Laura Silsby's Texas Missionaries Revealed

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.)

Who is Jorge Puello?

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?

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

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