legal adviser" Puello claimed to know nothing about "Jorge Anibal Torres Puello" saying his full name is "Jorge Puello" (no middle name) and he'd been born in Yonkers (Westchester County), New York to a Dominican mother. Incredibly he claimed to have no passport. "In a subsequent interview he told the Times that his full name is "Jorge Aaron Bentath Puello" and he is president of the Sephardic Jewish Community in DR. Documents connected to that Sephardic community were found in the house where traffickers held the young women. The February 13 Times reported that Dominican records filed on November 1, 2007 indicate that the Sephardic Jewish Community is registered to Jorge Anibal Torres Puello. I have not been able to confirm that.

*****

The Miami Herald (February 14--registratation may be required), scored an exclusive interview with Torre Puello's mother Ana Puello and stepfather Franko Ceminara who live on the outskirts of Santo Domingo. They confimed that Jorge Puello is the Salvadoran trafficking suspect, though deny he would ever hurt a child. Cerminara says he accompanied his stepson to the jail where the New Lifers were held to bring them food and medication Neither know how Torres Puello became involved with Laura Silsby and her crew.

Ana Puello told the Herald that her son was born in Yonkers, but was reared, mostly by his grandmother, in Santo Domingo. He moved to Miami as a teenager. In 1998, under the name Jorge Torres alias George Boyd, Jr, he was indicted for bank fraud in Philadelphia. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison, 6 months in a halfway house, 5 years probation and a $5000 fine after pleading guilty to attempting to negotiate a stolen $66,0000 US Treasury check. He appealed his sentence unsuccessfully. Like the current trafficking case, he was ID'd through video surveillance, fingerprint analysis, and positive witness identification. He was released on January 10, 2002 after Franko Cerminara went to the US to testify on his behalf. It is unclear why, but the US Marshal's Service issued a warrant for his arrest 10 months after his release, and he is currently on their fugitive list according to the Herald.

Torres Puello, has been married twice his mother says. He and his first wife Valerie lived in Plantation, Florida. In 2005, he married Ana Rameriz, who already had several children. He lived with her in Puerto Rico, possibly Canada, and then back to Santo Domingo where he bought a house with a pool. He reportedly attended law classes in 2000 and 2007, but dropped out.

Thanks to some super sleuthing by one of my "anon" commenters we can trace some of Torres Puello's activities in Santo Domingo. Go to Who is Jorge Puello? comment # 11 on my Daily Bastardette site. Through some whois research we find that the Puello Consulting phone number is linked to Puello Real Estate with Jorge listed as a real estate agent and his cousin (earlier identified as brother) Alejandro, as an attorney. As "anon" points out, Jorge sells cheap phone cards, too

Today when I typed in Puello Consulting's land line I got an ad for a 2000 Toyota Raum Jorge is selling for RD205,000, about $5700. The ad was placed on January 21, 2010, the day before Silsby & Co left for Haiti.

******

Having recently read a book about Crypto-Jews, I was curious about Puello Torre's claim to be a Sephardic Jew. Puello is not a Crypto-Jewish name, though Torres is. The problem is that the name Torres only came up a couple days ago when the scandal hit.

The Jewish population of DR is about 400 according to wiki, though there may be thousands of Crypto-Jews some of whom know their origins and follow at least some Jewish traditions and others who do not. There are three synagogues in DR, two in Santo Domingo: Centro Israelita de Republica Dominicana and a Chabad outreach center. The third is the Sousua Community (below right) located in Puerta Plata, which includes a Sephardic Beit Midrash dedicated to instruction of classical Hebrew, the Spanish-Portuguese rite, and teaching of Jewish Law. Sousua is, depending on which side of town you're on, between 4.5 and 9 miles miles (about a 10 minute drive) from Cabarete, the location of the to-be-built New Life Children's Refuge.

When the Miami Herald asked Dominican Jewish leaders about Torres Puello they claimed ignorance:

While Torres Puello has been telling reporters during recent interviews that he is convert to Judaism and is president of the Sephardic Jewish Community in the Dominican Republic, several Jewish leaders say they have never heard of him.

``I don't know any Jews by that name,'' said Rabbi Shimon Pelman, head of the Chabad Lubavitch of the Dominican Republic.

``The only Jewish community in the Dominican Republic is the chabad community or the Centro Israelita community. I know everybody, and he doesn't exist.''

Interesting.

In Fall 2007, The Society for Crypto Judiac Studies published an article on DR Crypto-Jews Visiting Anusim in the Dominican Republic. Anuism refers to Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity, but secretly kept their traditions. The article was written by Harry A. Ezratty, a Baltimore attorney and prominent scholar and historian of Jews in the US, Central America and the Caribbean. Ezratty lived in Puerto Rico for 25 years and is fluent in Spanish. A man using the name Jorge Yoram Torres--clearly our Jorge Torres Puello-- is central to the article, and many of the things we now know about Torres Puello are included in the article. (My emphasis):

When Jorge Yoram Torres moved to the city of Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, he never dreamed he would become the founder of the largest congregation on that island. Born in Westchester County , New York , he has lived in Puerto Rico and Canada. A young Orthodox Jew, Torres sports a beard, a kippah, and the fringes of his dangle outside his shirt. His Spanish is perfect. In 2005, Torres opened an internet café in Santo Domingo, offering credit card and long distance calls, fax facilities and a sales office for cell phones.

Obviously Jewish, it was inevitable that someone would approach him. It wasn't one of the members of the island's two tiny Jewish communities, but a Dominican who claimed a crypto-Judaic heritage. What Torres discovered amazed him. A large group of Dominicans had been meeting for over 25 years, studying Torah weekly. Many claimed Jewish roots.

For over two and a half decades, they had no serious contact with Jews until they met Jorge Torres. Their leaders had made overtures to Santo Domingo 's Jewish community for assistance but were rebuffed. Now they were asking Torres for help. He went to Kulanu, an organization that assists “out of the way” Jewish communities. Jack Zeller, Kulanu's coordinator, called me and asked me to visit with the group and report on what I found.

I arrived at Las Americas airport in October, 2006, and was greeted by Torres and several enthusiastic members of the community. My trip involved a mitzvah , as it coincided with the Brit Millah of Jorge's son, which I attended. Torres contacted a mohel from Brooklyn , New York. who would also be arriving that day to perform the service. It was an auspicious event for the members of this community who had never seen or attended a circumcision. What I discovered was that this group was made up of about 3,000 dedicated members, some of whom alleged a crypto-Judaic background. Because of time restraints, I was only able to interview a dozen or so persons. Those I did speak with claimed that one quarter to a third of them are descendants of early colonial Jews. I heard the classical stories of grandparents and parents telling them that they were Jews or that there were odd rituals of candle lighting Friday nights or refraining from eating on certain days. I was not there to determine the veracity of their claims but to make recommendations on how they might be helped. I alerted Stanley Hordes and Seth Kunin, who are studying crypto Jews in the Caribbean islands once belonging to the Spanish Empire. They are now weeding out the claims and performing the necessary detective work to discover the true backgrounds of any Dominican anusim...

and

...This group has a remarkable history. For the past 25 years, they have met on the Shabbat, reading from the only version of the Torah available to them: just one precious book written in Spanish and containing the Five Books of Moses. It has been lovingly circulated amongst the community's leaders. Taken home by one of them weekly, the Book then studied and used by that person as he led the group for his appointed week. With no Jewish guidance as to the established meanings of the passages, the community followed the Bible literally as they understood it. For Passover they took a lamb into the woods and slaughtered it, kosher style.

When they met Torres their lives began to change. He held Rosh Ha Shonah services in the spacious courtyard of his home. They rallied to purchase a building with a sanctuary, classrooms and dormitories for men and women so that they might observe the Sabbath without traveling. For Hanukah, Torres successfully petitioned the government for permission to erect a huge menorah in one of Santo Domingo 's busiest intersections. Torres didn't stop there; he got the government to donate land for a synagogue, a Jewish cemetery and a Jewish hospital. A rabbi has consented to help bring them back to Judaism and possible aliyah to Israel .

NOTE: Hordes and Kunin are leading Crypto Judiac scholars. Hordes published The Sephardic Legacy in the Spanish Caribbean: Crypto-Jewish Settlement in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Jamica in the Spring 2009 premiere issue of Crypto Jewish Journal.
The article is not online.

I admit that I don't understand the politics of the DR Jewish and Crypto-Jewish community Of course, Torres Puello, who seems to be a talented con artist, could have been blowing smoke at Ezratty. Ezratty, however, met some people who considered Torres a "leader," participated in events, and was impressed enough with him and his "congregation" to write about him, recommend him to Hordes and Kunin, and send a positive report back to Zeller, although I have found no reference to Torres Puello on the Kalanu webpage. I have found no reference, either, to a menorah in downtown Santo Domingo. Was Ezaratty sold a bill of goods? Maybe

But, there are other references to Torres Puello showing he may not be as invisible as the DR Jewish community would like him to be:

The February 14, 2010 Wall Street Journal, offers this tidbit, which almost makes Torres Puello feel like Laura Silsby's soulmate, and ties back to what Ezratty wrote:

Isaac Rudman, the president of the Israelite Center of the Dominican Republic, said he once met Mr. Puello two or three years back. At the time, Mr. Puello introduced himself as Jorge Torres, and had a letter of introduction from a synagogue in Canada, Mr. Rudman said.

Mr. Rudman said he heard over the years that Mr. Puello had grandiose plans to build a hospital and a Jewish city close to Santo Domingo's airport, but nothing came from these plans.

Mr. Rudman's impression from his one meeting with Mr. Puello was that he was very "conflictive," he said. "His attitude was 'the Messiah has arrived'" said Mr. Rudman.

Wiki, due to its open source, can be vulnerable to Torres Puello's charms. Jorge Yoram Torres, for instance, made an appearance in El Salvador with History of Jews in El Salvador:

During the civil war many Jews left the country. The Comunidad Israelita de El Salvador was established in 1944 with a Jewish community center opening in 1945 and a synagogue in 1950 and in 2008 the Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Council of America and the Sephardic Jewish Community is founded by Jorge Yoram Torres.

Jorge Yoram Torres also showed up in Puerto Rico in the wiki biography of Luis de Torres , probably born Yosef Ben Ha Levy Haivri. de Torres traveled on Columbus's first expedition. possiibly against his will. He is considered the first Jew to settle in the New World:

In the Bahamas there are two synagogues that bear the name of "Luis de Torres."

Luis de Torres, ended his days as he was called Borinquen Pierto Rico, near a town called Lares, which bears a name from the letter Reish The name is thought to have been given one of his students of languages. Today the descendants of the second marriage of Don Luis de Torres as he was known, are in this town of Puerto Rico, Don George Torres and his son Don Jorge "Yoram" Torres and their direct descendants.

I printed out the above entry at 11:45 PM, February 13, 2010. By 6:04 AM on February 14, 2010 , when I went to pick up the link, those those paragraphs had mysteriously disappeared.

******

On March 16, 2009 Jorge Torres. Jr. filed papers with the Florida Secretary of State to incorporate the for-profit Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Council of America, Inc. Torres is listed as registered agent and president, Ana Ramirez vice president, and Ester Orellana treasurer. All three have Linkedin pages, but little information on them.. There are possible links to other corporatons, but that will take awhile to track down, so I'm skipping that for now.

The corporration submits its purpose as:

Represent[ing]the Sephardic Jewish comunities in the Americas, and establing synagoges and performing religious marriages, conversion, kosher certification, Rabbi appointment and kosher supervisors, arbitration and mediation services.

The principal address is listed in Doral, Florida and the mailing address is in the Bosques de Lourdes section of la Liberdad, El Salvador. It appears to be the house where the young women were held captive (left)

"Jorge Yoran Torres -President of the Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Council of America and B'nei Anusim advocate" appears on numerous Jewish websites in what appears to be lifted--again-- from wiki. Included in these very long entries is a directory of Sephardic synagogues around the world. There is no listing for the Dominican Republic but we find this for El Salvador:

Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Council of Salvador "Shearit Israel" (2008)

http://sephardicjews.org; http://www.kosheresavaldor.com (neither of which work)

the only orthodox synagogue in El Salvador

But there's a problem. There is only one synagogue in the whole country, and it's not the Orthodox Council.

******

Jorge Torres Puello, like Laura Silsby, is a self-promotor, a narcissist, a reinventor, and a liar. He is a sex trafficker. She is an adoption trafficker. Both compartmentalize their lives with religion and corruption. Both commodify children and women.. Both believe that they are above the law. I honestly can't imagine why Torres Pulleo positioned himself in the middle of an international incident pretending to be a lawyer, especially with the voice-in-my heads from Central Valley Baptist Church and their brain inept leader. And why would the CVBC christo-colonials take Torres Puello's word sight unseen? A gift from God, no doubt. But, then, everything about this case is crazy.

There is growing evidence the Torres Pulleo had no prior relationship with most of the detainees. I am not convinced of Laura Sisby, though. There are, in fact, still many areas to look in to outside of Silsby. One should be the relationship between Puelleo and sex tourist real estate and rental agents. Another is a possible link between Torres Puello and CIA trafficking. How far has the sex ring investigation gone? Trafficking demands more than three players. And of course, what was Puello up to, whether he knew Laura Silsby before or after.

EVIDENCE GROWS AGAINST JORGE PUELLO; RELEASE OF KIDJACKERS MAY BE DELAYED

2010-02-13T05:03:00.000-05:00

Big news popping out of DR tonight.

The New York Times reports a growing amount of evidence to connect New Life Children's Refuge "legal adviser" Jorge Puello to a sex trafficking ring operating in El Salvador. The trafficking suspect, who police believe is Puello, worked with Pablo Nasser, the former deputy director of the Salvadoran Immigration Service to lure foreign girls and women into the country and sell them into prostitution.

The latest break comes from two sources: (1) photographs that appear to match Puello and the trafficking suspect and (2) public and court records linking Puello to a Florida address that is tied to the suspect.

Hey, I thought Jorge didn't have a passport!

Here's what the Times says:

The Salvadoran police asked their Dominican counterparts on Friday to arrest Mr. Puello. “Dominican authorities should proceed to detain him,” said Augusto Cotto, deputy director of investigations for the Salvadoran police. “If the fingerprints coincide, we’d begin the process to try to bring him to El Salvador.”

Eric Álvarez, a spokesman for the Salvadoran chief prosecutor’s office, said Friday that judicial officials had determined that photographs of Mr. Puello in Haiti matched those of the suspect wanted in El Salvador.

and

Asked about his identity [by police] Mr. Puello said that he had been married to Valerie Velasquez and that their home address in the United States had been in Plantation, Fla. Public documents and court records seem to tie, by name and birth date, Mr. Puello and the Florida street address to the suspect in the Salvadoran case.

Just for fun, I ran an Intellius search for Jorge and Valerie and found them in Plantation. Of course, the police, which I'm not, used something better than that. I have been unable to find a home address for Jorge or his brother Alejandro in Dominican online phone books.

The new revelations may keep the New Lifers in their cells for awhile. Judge Saint-Vil was expected to order some kind of release on Monday, but he has made clear that he wants the Puello situation settled before he does anything:

Judge Saint-Vil said he had no choice but to delay the group’s release until he knew more about Mr. Puello’s identity, any ties he might have to trafficking and what, if anything, the Americans knew about him...

...“I am working as fast as I can,” Judge Saint-Vil said. “But I must first understand Mr. Puello.”

The judge said an official from the American Embassy had called him Thursday night and asked for any information the judge had about Mr. Puello. He said the embassy would provide him on Monday with whatever additional information it was able to find about Mr. Puello.

Three days is an awfully short time to make a determination on the "good intentions" of the child lifters in light of Puello's suspected vocation. No decision should be made until the prints are made or other compelling evidence presented. If the prints match, then I think the "good intentions" of most or all of the New Lifers is gonna deep six., though no doubt they'll argue they were duped and innocent souls just going about God's orphan work.

I've got more to say about this, but it's nearly 5 in the morning and I'm going to bed.

But two more things:

As an addenda to my previous blog about who "hired" Puello to "advise" the New Lifers, we have this from the New York Times now:

Asked about the judge’s decision to delay the Americans’ release, Louis Gary Lissade, a lawyer for one detainee, voiced frustration. “My client never chose Mr. Puello,” said Mr. Lissade, a former Haitian minister of justice who represents Jim Allen. “In fact, I don’t even know whether anyone chose Mr. Puello to represent the group.”

Which again, brings up the question: why did Puello approach the Idaho families and offer his services? Did he already have an in with some of them, particularly Sean Lankford, whose daughter Charisa had traveled to DR and Haiti several times with Laura Silsby and may have known him from previous trips? Was it a cover for his own role in the kidjacking? Did he think he'd make a nifty bundle from the church folks who saw Puello as God's unfolding in their lives?

Finally, for a good read on the case from a non-adoption angle check out Twelfth Bough who has an intriguing theory that Puello, who claimed to be "president of the Sephardic community" in DR, was running people through Chabad. I have to mull that over a bit.

Jorge Puello: Not a lawyer after all

2010-02-13T01:57:00.005-05:00

For my initial report on Jorge Puello, please go directly below this entry.

The Associated Press and CBS News reported Friday afternoon that Jorge Puello, "legal adviser" to the New Life adoption traffickers, as suspected, has no license to practice law in The Dominican Republic. AP reporter Frank Bajak writes:

Jorge Puello, who has been a high-profile advocate for the American Baptists as they navigate the Haitian justice system, is in apparent violation of Dominican law for failing to register with the local bar association or obtain a license, said Jose Parra, vice president of the Dominican Lawyers Association.

Parra said his organization was still investigating the situation and might file a complaint with the Justice Department, which could pursue criminal charges.

Last night I asked some questions about Puello's relationship to CVBC and Laura Silisby. I was particularly interested in whether Puello and Silsby had a pre-quake relationship (about what?) which would have greased the way for Puello to slide in and "advise" the prisoners, their families, and their churches.

We now have this small statement from Sean Lankford, whose wife Corinna and daughter Nichole are being held in Haiti, which suggests that either the folks in Idaho are just plumb dumb or that they had reason to trust Puello, sight unseen. (my emphasis).

Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and daughter are among those detained, said Puello provided his services for free.

"He's really shown himself to be completely trustworthy, and I truly believe he has done everything to help our people and to help us," he said in a telephone interview from Idaho.

Lankford said Puello contacted relatives of the Americans to volunteer his services.

This contradicts Thursday's Times report:

But other lawyers for the detainees said that the families had wired Mr. Puello $12,000 to pay for the Americans’ transportation out of Haiti if they were released, and that they had been told by Mr. Puello in a conference call late Tuesday that he needed an additional $36,000. Mr. Puello said that he had not participated in a conference call.

While the names of "other lawyers" (i.e., real lawyers) went unmentioned, they are attorneys from the pro bono Christian advocacy organization Liberty Legal Institute headquartered in Plano, Texas and WilmerHale, the K-Street multinational firm Liberty Legal signed up to spring Amarillo contractor Jim Allen and probably Allen's inlaws, Eastside Baptist Church pastor Paul Thompson and Silas "Buck" Thompson."

The Dream Team is (co)headed by Reginald J. Brown, (right) Vice Chair of the firm's Public Policy and Strategy Group. Brown has a long list of very high profile government and multinational clients, is a former board member of Hewlett-Packard (them again!) and is a former special assistant to George W. Bush. The other co-leader is WilmerHale partner Jennifer O'Connor, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the United States Department of Labor under the first Bush, and former special assistant to Bill Clinton. Allen's attorneys have issued a statement that Puello does not represent Allen. I hope to write more about Liberty Legal, Jim Allen, and his attorneys this weekend.

These are not lawyers to be trifled with, and Puello is a trifle.

It looks like he's laying low--hiding out from Interpol who has a warrant on him, the Salvadoran National Police who want his fingerprints, and Judge Bernard Saint-Vil who's investigating him. Oh, and Homeland Security is looking into him. The Idaho folks must be having cats the size of mastodons.

The Puello Consultation website has been taken down. When the AP attempted to contact him yesterday:

...Puello declined to comment in a brief telephone interview, saying he would be busy in court representing a U.S. firm seeking to establish a business in the Dominican Republic. He could not be located in court and did not return later phone calls.

An emotional Puello, did, however, give a short and bizarre interview earlier in the day with ABC News denying that he had done anything wrong An incurious ABC news gatherer (or to be nice, maybe a news editor cut the meat out, but we doubt it) reports the following:

But Jorge Puello denies any wrong doing and told us one reason he took the missionaries' case is because he knows what it's like to be falsely accused.

"If I had somebody that would have done what I did for them, I would not be in this big mess that I have for past years. So that's why this case touch me.

What is he talking about? Puello was only "falsely accused" after he took the missionaries' case, or else he's been "falsely accused" before. And if so, when and what for? Or maybe he's a time traveler.

Ed Murrow must be spinning out of control.

Addeenda:

Who is Jorge Puello?

2010-02-12T04:30:00.012-05:00

I've been curious about Jorge Puello since his name appeared about 10 days ago as the legal adviser for the New Lifers. Puello made a big splat on CNN when he complained about the severe conditions under which his clients were jailed: "No air conditioning! No Electricity! Very disturbing!"

According to news reports Puello was hired by Laura Silby's church, Central Valley Baptist, after either the church or Laura Silsby and her gang rejected the attorney (or attorneys) recommended by American Consular Services. Puello, in turn, hired Haitian attorney Edwin Coq to represent the detainees, even though Coq speaks Creole and no English. What to make of that nonsense?

Last week, according to whose story you believe, Puello fired Coq, claiming that the Haitian had demanded a $60,000 fee and attempted to bribe the prisoners back to the US. Coq denied the accusation, and said he quit because the families back in Idaho never sent him the $60,000 he needed to take the case. Sources inside of Haiti who know Coq claim that he is an "honest young lawyer" and refused to believe Puello's claim. Coq has complained to the press that Puello has ruined his reputation.

Over the weekend I spent quite a bit of time looking for information on Jorge Puello. I could find no listing for him as a Dominican attorney. What I did find was Puello Consulting/Abogados Consultores, operated by Jorge Puello and his brother Alejandro, located at Avenida Duarte 359, in Santo Domingo.

The company's webpage, describes the firm:

Puello Consulting is a Firm of Attorneys, Notaries & Business Consultants that renders full legal services specialized in commercial, corporate and business fields providing the counseling with the “legal insight with business instinct” required for individuals and companies decision makers in the Dominican Republic or in other countries with Law Firms correspondents.

Established in 2005, has earned a solid reputation in successfully offering personalized professional services of the highest quality with a winning attitude and determination for customer satisfaction which has distinguished us in the legal and business marketplace.

This intro is followed by a long laundry list of legal services: including acquisitions, mergers and alliances, banking and finance, consumer protection and antitrust, corporate services, collections, family law, immigration and naturalization, intellectual property, trade, investment, taxes, public and private contracting, real estate, and trust.

Not a word about criminal law--domestic or international. And no word anywhere of how CVBC hooked up with Puello, and why it would hire what appears to be a civil law outsourcer with no criminal law section to take on a high profile international incident. It only got curiouser and curiouser with the hiring of Coq and the dust-up that followed.

Bernard Saint-Vil, the presiding judge in the New Life case, is curious, too. According to the February 11, 2010 New York Times, he plans to open an inquiry into Puello's activities after learning that police in El Salvador are investigating whether Puello heads a trafficking ring involving Central American and Caribbean women and girls.

Picking up from the NYT:

The head of the Salvadoran border police, Commissioner Jorge Callejas, said in a telephone interview that he was investigating accusations that a man with a Dominican passport that identified him as Jorge Anibal Torres Puello led a human trafficking ring that recruited Dominican women and under-age Nicaraguan girls by offering them jobs and then putting them to work as prostitutes in El Salvador.

Mr. Puello said he did not even have a passport. When Mr. Callejas was shown a photograph taken in Haiti of Mr. Puello, Mr. Callejas said he thought it showed the man he was seeking. He said he would try to arrest Mr. Puello on suspicion of luring women into prostitution and taking explicit photographs of them that were then posted on Internet sites. “It’s him, the same beard and face,” Mr. Callejas said in an interview on Thursday. “It has to be him.”

Judge Saint-Vil also said he thought that the photo of the trafficking suspect in a Salvadoran police file appeared to be the same man he had met in court. He said he intended to begin his own investigation into whether a trafficking suspect had been working with the Americans detained in Haiti.

“I was skeptical of him because he arrived with four bodyguards, and I have never seen that from a lawyer,” the judge said in an interview. “I plan to get to the bottom of this right away.”

The judge said he would request assistance from the Department of Homeland Security to look into Mr. Puello’s background. A spokesman for the department said American officials were playing a supporting role in the investigation surrounding the Americans, providing “investigative support as requested.”

That Puello, has no passport is an odd circumstance for a man who claims to have a large law practice with international commercial clients. In fact, there is some doubt if Puello is actually a lawyer. The NYT, verifying my own research, says that records in the College of Lawyers in the DR has no one with his name listed.

Again from the article:

Mr. Puello said he had a law license and was part of a 45-member law firm. But his office in Santo Domingo turned out to be a humble place, which could not possibly fit 45 lawyers. Mr. Puello’s brother Alejandro said that the firm had another office in the central business district, but he declined to provide an address. (NOTE: the article does not say if the "humble office" was located at Duarte or another location)

Mr. Puello said in the interview that he had been representing the Americans free of charge because he was a religious man who commiserated with their situation. “I’m president of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Dominican Republic,” he said. “I help people in this kind of situation. We’re not going to charge these people a dime.”

But other lawyers for the detainees said that the families had wired Mr. Puello $12,000 to pay for the Americans’ transportation out of Haiti if they were released, and that they had been told by Mr. Puello in a conference call late Tuesday that he needed an additional $36,000. Mr. Puello said that he had not participated in a conference call.

Even if Puello is found to be the wrong man in the Salvadoran investigation, there are still questions:

Is Jorge Puello a lawyer?

Why did Central Valley Baptist Church reject consular recommendations and hire what appears to be a outsourcer with seeingly no criminal expertise to defend its members?

Why did Puello hire a Haitian lawyer who couldn't communicate in any meaningful way with his clients and then accuse the lawyer of attempting to bribe the court,

Did Puello and Laura Silsby have a legal or personal pre-earthquake relationship, which led CVBC to hire him as legal adviser; possibly a relationship regarding the leasing of the Puerto Plata Diocese-owned Education and Training Center in Cabarete that was to be converted into the temporary New Life Children's Refuge?

Was Puello involved in the attempt to move the "orphans" across the border?

Why is Puello lying about being paid by the New Lifers? (And I believe he is lying)

Who is paying Puello and who is funding the defense?

And, if Puello is the right man:

Did he plan to traffick the children?

Or...

is this a simple matter of scavengers scavenging scavengers?

Haitians Release Interrogation Tape: Abductees cry for their mothers

2010-02-10T14:26:00.021-05:00

I'm working on another piece and won't comment on this right now. The video, released by Haitian authorities, shows them interrogating Silsby & Co. Many of the children are crying for their mothers and want to go home, while Laura Silsby tries to explain her "good intentions" Silsby, unlike, the public persona she has carefully crafted, is shaken. The article accompanying the video is here.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The page also features a February 5 CBS video of a "sincere" Silsby proclaiming the group meant no disrespect to the Haitian government and had done "nothing wrong." You may have already seen it, but it's worth archiving.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

On a sidenote, The Idaho Statesman this morning published more on Laura Silsby's financial your-check-is-in-the-mail woes. (Yes, there are more than what we already heard about!) Laura Silsby's business couldn't pay rent, taxes. BTW, the company's Better Business Bureau accreditation "expired" on February 4, 2010. No doubt!

And, how have I forgetten this? Personalshoppper.com was promising matching funds up to $50,000 for various children's and school projects. I can't get the URL to work as a direct link, but you can cut and paste this: http://www.personalshopper.com/jsp/kcl/what_others_are_saying.jsp

Laura Silsby: Loses her Grip on the Gang; Did the Con Get Conned?

2010-02-08T03:01:00.001-05:00

This is the first part of a 2-part blog, which was becoming too long for comfortable consumption. Part 1 is limited to the latest story coming out of Haiti on the break-up of Silsby's onsite New Lifers and allegations of attempted court bribery last week.

The Laura Silsby child lifting case just keeps getting stranger.

MSNBC reporter Kerry Sanders reported Saturday that one of Laura Silsby's "missionaries" slipped a note to his producer Don Wood during an off camera interview. Signed by eight of the 10 prisoners, the note said the detainees feared for their lives. And seemingly feared Silsby.

The 3 minute broadcast is below.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here are the relevant parts:

We fear for our lies here in Haiti. There is corruption and extortion.

Laura wants to control. We believe lying. We are afraid.

Please you must listen. We have no way to call. Court will not let us have a say about truth for us We only came as volunteers. We had nothing to do with any documents. We have been lied to.

******

The Associated Press picks it up from there, reporting Sunday morning (Feb. 7) that Edwin Coq, the Haitian lawyer representing the group in court last week, has been fired by Jorge Puello, the Dominican attorney retained by the detainees' relatives, after they rejected the lawyer recommended to them by US Consular Services.

Puello in turn, hired Coq to work the Haitian end. Puello, the guy who a few days ago complained to CNN about living conditions in the jail, claims (and what's left of the Haitian government isn't denying it so far) that Coq tried to bribe Silsby & Co out of jail and out of the country with $60,000 he'd requested from the families for his fee, even though he told the AP on Friday that he was taking no fee. (No mention on Puello's fee, if he has one).

In another story from CNN Sunday, Coq claims he was actually hired by Eric Thompson, husband of detainee Carla Thompson, and had quit the case, not been fired as Puello claimed.The London Sunday Telegraph reported that Coq was preparing to resign anyway because he had not received money promised him by the families of this clients.

Puello has a different story. He says:

Coq initially requested a $10,000 fee, but kept asking for bigger and bigger amounts. He said that when Coq reached $60,000, he said he (Coq) could guarantee it would lead to the Americans' release. Coq orchestrated "some kind of extortion with government officials" that would have led to the release of nine of the 10 missionaries...He had some people inside the court that asked him for money, and he was part of this scheme."

Despite Coq's earlier claim of pro bono work, he does not deny he had the money (or at least some of it) , now claiming it was his fee (that didn't exist on Friday), not a bribe.

I have worked for 10 people for four days working all hours. Look at what hour I'm working now responding to these calls. I have the right to this money.

The story gets more interesting since both Puello and Coq have thrown Silsby under her own bus. At the Friday hearing, pleading for provisional release of all but Silsby (bail where bond is not required, which would permit the prisoners to return to the States until trial), he told the court that in his opinion the nine had been well-intentioned but naive volunteers duped by their leader who had lied to them that she had the legal documents to transport the children to DR. Puello agrees that Silsby lied to everyone else. He seems to have little interest in defending her.

The God that failed. The bribe that failed.
The story is so confusing. Silsby is so slippery. The other defendants so ignorant. To make things more complicated, Coq speaks Creole and no English, and has been working with Silsby through interpreters whose language skills seen to be questionable. Thus, we have a story full of questions, inconsistencies, conjectures, and holes making it difficult to offer sane observations. So far, MSM has not investigated the bribery allegations, instead taking them at face value. I can't decide without more information, though I can easily see the the morally deficient Silsby trying to buy her way out of her jam--with somebody else's money

These are some of my random meandering thoughts from the last 24 hours. I keep running them around in my head. They tend to change, so tomorrow I may have a whole set of new observations and conjectures, especially if and when new information is released.

Why would the families or Puello hire an attorney who doesn't speak English or have decent translators? Surely there are better choices, even in the midst of Haiti's chaos. After all, Consular Services suggested a lawyer (who presumably spoke English). Why was this lawyer rejected?

Were funds transferred to Coq, and if so, how much?

Did Coq, in fact, have $60,000 in hand and did he want more? The report that he planned to resign from the case because he'd not received the funds promised suggests he didn't have the $60,00, the last amount the Puello mentioned, or that he wanted even more.

Were, in fact, bribes offered to the court, or is this just a lawyer smackdown? If so, how much was offered and to whom for what? Since the Haitian government with its history of corruption has much bigger things to worry about right now, I don't expect this to be pursued, unless it's linked to something bigger. The Haitian and US governments just want this to go away.

Was Laura Silsby aware of the bribe offer? As the "spokesperson" and self-appointed group herderm did she, in fact, suggest it under that self-made privilege she likes to throw around while the rest of the group sat on the floor singing praise songs? Reflecting on Silsby's murky financial history, lack of ethics in Idaho and Haiti, and her long failed history of rules-are-for-other-people lifestyle--what I call Silsby exceptionalism--it is almost inevitable that she would try to toss her trick bag stuffed with other people's money into a Haitian judiciary sinkhole and then credit God with their release--a release that only the delusional psychic grifter and her followers (maybe) could actually believe would happen. Though Silsby has complained she couldn't communicate well with Coq, would that prevent her from entangling him in her latest scheme through some other source?

If Coq offered a bribe independent of Silsby, did Silsby know about it at some point?

No matter where the bribe initiated, (if it did) did the other prisoners know about it? The group's specific reference to "Laura wants to control. We believe lying. We are afraid" tells me that they believe that Silsby not only lied about their rescue mission, but continues to lie to authorities and themselves; thus, putting them in some kind of danger. Would a failed bribe attempt (or rumor of attempt) fueled by their baby stealing plot be enough for them to fear retribution from people who didn't get the pay-off? Or do they actually fear Silsby?

If there was an attempted bribe, who dropped the dime on Coq?

Is Silsby expendable? Obviously she's the loony ringleader that can't stop mugging for the press, but beyond that, she offers no financial incentive to acquit. While the other nine have families to at least somehow support their attempt to repatriate Silsby has nothing but a foreclosed home, a failed business, lawsuits, a ruined reputation, and a lot of disillusioned churchies who won't be eager to donate to her defense fund.

Was the whole thing a con? Did the con get conned?

I am particularly struck by Silsby's performance (and this is indeed performance) before Friday's court appearance. News videos, some of which can be seen in the above video, show a blissed out Laura Silsby leaving for court, patronizing smile on her made-up face, explaining patiently to her dumbo audience, that God will set them all free. She and her crew, in fact, took their packed bags with them to court, expecting to fly out of Port au Prince later in the day. Was her confidence based on her incessant phone conversations in her head with God or did she believe throwing around money would make the problem--and them--go away? I've been around a lot of evangelicals and fundamentalists over the years, but I can't remember anyone this jazzed on her personal interpretation of God' will. The woman just isn't plugged in.

Instead of the walls of Jericho falling at God's proxy commando, the ten prisoners were officially charged with child abduction and criminal association and remanded to new jails: the men to the severely damaged national penitentiary (all the prisoners escaped after the earthquake); the women to a women's prison in Petionville. Since Haitian law is based on the Napoleonic Code, anyone charged is considered guilty until proven innocent. The court has up to three months to decide the next move.

Incredibly, after the bad news that they might sit in jail for another three months, Silsby, enjoying her 15 minutes of fame overtime, gave a thumbs up to the press, (see above with her nanny Carissa Coulter) telling the press, "I feel good. I'm trusting God." Two days later her "missionaries" sent their note: "Laura wants to control. We believe lying. We are afraid."

"It smelled like trafficking to me" -- US Orphanage Director on Silsby & Gang

2010-02-05T22:18:00.036-05:00

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 Children told CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker. "They had no paperwork. They had no authorization from the U.S. government, from the Haitian government, or from anyone involved. They were just taking kids. That fits right in with what I would classify as child trafficking."

We have heard stories that the team went orphanage to orphanage looking for children to collect for their mismanaged, ill-thought social experiment, but unless I missed it, this is the first time I've seen an American orphanage director and fellow missionary come forward publicly with his suspicions. I'm sure the interviews were longer than this, and I'd love to see them.

Also note in the opening of the video, Laura Silsby, when asked if she believed she owed the government of Haiti an apology, she says, she doesn't and goes on to say things are working out with God's help. This was before the was were remanded back to the slammer.

******

I am currently working on two new blogs, but am stuck with some fact checking. I hope to have one or both up soon.

CUB Statement on Haiti

2010-02-04T07:40:00.013-05:00

CUB: Concerned United Birthparents had issued a statement regarding Haiti. It is linked on the sidebar at the right under Organizational Statements. Here is an excerpt:

As the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its partners – including the Haitian Government and the Red Cross – establish safe spaces for the hundreds of thousands of children separated from their families before and after the earthquake, and begin to register all unaccompanied minors, CUB urges the governments of the U.S. and Haiti to halt any further airlifts of children or any new adoptions.

In addition, CUB urges that any groups with clear or potential conflicts of interest – such as adoption agencies and ministries – be removed from the decision-making process about how best to serve Haiti’s children. Humanitarian policies should be applied on a case-by-case basis for those children whose legal adoption had already been approved, and were in the process of being adopted, with the support of the latest and best practices in the field. “But,” Cullen says, “all other pending adoptions should be immediately suspended.”

Haitians living in the U.S. should get help to locate their youngest relatives on the island, and the transfer of any children with documented parents or family members in the U.S. should be expedited, for temporary or permanent placement.

Thanks, CUB!

In Their Own Voices:--New Lifers on a Mission for God and Adoption

2010-02-03T01:32:00.006-05:00

My original blog, from which this is taken, grew and grew, so I'm splitting it up. Part 1 is Laura Silsby, and Charisa Coulter and others in their own words. Part 2 are the voices and narratives of the children and parents exploited by the Idaho christo-suburbanites. If the blog continues to grow I'll split it some more.

Last night KTBV Boise aired an interview with Silsby. You can see the video and read the transcript here

Below are some excerpts from the interview which show clearly that Silsby still doesn't comprehend that she cannot just pick up kids off the street and ship them off to another country, even if God told her to do it. " (This audacious claim will be discussed in a later entry).

We came here to help the children who had no one else, children that kind of were on the streets or in orphanages that were not in line really for other types of aide.

and

Silsby called it all a mix-up and said the group is not guilty of any crime. We did have documents we had approval from the Dominican government to go over to, to take these children over to the Dominican Republic. We had we believe that we were getting conflicting information on what was required and we understood that Pastor Sandil wrote us a statement and then indicated that he...,"

This is from CNN, American Morning, CNN transcript, February 1, 2010:

LAURA SILSBY, DETAINED IN HAITI: We believe that we have been charged very falsely with trafficking, which, of course, that is the furthest possible extreme, because our hearts here, we literally all gave up everything we had, income and use of our own funds to come here and help these children.

CARLA THOMPSON, DETAINED IN HAITI: God is the one that called us to come here, and we just really believe that this was his purpose.

From CNN, For Haitian Parents Giving Kids to US Group Backfires Painfully, February 2, 2010

Haiti's government requires documentation stating approval for children to exit the country Silby acknowledged she had none.

From the New York Times, February 1, 2010, Case Stokes Haiti's Fear for children, and Itself:

Laura Silsby: "God wanted us to come here to help children, we are convinced of that."

and

"We intended to raise those children and be with them their entire lives, if necessary," she said, standing behind a door of thick metal bars in pedal pushers, sandals and a blouse printed with palm trees "These kind of children are sold across the border for the price of a chicken We wanted to give them lives of joy and dignity in God's love."

A records check, I made this evening, however shows that incorporation papers for New Life Children's Refuge were only filed with the Idaho Secretary of State on November 25, 2009, and that international adoption is the organization's mission. In part, the papers read:

A. ....The Corporation shall hold and manage funds for the establishment of a Children's Refuge designed to provide a loving Christian environment for abandoned and unwanted children. Plans include orphanages, schools, medical clinics, and villas for adopting parents. The Corporation plans to provide opportunities for adoption as well as a sound education for life skills...

New Life's Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission agenda, (which I'll write about in another blog) admits that it has no orphanage or any other facility outside of a rental hotel that God directed them to, but again, makes clear that its mission is international adoption:

Seaside Villas at Playa Magante: Villas for adopting parents to stay while fulfilling requirement for 60-90 day visit as well as Christian volunteers/vacationing families. Provide opportunities for adoption through partnership with New Life Adoption Foundation which works with adoption agencies in the U.S. to help facilitate adoptions and provide grants to subsidize the cost of adoption for loving Christian parents who would otherwise not be able to afford to adopt.”

But... there is no New Life Adoption Foundation registered with the Idaho Secretary of State. It is not listed as a licensed adoption agency in the state, and obviously is not an accredited international adoption agency with the US State Department. It is probably safe to say that now, it never will be accredited, if and when it rises from the rubble.

Adoptions to the US from the Dominican Republic are rare According to State Department figures, since 1998 there have been a little over 200. In 2009 there were 11. (link is a little wanky.) How the New Lifers thought, without accreditation, they were going to adopt out undocumented Haitian citizens from their group's DR hotel is one of the great mysteries only they--or God--an answer.

******

But there's more!

Earlier today the Associated Press posted a video of Charisa Coulter, VP of New Life Children's Refuge, guarded by two Haitian cops in a University of Miami field hospital, as she's treated for either severe dehydration or the flu. Lying in bed, she looks and sounds pretty miserable. IRL, Coulter is Laura Silsby's live-in nanny. The link is now gone. I did, however, copy down her short interview. Coulter told the AP:

I am really praying that we'll be able to take these kids out and we will be able to provide a safe and loving home for these kids who have nothing and the charges will be dropped and they'll be able to see our hearts.

Coulter's father, Mel Coulter, an Idaho Department of Transportation spokesperson, has gone to the press to build up sympathy for his daughter and her colleagues. "Outrageous" he declares of the charge that she and her nine companions attempted to traffick or kidnap 33 children."When you are called by God to do something, you cannot say no if you are truly committed to following him." (You can see a picture of Coulter at the hospital in this article.)

******

Now comes Jorge Puello, an onsite attorney retained to represent the alleged traffickers complaining in the CNN American Morning link above, that the prisoners are living under unsatisfactory conditions:

There is no air conditioning, to electricity. It is very disturbing.

No! Yes! Really!

Would I make this up? He really said this while tens of thousands of Haitians have been left with nothing, living in the streets, or are dead. I bet there's even some homeless Haitians who would would be thrilled to have a roof over their heads at the jail. I'm waiting for Puello to suggest that the suburbanite New Lifers, in deference to their specialness, be held in beach houses at Labadee with meals catered by Royal Caribbean International.

In a phone interview with Fox News' Greta van Susteren, Puello complained that he has been able to meet with only one of the prisoners since no one in authority is handy to give permission to speak to the others. Perhaps the police have better things to do than jump when Americans and their surrogates with special needs say jump.

We get to the police station and we ask to see them and they say we need permission from the director general. When we asked them where is the office of the director general, they keep telling us they don't even know, that the building collapsed and there's no one there and they are just giving us the run-around.

Followed by this exchange between himself and van Susteren:

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you know what your clients intended to do with those children? Was it just to bring them to the Dominican Republic or to the United States?

PUELLO: There was no intention to bring them to the United States. They were only trying to take them to a temporary facility so they can be taken care of. A lot of these kids don't even know that their parents have died. They need psychological help. And it doesn't make any sense when at the border they are not asking for any papers. But Haitians cross over to the Dominican Republic and the Dominican government is not asking for passports or any ID to cross over.

VAN SUSTEREN: Where did they find these 33 children? How did they get these children?

PUELLO: There was an orphanage that collapsed in Haiti. It was called friends of the orphans of Haiti. And there was somebody over there that told them that the orphans had no place, no room to place them. And these people that came to Haiti to help these kids were trying to do a job that nobody is doing right now. There's too many kids in the streets. There's a lot of people starving to death in Haiti. And they were just trying to help them. There was no intention to do anything illegal.

******

Joining the pity party we have Sean Lankford, husband and father of two of the women being held, (Corinna and Nicole) accusing the Haitian government of not furnishing customary post-quake amenities. Lankford is a business applications developer for Hewlett Packard, Silsby's former employer.

From AEP, Parents "Reclaim Children in Haiti Abduction-Adoption Row

He said he had not been able to speak to them since their arrest and was concerned that they had not received better treatment in detention.

"First off, you know, I think they were required to give them food and water. I mean, the basic essentials for life. And they were to help them to contact counselors on their behalf -- at least to give them the ability to do that. They were late in doing that," Lankford complained. "I appreciate everything they have done. I know that it took them a while to find them first off. I know also that there's a lot of needs that are happening in Haiti," the Meridian, Idaho resident said.

******

The New Life media blitz so far has been a fizzle. Outside of a relative few supportive comments on the numerous articles and blogs I've read, the New Lifers are being soundly condemned for their actions.

Laura Silsby sitting--or rather standing from the pictures of seen--in her Haitian jail cell, continues to yatter on about good intentions, misunderstandings, and God's work. She hasn't grasped that "permission from the DR government or Pastor Sandil (I'm just beginning to research him) doesn't mean squat. As I wrote earlier, I've given my readers permission to stick up the convenience store of their choice. I trust they are not gullible enough to think that my permission exempts them from the long arm of the law. Now, I'll up the ante. I hereby give permission to all my readers to order online purchases from Silsby's homeshopper.com with fraudulent credit cards. Hey, it's OK. In these hard times my readers are desperate for Fendi clutch wallets and Balmain fuck-me booties. God told me so.

I've been working over the question of intent and organization. One one hand I believe they knew exactly what they were doing, since they wrote about and fund raised it all over the 'net before they left. On the other hand, since they were not hooked into any established missions or aid groups who actually know the rules of engagement. Instead, they listened to the voices in their head, which apparently had no clue either. (I'll be writing about that later, too.)

Silsby's story remains full of holes...and she and her lawyer can't shut up. Rule 1 if you're accused of a crime: Don't talk to the media. And don't let your lawyer talk either. For a award winning entrepreneur (with endorsements from Joan London and Dr Phil) she sure is stupid. Or a liar. Or both.

I don't know if I'll put up anything tomorrow outside of adding links.

Addenda: Also read The 10 Arrested Christian Scavengers Had an Adoption Centered "Mission" For the Kids They were Caught Trying to Remove Illegally

Warning! The Mormons are Back for More "Orphans"

2010-02-02T14:54:00.001-05:00

While checking on material for a blog that's going up later today, I found this article from the January 27, 2010 Salt Lake City Tribune, Child Experts Warn Not to Rush Haiti Adoptions. We learn the Utah babylifters are back:

The Utah Hospital Task Force, which leaves for Haiti on Thursday (February 4), plans to provide medical care, rebuild the Healing Hands for Haiti medical center in Port-au-Prince and "assist in the transportation of impoverished and orphaned children."

The group hopes to send its plane back to the U.S. within hours of arriving, after picking up 70 orphans. Those children had already been matched with adoptive parents through For Every Child, an American Fork-based agency.

Here's a response from Adam Pertman, director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

Pertman said aid groups going to Haiti have good motives but attention needs to be paid to the children's psychological well-being.

"You wouldn't choose to move a kid who is traumatized into new circumstances"

and

Nobody would choose to move children into new homes at a time like this. These are traumatized human beings right now. We do not have to decide where they are going to live for the rest of their lives in the middle of a crisis.

and from the Swiss-based Child Relief ( I have been unable to find the original source)

But Child Relief, a Swiss-based international adoption agency, said that 90 percent of children in Haitian shelters were given up by poverty-stricken parents to people "who promise them money."

Child trafficking is common in this country and after the earthquake the risks are now increasing," the agency said in a statement on its Web site.

But, what's ever kept "well-intentioned" baby lifters and kidnappers from following best practice, ethics, and the law?

How how many aid planes will be diverted to fill the entitlement of Utah's privileged?

Tila Tequila Wants to Adopt Haitian Orphans

2010-02-01T21:38:00.001-05:00

I know this is not serious Haiti news, but I just had to comment.

As if things can't get any worse in Haiti, now comes attention whore and obsessive tweeter Tila Tequila announcing she intends to adopt two (or three) Haitian "orphans." Of course this wouldn't happen even if hell freezes over.

Numerous sources report that Tequila, apparently recovered from her suicidal tendencies over the December death of so-called fiancee Casey Johnson and her thwarted "attempt" to adopt Johnson's adopted daughter (another hell freezes over impossibility) tweeted her orphan saving intent yesterday. Last month I wrote about the Casey Johnson adoption scandal here.

My favorite headline is Hollywood Gossip's Tila Tequila Threatens Haitian Orphans with Adoption. Her tweets include (original spelling)

I will adop 2 children from HAITI....I'm going to try to do that ASAP! Those poor babies ! Mommy is coming to rescue u my Angels! xoxox.

I am going to have 2 biological babies of my own, then adopt 3 other babies who need a home! TILA FOR PRESIDENT!!!!For real

4 real Im filing papers now to adopt a child...a boy around 2 years old!! I'm sooooooo excited! AHHH oops! I wasn't supposed 2 tell u that!"

Aceshowbiz reported another tweet:

"I'm in the middle of filing papers to adopt another child right now! While I have my own, I want my baby 2 have a bro or sis 2 play with!,"

Yesterday, Tequila posted the following message on her official webpage Tila's Hotspot and her My Space blog

Hey everyone!

Even though I am already pregnant right now, I have always wanted to adopt at least 2 or 3 more children of my own. Right now with all the horrible things happening in Haiti, I have decided to go file some papers to see if I can at least save 1 baby from Haiti and bring he/she to America and provide a nice, loving, home for my adopted child and save the baby from the tragedy going on in Haiti right now!

Love,
Mama T

Ace also says that in the middle of making her Haitian adoption plan Tequila asked for volunteer sperm donors for the second baby, she plans to make immediately after the birth of the first.

I wanted to go back and look at her tweets myself to see if there were any more, but Tequila has deleted her Twitter account. (Maybe hell did freeze over!) As I was finishing this entry, for some insane reason I looked around and found an archive them here, (pages 4-6.) Interspersed with dozens of inane obsessive chatter about herself, her alleged baby, her "business" plans, Casey Johnson, and all around public masturbation, you'll see this:

I am the virgin Mary, and my child will be born Jesus Christ. I am the second Coming.......God told me so. I shall save all good people

You will also see several claims that "the Ambassador" (unnamed) supports her adoption plans.

Just got done talking 2 Ambassador! Hes gonna help me adopt a child from HAITI! Im so blessed! Ok guys thats all 4 twitter. I got work 2 do!

and

I swear this is wut the Ambassador emailed me in regard 2 adopting a baby frm Haiti "God Bless your heart you are truly one of God's angel!

It would be nice to think the Twitter account was nuked because her family staged an intervention, but they didn't. She promises us a new "celebrity blog" soon.

Now I'll return to real Haitian news.

Political Armtwisting in Port au Prince: It's Still All About Adoption, All About Us

2010-02-01T01:52:00.005-05:00

I've been meaning to post this addition to the Very Important Person Hall of Fame.

On January 29, ABC 4 in Salt Lake City reported a baby lift story that involves Very Important Persons in Utah and beyond. The Very Important Person Magnet is Stephen Studdert, (a VIP in his own right) an adviser to Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. You can read his bio on his Studdert Group webite.

According to the ABC 4 report Studdert started the Utah Hospital Task Force and negotiated the "release" of 125 "orphans (the figure was later corrected) bound mostly for Salt Lake City and presumably nice Mormon homes.

As a former mission president for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Studdert started the task force with a call to all former L.D.S. missionaries who served in Haiti to return in the aftermath of the earthquake to serve again, this time as volunteer interpreters. The task force was expanded to also include medical teams, construction workers and security personnel.

The Task Force doesn't have a webpage, but it does have a blog and a Facebook page. It is working with Healing Hands for Haiti International Foundation, 501(3)(c), which seems to be an L-d-S organization, founded in Salt Lake in 1998. Its mission is fostering the expansion and quality of rehabilitation services for the benefit of physically disabled adults and children in Haiti. The Healing Hands facility in Port au Prince was severely damaged in the earthquake. Dr. Jeff Randle, founder and Chair of the Healing Hands Governance Committee has just returned from a week in Haiti. His blog is here.

According to ABC 4, the "orphan" evacuation had been "up in the air" for a week. On the 28th it was called off again when the adoption agency handling the children said that the Prime Minister of Haiti (why is it that US reporters can't actually write his name?) Jean-Max Bellerive, had left the country without signing the releases. The Deseret News pouted, "The Haitian prime minister had run off to Canada." The same article parenthetically informed us: "he was reportedly in Canada." (NOTE: Google is your friend).

Bellerive, in fact, was in Montreal attending a conference with US Secreatry of State Hillary Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper and others to "review and improve the delivery of short-term aid as well as chart a course for long-term recovery"--hardly as important, of course, as expeditiously sending off a few dozen adoptables to be Mormonized and Caucasianized. The Miami Herald reported that after the Montreal trip Bellerive went to the Domincan Republic, presumably on business, not to live it up at someplace like Villa Castellamonte to spite USA paps.

On Thursday evening, around the time Studdert's "rescue plane" landed, agency reps said they were informed Bellerive was returning to Port au Prince, but would not be available until some time Friday to finalize the authorizations. The "rescue plane" might be forced to return without its human cargo.

Then, like Jones, along came Studder. ABC 4 reports: (my emphasis):

The jet (Studdert's plane) landed in Port au Prince late Thursday night with a task force of 110 Utah volunteers.

ABC 4 News has learned Stephen Studdert, the task force leader, went immediately into negotiations with both U.S. and Haitian officials on the fate of orphans from the Foyer de Sion Orphanage -- 70 of whom already have adoptive parents waiting for them in the United States.

These negotiations continued through the early morning hours of Friday while the task force's charter jet remained on the runway at the Port au Prince airport in violation of rules requiring relief aircraft to depart within 90 minutes of arrival.

Aid planes were delayed or diverted, so Steve Studdert could bring home the bacon to Utah.

On January 29, at 8:48 AM the Healing Hands blog posted a text message that the organization had negotiated the release of 125 "orphans" who were headed to Miami.

We have negotiated the release of 125 orphans bound for SLC and are on ramp in Haiti. Steve Studdert and Executive team along with full support from US Military and US Customs and ICE Agents made it happen. It is truly a miracle.

According to ABC 4, 70 of the "orphans" were going to adoptive parents waiting for them in the US. As usual, reporting was fuzzy and incurious with universal claims that the children had been adopted pre-earthquake, though it is more likely they were in the pipeline. Maybe.

The adoptions went through For Every Child. Here is its Haiti Adoption page. Agency rep Lori Timmerman told ABC 4 that the agency was scurrying to arrange for host families though social service agencies if "extra children do in fact make the trip to Utah."

Extra children??? And how might they get through?

But wait! There's more! Watch this video from the SLC Fox affiliate where we learn that the "release" was pushed through by Utah Senators Orrin Hatch (right), Bob Bennett, two other unnamed US Senators, the US Ambassador, and two unnamed former White House officials. Here is Hatch's press release. In an entry dated Jaunary 29, 8:15 PM, the task force blog acknowleges assistance from Hatch and Bennett.

And we can't forget God who created this massive orphan migration for his greater glory and to make the American middle class feel good about itself. Lori Rosenlof, a pap in waiting of two and Port au Prince orphan herder told the Deseret News, "God has had his hands all over this."

Foyer de Sion publishes blog updates here and also mentions Hatch.

The number of children supposedly sent to the US varies greatly. Initially, the Utah Task Force said 150 would be taken out. The number has varied due to paperwork problems, final release authorizations, last minute changes, misstatements, and misreporting. 150 was downgraded to 141, 125, 70, and finally 66, a figure the task force says is correct. Other children reportedly will be airlifted by other aid agencies when the US government approves entry.

Jason Glen Taylor, a volunteer with the Utah Hospital Task Force hit the public's panic button when he begged, during the Fox video, "These babies will not survive here. There's babies dying in the streets. Let us take these babies home."

But those babies are not dying in the streets--not those with a troop of task force nannies taking care of them. Instead babies are dying in streets, hospitals, and camps due to lack of medical supplies and other aid while privileged politicians, their cronies, and "desperate" US paps hog air space and tarmacs, twist arms and play Great White Hope.

It's all about adoption! It's all about us!

Short Update on "Christian" Child Lifters in Haiti: "We Didn't Understand"

2010-01-31T15:07:00.004-05:00

It's only mid-afternoon, but it's become clear I won't finish my follow-up on the New Life 10 today, though I'm working on it. There is so much material to wade through.

In the meantime, I recommend that you read Mike Doughney's latest blog, Personal Shopper.com CEO Arrested While Returning from Free Child Shopping Trip to Port au Prince. Also read his previous blog below it. This is very important stuff. I have linked them both under "Featured Blogs" on the right sidebar.

Here is an excerpt:

Looked at from the point of view of an entrepreneur, what are these things? First, establish a warehouse for the merchandise, and processing facilities to make the merchandise suitable for the customer. Second, expedite the process of governmental approval which customers must obtain, making them as comfortable as possible while they fulfill the government’s mandate of a 60-90 day stay. Third, provide financing for the customers. Fourth, provide food and refreshment to the customers, which along with the lodging provides a “bubble” in which customers need not interact with the locals.

But as a business plan, there’s nothing to it, if the people putting it forward can’t seem to grasp the basic illegality of its initial premise. The children of Haiti are not theirs to process and export, to satisfy the endless demand for adoptable children without history, a demand their mythology creates.

Also go to the Baltimore Sun site for an AP video of the baby lifters trying to explain it's all a "misunderstanding"...they need God's love." According to raid commander Laura Silsby, IRL, the CEO of Personal Shopper.com, they "did not understand that there was additional paperwork required." Quite a big different from her quote in Reuters (and other articles) last night "I was going to come back here to do the paperwork."

Yeah, Laura. Trafficking children across national borders is a bit more problematic than selling leopard print pajamas over the Internet.

Later today I will be posting another Very Important Persons entry that I had started before the New Life baby raid.

Breaking News: Do-it-yourself Evangelicals Popped for Attempting to Take "Orphans" Out of Haiti Illegally

2010-01-31T00:41:00.006-05:00

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 showing they were made orphans by the quake in the impoverished Caribbean country.

"This is totally illegal," said Yves Cristallin, Haiti's social affairs minister. "No children can leave Haiti without proper authorization and these people did not have that authorization."...

...But Laura Sillsby [sic] from the Idaho group told Reuters from a jail cell at Haiti's Judicial Police headquarters, "We had permission from the Dominican Republic government to bring the children to an orphanage that we have there."

"We have a Baptist minister here (in Port-au-Prince) whose orphanage totally collapsed and he asked us to take the children to the orphanage in the Dominican Republic," Sillsby [sic] added.

"I was going to come back here to do the paperwork," Sillsby said. "They accuse us of children trafficking. This is something I would never do. We were not trying to do something wrong."

NOTE: I wonder if Silsby (her name is incorrectly spelled in the news report) tells the judge when she's popped for driving without a license, "I was going to get it next week." And what about the part where she says she had permission from the orphan master in Port-au-Prince to traffick the kids across the border. Bastardette hereby gives her Dear Readers permission to stick up a convenience store and to use her permission as your defense.

But back to the news.

The Associated Press reports further:

Silsby said they had documents from the Dominican government, but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities before taking 33 children from 2 months to 12 years old to the border, where Haitian police stopped them Friday evening. She said the children were brought to her by distant relatives, and that the only ones to be put up for adoption would be those without close family to care for them...

Sean Lankford, the father of one of the US detainees told the AP (my emphasis)

The plan was never to go adopt all these kids. The plan was to create this orphanage where kids could live. And kids get adopted out of orphanages. People go down and they're going to fall in love with these kids, and many of these kids will end up getting adopted.

According to CVBC's latest newsletter, which includes an itinerary of their child snatch mission, New Life is:

in the process of buying land and building an orphanage, school and church in Magante on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic...He (God) has provided an interim solution in nearby Cabarete, where we will be leasing a 45 room hotel and converting it into an orphanage until the building of the NLCR is complete.

And a prayer request:

NLCR is praying and seeking people who have a heart for God and a desire to share God's love with these precious children, helping them to heal and find new life in Christ.

As we suspected, God caused the earthquake and the deaths of tens of thousands of Haitians so old and new-made "orphans" could not only be reborn as cornfed adopted Americans, but reborn in Christ through the good services of New Life Children's Refuge and others of their ilk and trade. Isn't that the same thing?

There are growing reports of children missing from orphanages and hospitals, but this is the first solid report we have of do-it-yourself baby lifters caught attempting to remove children from Haiti illegally--for the good cause of adoption and redemption, of course.

I suspect due to the chaotic circumstances in Haiti, the US Embassy, which has its hands full already, will lift the traffickers visas and kick them back to Idaho, but I'd really really really really like the Haitian authorities to prosecute them for child stealing.

I'm sure that by tomorrow morning we'll hear the bellowing of the missionaries slithering their way through Haiti: "Christians are being persecuted--for the children"

This is a significant story. These people just weren't spur-of-the-moment stupids They planned and publicized their raid. I hope the incurious press doesn't let it die.

Here is a picture of 8 of the 10 New Life child stealers with text from the AP:

American citizens pose for a photo at police headquarters in the international airport of Port-au-Prince, Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010. Ten Americans were detained by Haitian police on Saturday as they tried to bus 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic, allegedly without proper documents. In the front row from left to right are Carla Thompson, 53, of Meridien, Idaho, Laura Silsby, 40, of Boise, Idaho, Nicole Lark Ford, 18, of Middleton, Idaho, and in the back row from left to right are Steve McMullen, 56, of Twin Falls, Idaho, Jim Allen, 47, of Amarillo, Texas, Silas Thompson, 19, of Twin Falls, Idaho, Paul Thompson, 43, hometown unknown, and Drew Culborth, 34, of Topeka, Kansas. The names of the two Americans not pictured are unknown

The New Life 10 are scheduled to appear in court on Monday.

Thanks to Luanne Pruesner-Van de Velde and anon guy

"Important Blog: Adoption Kids Out of Satan's Haiti..."

2010-01-27T14:44:00.013-05:00

Baby Love Child has published stunning blog today: Adopting Kids Out of Satan's Haiti for the Glory of His Kids & The Slowing of Child Export Flights. It is separate from her ongoing Hatian series.This is by far the best piece I have seen anywhere (and I've downloaded lots of stories and blogs) about babylifting, it's impetus and purpose. This is a long piece that will turn the stomach of anyone concerned about the ethics and purpose of adoption. This is a small excerpt:

This from the “religion” section of their page on Haiti:

“Mission work in Haiti faces enemy onslaught as this is a country that is yearly dedicated to Satan in a contractual form. There are voodoo practices and worship of the dark.”

While some may find that statement rather stunning, it is sadly a more common attitude within the evangelical and “missions” subculture than many would care to think. Pat Robertson’s comments along these lines were merely a reflection of a commonly held belief across numbers of people within his subculture.

An historic explanation of the role of Voudou symbolism, language, and drumming is beyond the scope of this post, suffice it to say, all played a role in Haiti’s revolution, a fact that was not lost on slave owners in the United States and elsewhere.

The deliberate suppression of Voudou thus became important politically and culturally to as a means of maintaining control. After centuries of “demonizing” indigenous African religious practices brought to the west, few should be surprised when people in for example, Texas begin using such as a basis for “saving” children from countries and culture they are religiously unwilling to coexist with.

The flight of For His Glory’s kids out of Haiti must be understood within this missionary context- they are not merely removing children from Haiti and placing them with American would-be-adopters, they view their adoption ministry work as removing children from a “Satanic” and “dark” land.

BLC's blog also gives sickening details on the two babylifting "orphan ministries" I've written about in my last two entries: Maison de Enfants de Dieu ala For His Glory and HIS Home for Children.

As some of you know, one of my big interests outside of adoption is theocracy and theonomy and the emergence in the US of a theocratic state doctrine. Adoption theology plays a huge role in the evangelical promotion of that ideal state. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to articulate without a lot of Biblical and cultural context, both of which BLC puts into this piece.

This information needs to go out!

Addenda: Earlier today I signed up for the Maison de Enfants de Dieu email list. I to got my first mailing this evening. Kim Harmon, president of For His Glory Outreach calling for a nationwide day of prayer and fasting on January 28, to release the orphans of Haiti from the clutches of the evil Haitian goverment and UNICEF:

Unfortunately, there now seems to be a mountain standing between the orphans who remain in Haiti and the safe and loving homes of their adoptive families. That mountain is the Haitian Government's new, and still undefined, exit process for children with foreign adoptive parents. With limited resources available to Haitian orphanages, this process has stopped the departure of orphans with humanitarian parole status and directly affects our ability to care for those children orphaned since the earthquake...

The press release is also published on the For His Glory website.

God Brings Another Haitian Adoptee to Ohio

2010-01-26T11:59:00.001-05:00

There is no rest for the wicked. Like yesterday, I didn't plan to post today on Haiti, but some things just lend itself to plugging away on the keyboard. More disaster evangelism, disaster adoption, and Very Important People appeared in today's Columbus Dispatch with the arrival of Nephtalle Jean-Pierre, soon to be renamed Gracie Hansley. Nephtalle is a former resident of Maison des Enfants de Dieu aka For His Glory Adoption Outreach in Port au Prince.

Home from Haiti

First, as if we don't already know it, we learn that God, with his super quake powers, is the great distributor of adoptees. From the way people talk lately you'd think that without God's hand in natural disasters there would be no adoption.

"God really did bring her sooner," Hansley said after she stepped off a plane from Florida yesterday and strode into the terminal at Port Columbus holding Gracie in her arms.

But what God can't do with an earthquake, our local pols can:

Gracie and other Haitian children arrived in Florida on Saturday, where Hansley and her father were waiting. Red tape, confusion and delays ensued, and at first it was not clear that Hansley could bring the little girl home. Frustrated, she and her father got on the phone. She credited U.S. Rep Pat Tiberi, a Genoa Township Republican, for helping her cut through the bureaucracy.

Last I ran into the toadish Tiberi (pronounced Teaberry) he was chatting up Ohio Right to Life on how unfair it is that RTL is so broke has to depend on volunteer canvassers to get out the vote, while the Dems have Hollywood doing their dirty work for them. Here is his press release offering his Very Important Person services to "frantic adoptive parents."

This must be the red tape, confusion and delays Tiberi made go away for Ms. Hansley. From the Maison des Enfants website:

Seventy-nine of the 106 children from Maison des Enfants de Dieu (Children of the House of God) orphanage, who were granted humanitarian parole, arrived in Florida on Saturday, January 23^rd. The Haitian Government has blocked the remaining 27 children, including the adopted son of the For His Glory (FHG) Adoption Outreach President, Kim Harmon, from departing Port-au-Prince. In a surprise announcement, Haitian Prime Minister Bellerive stated that all future cases of humanitarian parole would have to complete an exit process with his office. He has not yet defined this exit process so no action can be taken to bring the remaining children to their adoptive parents in the United States.

Obviously, Kim doesn't know the right kind of Very Important People. Imagine, an orphanage director tuned away at the gate!

Also in today's Dispatch is pap couple, Shanna and John Gordon, from Gahanna. They have been trying to adopt Jolanda, whom they met in a Haitian hospital last September while on a mission trip with New Life Church (planted by a team from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, in 1985.) Although they were barely into the pipeline, they'd planned to move to Haiti "to stay with Jolanda" during the adoption process. Move to Haiti? Shanna complains in her best tntitlement American style:

"The Haitian government just keeps changing the rules," she said. "We hear good news and then we hear bad news.

The article also includes a curious interview with Ohio State University-Mansfield professor Terri Bucci who heads the Haiti Empowerment Project that sends OSU faculty to Haiti to assist in teacher and classroom development. Her program is working to get 20 orphaned girls into the US who according to Bucci "have been granted humanitarian parole status to live in Ohio for two years while Haiti rebuilds. I find it difficult to believe that once here the girls will be sent back, though judging from the article they are not adoptable at the moment. Call Pat Tiberi!

The comments on the article are not what I expected. Not many tears over God's awesome plan for adoption. There's a few snarks about immigrants. And who knew the always-elected Tiberi is so disliked? But other posters responded like this:

Why is this mom changing the girl's name? Gracie? At least name her Natalie (closer to her real first name) & keep the Jean-Pierre so that she can remain connected to her roots! These poor babies.

Nice to see some civilians get it.

Snapshot: Disaster Evangelism in Haiti--"God Brings Something Good from a Horrible Situation"

2010-01-25T21:17:00.000-05:00

I wasn't going to post anything today until I ran across this article from today's Toledo Blade a few minutes ago: Quake in Haiti hastens long awaited adoptions.

It's about Seth and Amber Newlove who find a silver lining (see yesterday's entry on disaster silver liningism) in the destruction of a country and its people. The earthquake, see, is an awesome example of how God works in mysterious ways. Why, without the earthquake, she and Mr. Newlove would still be waiting to bring Snyder home to Arlington, Ohio from H.I.S. Home for Children, a Lima, Ohio-based orphanage and non-denominational ministry in Port au Prince. According to Wiki, Arlington has a population of about 1350; 99.48% of which is white. We're with ya, Snyder!

It's just a good example of how God can bring something good from such a horrible situation," Mrs. Newlove said.

Then we have the Wassinks from Lima, Joe and Michele, waiting for delivery of Alin who they've been trying to adopt since 2008. Mrs. Wassink's brother, Hal Nungester and his wife Chris, just happen to run H.I.S. and his mother is secretary of the board. Other board members are "Christian leaders" from west central Ohio and northeast New York.

The H.I.S. webpage tells us that the orphanage has around 125 kids between the ages of birth to 13 and three fulltime staff. (right--pre-quake mealtime) Many are "orphans" while others have been abandoned there by "a single parent who is unable to provide for them due to extreme poverty." We have no idea if abandonees up for grabs--or if anyone at H.I.S. thought to help those mothers.

School is held in the on-sight classroom for children 5 and older. Our Christian teacher conducts the classes in both English and Creole with older students learning French. The 3 and 4 year olds began attending pre-school classes off-site at Quisqueya Chapel in September, 2005 with a volunteer Christian teacher. On Sunday mornings Sunday School classes are taught at HIS Home for our children, and children from another community orphanage as an outreach ministry to share the the gospel of Jesus with the children of the community. Following Sunday School, the children attend worship services at Quisqueya Chapel.

We are pretty sure those "Christian" teachers aren't Catholic.

The Blade reported that 56 children from H.I.S. had been released to travel to the US and the Nungesters were working on getting another 22 released. Since the quake, the whole entourage--listed as 114 kids by the Blade-- has been living in the US Embassy. Because the orphanage has substantial structural damage, Hal Nungester is looking for a rental mansion for them.

H.I.S. posted an update on their orphan movement status at 12:33 PM today:

Last night 67 children arrived in Orlando and are traveling today to Miami to be united with their families Hal remains in in Haiti with 59 other children, 12 of whom are waiting for visas. The remaining 47 will remain with him in Haiti.

There is no explanation in the discrepancy between the 114 in the Embassy and the 126 listed in the update.

Continued from the Blade:

Like the Newloves, Mrs. Wassink said she and her husband, who is associate pastor at Grace Community Church in Lima, feel the Haitian adoptions' hastening was a bright light that came from the devastation.

"One of the first things my husband brought to my attention was Isaiah 61:3: 'The Lord will bring beauty out of the ashes,'" Mrs. Wassink said. "We will never see all the purposes He has in this, but the ones we do see, we can celebrate and know He is doing wondrous deeds."

It all makes sense now. Those adoptions in Haiti were just too damned slow, so God knocked the country off its foundations so a few hundred "orphans" could slip into middle christian America where they belong. Or conversely, maybe Pat Robertson was right. God is punishing Haiti by sending its children to the US for evangelical indoctrination.

Ultimately, as I wrote yesterday, it's all about adoption. It's all about us.

It's Not About Haiti, Damn It! It's About Adoption. It's About Us!

2010-01-24T21:13:00.002-05:00

As I wrote last week, Washington politicians couldn't even wait for the aftershock to figure out ways for the Haitian earthquake tragedy to be all about adoption

January 15, 2010, The Seattle Times:

Adoption advocates met Thursday in the Capitol Hill office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., (right) to discuss the quake's impact on adoptions. Many parents have been pushing to see if the State Department can expedite adoption proceedings, because they fear orphanages will need to serve other children left homeless or alone after the quake.

Although we've seen the quotables of random politicians since then, and the highly publicized Rendell baby lift of healthy uninjured BRESMA " orphans," some without "adoption plans," we heard no more about the Landrieu sit down. Now we have a January 20 letter, [pdf] addressed to Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, and Dr. Rajiv Shah, Administrator Designate, US Agency for International Development, signed by 50 Senators and Representatives (Landrieu, below right, the lead signer) posted on the JCICS website.

The letter outlines the Haiti adoption "concerns" of politicians and their adopta constituents. While signatories commend Homeland Security's Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services for extending humanitarian parole for a small and limited number of children with "established adoptive relationships with US adoptive families," they clearly aren't happy that the high end figure of 600-700 in-process (or unvetted?) paps weren't extended the same privilege. We say high end, since according to the US State Department the yearly average number of US placements from Haiti is around 225 (1998-2009). Adoptions in Haiti, in fact, can take several years to complete, which until now has discouraged a stampede by the desperate.

Now that Haitian court records are destroyed and Judge Rock Cadet dead, the sharks are circling. Fast trackers seem to think there is nothing in the way to stop forced fast adoption from Haiti. Politicians, paps, evangelical zealots in the Beltway and on the ground in Haiti, and an uneducated public demand that Haiti "cut the red tape." They insist that the US sweep aside family and child safeguards, and legal, ethical and professional standards to bypass Haitian and US law to "expedite" the adoption process on "humanitarian grounds." They never mention parent and child support, individual child sponsorship, family reunification or other programs to keep families together. Adoption for them, is always the right answer, to complex, often temporarly domestic situations, including natural disasters. We are, generally speaking, no fan of red tape but we heartily agree with Jane Edwards, eloquent blog published a few days ago on the First Mother, Birth Mother Forum: "Red tape holds families together."

The politicians' (awkwardly written) letter to Very Important People reads, in part:

We appreciate that a limited number of cases with access to private planes have been processed and evacuated from the country, but clearly not all adoptive families are in a position to put forward those resources to ensure the safe and swift travel of these orphans to the US... .

..In our view, the chaos that has ensued is a direct result of a lack of logistical inter-agency coordination, a lack of communication to the public, and ad-hoc processing of travel documents by the US Embassy Therefore, we are writing to ask for your personal assurance that the State Department, in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security, the US Agency on International Development and the Department of Defense, puts in place a plan to directly ensure that ALL of the 600-700 orphans affected by Monday's announcement of humanitarian parole are safely and efficient evacuated within the next ten days.

In other words, elected officials expect the US government to turn into an international child trafficker by turning over children to potential adoptive parents whose applications to adopt have not been thoroughly investigated and completed and whose petitions to adopt have not been granted by the Haitian government. Matthew Mancuso must be kicking himself for not waiting a few years for a quick Haitian fix. Lookout Third World! Or Second World! Or even First World! Today it's Haiti. Tomorrow it's some other country that impedes the immediate gratification of the neocolonial child merchants and their customers.

At the teleconference I participated in a few days ago, Homeland Security officials were clear on procedures to remove-for-adoption a child from Haiti. Category 1 cases, where adoptions had been finalized by Haitian courts before the earthquake were clear cut. They are good to go with appropriate paperwork.

Decisions on Category 2 cases; those "in process" where no Haitian finalization has taken place, require a long and wide paper trail, at least in theory. As we see in the Rendell baby lift where 7 children, with no adoption plan were removed to Pittsburgh, these protocols have not been followed due to interference and intervention by Beltway bigwigs and the White House going over the heads of US Embassy staff.

The paper trail , demanded by the US (again in theory) includes, but is not limited to:

---Proof that the child is actually available for adoption: surrender papers, correspondence or letters or records with agencies or authorities with a Case Number.

---Service provider proof that a potential match was made on or before January 12, 2010 and that paps and child have met in Haiti: hotel receipts, airline tickets, passport, visas and other secondary documents that paps have in their possession.

---Significant evidence of adoptive relationship and intention of paps to adopt that specific child: copy of the referral letter, an amended birth certificate with their names on it

We absolutely reject pipeline placement. The definition of "in process" (as the word "orphan") is continually challenged and redefined by politicians, waiting adopters, and evangelical child lifters to mean whatever they want it to mean, leveling child acquisition to anyone in any stage of Haitian adoption: a case a few days away from finalization to an application emailed to an agency 2 hours before the quake. The wail, "give me my child" can be heard all the way to Washington. In the give-em-inch-take-a-mile adoption industry, an exception one day is normalized the next. Look at 'safe havens."

A little relief may be on the way. JCICS reported on its blog, Be the Answer today, that the Haitian government, in response to all those fast tracks to the US and other countries , has established tougher standards for child removal. The report is unconfirmed as of this writing.

The JCICS blog reports:

It is Joint Council’s understanding that the government of Haiti, in protecting against the inappropriate movement of children to the U.S. and other countries, has announced that the Haiti government must approve the international movement of each individual child. This includes children that are bound for the U.S., whether through the visa process or humanitarian parole. It is also our understanding that the U.S. government is actively engaged on this issue with the Haitian government. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which authorizes humanitarian parole for each child, continues to process cases at the US Embassy in Port au Prince... .

..It is Joint Council’s understanding that this new requirement is in response to concerns that children who were not in the process of adoption, leaving Haiti for the U.S. and other countries. Joint Council shares in the concerns over the inappropriate movement of Haitian children.

Political panderers and US mainstream media have focused much of their Haitian time on adoption, and the plight of paps-in-waiting as if they, not the Haitians, are the tragic victims of circumstance. A writer for the Baltimore Sun actually described the earthquake as a "small silver lining for families in the adoption process."

The political and media focus on adoption erases the suffering in Haiti. Tens of thousands of Haitians are dead; more are homeless, injured and sick. They are living in hospitals, camps and in the streets. Children are being trafficked off those streets and in those hospitals and camps. God squads of evangelical missionary traffickers, complaining of government and aid inertia, are flying into the country at a record rate with talk of snatching up "orphans" under the guise of humanitarian relief

The Tampa Times calls amputations the defining injury of the earthquake. The number of field amputations, according to Deanne Marchbein from Doctors Without Borders is unprecedented since the Crimean War or the American Civil War. While aid agencies struggle to save lives and limbs, the US military diverts relief transports to the Dominican Republic so Washington fat cats and baby lifters can hog up runway space with unnecessary rescue missions and make political points back home.

While I was finishing this piece, I ran across an article in Sunday's Washington Post about four severely injured children refused entry into the US for treatment:

Late last week, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said Homeland Security officials had told him the agency would grant "humanitarian parole" to about 200 severely injured Haitian children. Even after that, Nelson said, he got a late-night e-mail, with the subject line "HELP," from a Miami neurosurgeon doing relief work, saying the U.S. Embassy in Haiti would not allow three critically burned children to be flown to a Miami burn unit. Nelson also said the State Department had issued a memo saying that a 17-year-old named Samantha, with a broken back and a father in Michigan, "would be ineligible to board an aircraft to the United States."

"Typical bureaucratic crap that needs to be cut through," Nelson said in an interview.

Apparently, these children aren't adoptable so they are expendable

Which leads me to my final point. Baby Love Child is publishing a collection of blogs on Haiti. Haiti Series: "It is madness. It is insane"...Bribes, bullies and traffickers extract kids. The first three parts were published in one entry today.

Go here:

Part 1: Basic Haiti to the U.S. adoption statistics
Part 2: A snapshot of the Haitian Government reaction to the exports
Part 3: The Article I’m using as my framework for this series
Part 4: Kids not in an adoption process being exported, bullies and bribes
Part 5: The Do It Yourself-ers (DIY)
Part 6: One of many American examples of a fundamental denial of the pre-quake corruption
Part 7: France and the European Union
Part 8: The Bethany Christian Services/ God’s Littlest Angels planeload of human cargo
Part 9: Kids disappearing and the “orphan” trade
Part 10: As if “being in process” alone makes Haitian adoptions somehow “ethical”
Part 11: Those that remain in Haiti- the race to protect the kids vs. “You don’t work, you don’t eat”

A Little Bit About Important People in Their Own Words

2010-01-22T21:08:00.001-05:00

The shark pool grows hourly. I've been reading news articles, blogs, and tweets of numerous mock heroic evangelical childlifters "leading" babies out of Haiti like they are Henry Stanley bringing out Dr. Livingston.

But just a few days ago, it wasn't the never-heard-if-'em church crowd, but important people, connected people, people who aren't connected but know somebody who is connected that lead them out. I may write more about this at some later time, but tonight I'm adding three quotes about the Rendell lift as a supplement to what I wrote earlier today. This is about important people and priviledge--in their own words. The quotes are from an article accounting in great detail Rendell's "rescue mission" into the heart of darkness I missed earlier today.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. January 19, 2010
Haitian orphans settle in; rescue team discusses trip

It's Who You Know: The White House
..."I called the White House and told them I had two constituents who wouldn't leave those kids," the congressman said.

"Over a period of hours it was cleared by the National Security Council. Everyone at the State Department who was involved with this issue dropped what they were doing," Mr. Altmire said...

Expediting Adoptions : Get 'em while they're hot!
Catholic Charites (sic) also set up a "comfort room" on the third floor of the John G. Rangos Sr. Research Center adjacent to the hospital. at Children's Hospital where children can sleep, play and be comfortable while awaiting placement with their adoptive or foster families, she said. The Red Cross stocked it with bedding and "we purchased additional toys to make it as homey as possible," Ms. Kushma said.

The children are now in the comfort center eating chicken fingers and pizza. The younger children are eating baby food, bananas and playing with teddy bears.

Allegheny County Children Youth and Families will begin to work to process the children, many of whom have clearance for adoption. A family court judge will set up across the hall from the comfort room to handle placement of the children.

Marc Cherna, head of CYF, said he expects many of the children to be adopted today. Most have the paperwork completed and the adoptive parents have traveled to Pittsburgh. Mr. Cherna said as many as three quarters of the children may be adopted today. The others will be placed in temporary shelter here until their paperwork is completed.

It's Who You Know: I'm the Governor of Pennsylvania!
He then heard the Haitian ambassador on CNN Saturday afternoon, and called him in Washington. The ambassador said it was important to have the governor of Pennsylvania on the relief plane in case any diplomatic complications arose.

UPMC helped arranged the Republic Airways plane, which left Pittsburgh at noon Monday and landed in Port au Prince Monday about 6 p.m. He said the fact that he was aboard did speed up the plane's ability to land on the one runway at the busy airplort (sic).

(Doesn't the P-G have a proofreader?)

Adoption Business Trumps Aid

2010-01-22T21:02:00.002-05:00

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 hanging.

I will be writing about and referencing what was said in future entries after I type up the 17 pages of notes I made. I do, though, want to give a brief description of what is happening on the ground at the US Embassy regarding adoption and make some comments on priorities.

The Embassy (pre-quake picture) has been in a state of chaos. Some Embassy staff lost family members and homes and are unavailable. Until yesterday (I think) only one person has been handling orphan/adoption exit requests, and he has been working virtually non-stop with only 2 hours of sleep a night. A second person joined him yesterday and four more are scheduled to join today. (My notes are a little unclear on this, and there may be one more recent addition). Consular services has been pitching in, but they have their own duties.

Hundreds of adoptive parents, paps, orphanage directors with dozens of children, and even, apparently, loose children gather outside the US Embassy. Many come unannounced demanding entry. Officials have set up and are refining procedures for entry into the compound, interviews, and decision making. (Procedures were discussed in detail, but I"ll hold that for another entry.) They emphasize that the Embassy needs advance notice of petitioners so someone can go outside, locate them, and escort them through the gates. Only adoption cases are being handled. (Haitians with other Embassy business, including those with pending pre-quake visa and immigration applications are being turned away for now.) Once inside, Embassy staff is furnishing kids with food, water, and other care while their cases are investigated.

Officially, the process is just not whisking kids and their keepers through. Each child removal is fraught with paperwork, paperwork verification, questioning, visa applications and approvals, etc. Accept for "special" cases, like Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's BRESMA Orphanage"rescue mission," in which 54 healthy "orphans" under the age of 4, earlier denied visas, were whisked out on the US government fast track. BRESMA is operated by photogenic Ben Avon, Pennsylvania natives Jamie and Ali McMurtie. They requested assistance from high places, and got a lot of TV coverage as a result. Here is the McMutrie Sisters statement after their return to Pittsburgh.

Rep. Jason Altmire, (D-Pennsylvania), who traveled with Rendell's group, contradicts the number of denied visas, saying he understood that all the children were cleared to leave but the paperwork of 14 had been destroyed causing the Embassy to deny them exit visas. This doesn't make any sense to me, but I'm only reporting what was published. Of course, we don't know if there ever was any paperwork. Whatever, those 14 got out when Rendell & Co put the squeeze on.

According to January 20, 2010 CNN, via Rendell, adoption placement for 47 of the children was already underway before the quake. No mention of how far "under way" or what proof they were even in the pipeline was offered. 40 children were bound for the US and 7 to other countries. During the teleconference we learned that transfer to the intended destination countries of those non-US bound children would be a "complicated process." An additional seven children had no "adoption plans" prior to evacuation, which contradicts Altmire's statement. Adoptive parents will be sought for them. According to today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette, about 20 of the kids are housed in (Holy Nebraska Fiasco!) Holy Family Institute, a residential treatment center in Emsworth, Pennsylvania that houses around 50 other children. The facility was given 24 hours notice to get ready for the surprise delivery.Those who have no adoptive families lined up will stay there indefinitely Except one. Three-year old Fredo has been "adopted" by the McMutrie Sister's parents. Boy, that was fast! Wonder what they pulled that home study out of.

Here's the January 20, 2010 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-Philadelphia Inquirer account of Rendell's trip (my emphasis):

But to get a private plane into Haiti on Monday -- and then hop a military-transport flight out -- Mr. Rendell had to muscle his way through an international logjam over access to the Caribbean nation's sole airport.

Inadvertently perhaps, he also inserted himself into talks between the State Department and Haitian officials over how -- and how many -- orphans will be permitted to come to the United States for adoption.

A thrilled, exhausted Mr. Rendell, who hadn't slept for a day and a half, said at a Harrisburg news conference yesterday that he didn't much care what anyone thought of his Haiti venture. He said one look into the eyes of the children on the Air Force C-17 that was heading to Orlando, Fla., gave him all the justification he needed.

While still on the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, Mr. Rendell said, he learned that CNN anchor Anderson Cooper had "ripped" him on TV for his unilateral move amid efforts to coordinate the global response to the crisis. "I just didn't care," the governor said. "To see those faces. ..."

Mr. Rendell said he had learned Friday of pleas by two Pittsburgh-area women, working at the Port-au-Prince orphanage, to get the children out. An "anonymous benefactor" provided the plane, he said. A team of University of Pittsburgh medical professionals volunteered to go.

Mr. Rendell said he chose to go along to use his political clout if bureaucratic problems arose -- as, indeed, they did. "We were denied our slot [to land] until the pilot said, 'The governor of Pennsylvania is on the plane,' " he recalled.

France and Brazil have both complained in recent days that the U.S. military, which now controls the Port-au-Prince airport, has hindered their sending in some planeloads of food and medical supplies. The Red Cross and another aid group, Doctors Without Borders, have also cited trouble getting clearance to land. Some flights have been diverted to the Dominican Republic.

Mr. Rendell himself said planes were "circling forever to get runway space." As the Democratic governor of a big state, he was able to use his State Department and White House connections not only to arrange a flight into Haiti, but also to gain visas for the orphans. "The initial response [to the visas] was 'no,' " he said.

The governor spoke with federal officials he knew, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief of staff, whom he had gotten to know during Mrs. Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. In the end, it took the National Security Council -- the agency charged with protecting the nation from the gravest dangers -- to break a deadlock over whether to grant all 53 orphans visas...

CNN's Anderson Cooper was critical of Rendell's "rescue mission" taking the governor to task during a live broadcast from Port au Prince. This is taken from PennLive.com and includes Rendell's reply.

“Again, I just don’t understand that decision, and allowing [a] Democratic governor of a state to fly out a group of orphans who weren’t severely injured, but, you know, who God knows deserved to go to the United States and be united with parents,” Cooper said on air Monday.

Cooper was one of the first anchors to hit the ground after the quake that caused hellish devastation to Haiti’s capital city and had witnessed agonizing scenes of suffering. He and CNN’s chief medical reporter, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, were visibly agitated about the lack of medical supplies and “stupid deaths” taking place.

But upon his return Tuesday, Rendell said there was no equation to be drawn between American officials pulling strings to rescue healthy children and the thousands still in need of aid and care.

Rendell said he was drawn to action after two Pittsburgh-area sisters, Jamie and Ali McMurtrie, who run the Haitian orphanage, used Twitter and Facebook to plead for help in evacuating the children.

“Anderson Cooper was mistaken and wasn’t equipped with the facts. CNN was mistaken. He said we had 28 kids. We had 53. He did not know that we were carrying 2½ tons of medical supplies, more than Doctors Without Borders,” Rendell said.

“This is one success. There needs to be a hundred successes. The good news we were told by the State Department is that what we did will probably be the breakthrough that will open it up for a lot more orphans to come to the U.S.,” Rendell said.

We're not sure how Rendell's "rescue mission" will open the door for "orphans" except to encourage other bigwigs to call in markers from their Beltway cronies. Outside of harvesting a lot of opportunistic publicity, Rendell's trip-- and other relief-delaying actions during the military takeover of Haiti --has pissed off aid groups that were denied landing and diverted to The Dominican Republic while Rendell sat on the tarmac. Brazil and France have filed formal complaints with Washington over routine military diversion of aid flights. The January 17, 2010 Guardian reports:

Brasilia warned it would not relinquish command of UN forces in Haiti, and Paris complained the airport had become a US "annexe",

The Red Cross has also complained, and Doctors Without Borders issued a press release, not only about the Rendell hold-up, but other problems with the US military control of the congested Toussaint l'Oeuverture Airport, which has forced them to land in DR and truck in (so far) 85 tons of medical supplies across the border.

Here is a portion of the press release:

“We have had five patients in Martissant health center die for lack of the medical supplies that this plane was carrying,” said Loris de Filippi, emergency coordinator for the MSF’s ChoscalSoleil. “I have never seen anything like this. Any time I leave the operating theater I see lots of people desperately asking to be taken for surgery. Today, there are 12 people who need lifesaving amputations at Choscal Hospital. We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue amputations. We are running against time here.”...

...“It is like working in a war situation,” said Rosa Crestani, MSF medical coordinator for Choscal Hospital. “We don’t have any more morphine to manage pain for our patients. We cannot accept that planes carrying lifesaving medical supplies and equipment continue to be turned away while our patients die. Priority must be given to medical supplies entering the country.”

Clearly a lot more is going on here that the MSM (surprise!) isn't covering . US (re)militarization of Haiti, and the militarization of aid goes beyond the scope of this blog, though I will continue to discuss it on some level. Here are four good reference points, to start with for those interested:

Alternet: Is the Haiti Rescue Effort Failing?

The anti-globalist website, Global Research, The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion? by Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky who points out that US rescue is headed up not by civilian agencies or even the odious USAid, but the Pentagon and SouthCom. There are a lot of other articles on Haiti there, too.

Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel: Disaster Capitalism Headed for Haiti

Haitiaction.net: The Transformation of Diplomacy or a New Manifest Destiny?: a 2007 article about the building of the current US Embassy in Haiti--the 4th most expensive US embassy in the world behind Baghdad, Beijing, and Berlin. Now that makes ya wonder what's going on that such a small country needs such a big compound. There are also some pictures of the complex so you can get an idea of how big it is and what kind refugee congestion is possible.

I fail to see how feelgood for the few export-for-adoption and premature evacuation of children to the US, and other western countries, where they stand little chance of family reunion, takes priority over food, shelter, medicine, running water, sanitation, electricity, and infrastructure for the many. We need to follow the axom: follow the money, and I suspect it goes way beyond the adoption industry. We are certainly down the rabbit hole. It is unconscionable that adoption business pushed by Beltway nabobs, trumps rescue and aid for the hundreds of thousands affected by the earthquake. This is about the globalization of children for profit and political gain. And what a jackpot they've hit!

END CHILD EXPORTATION AND TRAFFICKING IN HAITI

Tonight on CNBC: A Secret Flight to Freedom. A documentary on Operation Pedro Pan

Even Haiti Doesn't Want Her: Laura Silsby to Return to Boise Today:

Celebrating Laura Silsby

More Silsby Drama: Dropped Charges Not Dropped

Laura Silsby: Will God Overcome All This?

Clueless in Boise: Charisa Coulter Still Doesn't Get It

An Old VIdeo: TeamSilsby: The Ten Musketeers

Laura Silsby to Remain in Haiti Jail at Least Until May?

Haiti Earthquake Glorifies God: Part 1: Laura Silsby

More Intrigue in Port au Prince: More Trouble Ahead for Laura Silsby?

Saint-Vil: Silsby to be Held for Further Investigation; Coulter Home Soon

More Problems for Laura Silsby: Lawyer Dumps Her

Waitng for God: Silsby and Coulter Still Waiting; Groupies Fume Over UNICEF

Running on Empty: Two Snips from the Lives of Team Silsby

Small Update on Silsby and Coulter

Bad News for Laura Silsby

Laura Silsby's Texas Missionaries Revealed

Oh the Audacity! Jorge es Inocente.com

Down the Rabbit Hole: Additional Idaho Baptist and Anonymous Texas Missionaries were in Dominican Republic with Silsby

Jorge Torres Puello speaks - 1 & Introduction

Jorge Torres Puello Speaks - 2

George Torres Puello Speaks - 3

Jorge Puello Speaks - 4

Jorge Torres Puello Speaks - 5

Jore Puello Speaks - 6

Jorge Torres Puello Speaks - 7

Is Jorge Torres Puello Really Jewish?

Who is Jorge Puello? part 2: Jumping Down the Rabbit Hole

EVIDENCE GROWS AGAINST JORGE PUELLO; RELEASE OF KIDJACKERS MAY BE DELAYED

Jorge Puello: Not a lawyer after all

Who is Jorge Puello?

Haitians Release Interrogation Tape: Abductees cry for their mothers

Laura Silsby: Loses her Grip on the Gang; Did the Con Get Conned?

"It smelled like trafficking to me" -- US Orphanage Director on Silsby & Gang

CUB Statement on Haiti

In Their Own Voices:--New Lifers on a Mission for God and Adoption

Warning! The Mormons are Back for More "Orphans"

Tila Tequila Wants to Adopt Haitian Orphans

Political Armtwisting in Port au Prince: It's Still All About Adoption, All About Us

Short Update on "Christian" Child Lifters in Haiti: "We Didn't Understand"

Breaking News: Do-it-yourself Evangelicals Popped for Attempting to Take "Orphans" Out of Haiti Illegally

"Important Blog: Adoption Kids Out of Satan's Haiti..."

God Brings Another Haitian Adoptee to Ohio

Snapshot: Disaster Evangelism in Haiti--"God Brings Something Good from a Horrible Situation"

It's Not About Haiti, Damn It! It's About Adoption. It's About Us!

A Little Bit About Important People in Their Own Words

Adoption Business Trumps Aid