Haiti: Missionaries charged with child kidnapping

Haitian mother: I willingly sent my sons to the Dominican Republic, but did not realize they were up for adoption.

Inigo GilmoreFebruary 4, 2010 17:26Updated May 30, 2010 12:20

Haitian children Gesner, 13, carries his sister Gloria, 1, next to his brother Gabriel, 3, three of the 33 children involved in an illicit adoption scheme, as they sit next other children inside the NGO "SOS Children's Village" in Port-au-Prince Feb. 2, 2010. (Eliana Aponte/Reuters)

CALEBASSE, Haiti — When the American Baptist missionaries came into this small village perched above the destroyed capital, Maggie Moise willingly gave away her 9-year-old twins.

She says she believed the boys would be better off growing up in safety in the Dominican Republic, as the missionaries promised. She waved goodbye as they were loaded onto a bus along with about 20 other children from here.

"The country is going to be bad for some time. I cannot help my children. So I gave my boys to the white people,” Moise, who has eight children, told GlobalPost.

The 10 missionaries, who were arrested last week while trying to take 33 children, including Moise's two sons, into the Dominican Republican without documentation or permission, were charged Thursday with child kidnapping and criminal association.

The kidnapping charges carry a possible prison sentence of five to 15 years, and the criminal association counts have potential sentences of three to nine years. They will face a criminal justice system in a country where the government is barely functioning amid the destruction and the chaos of the earthquake.

The missionaries' intentions for the children, as well as the manner in which they gathered them, has raised many troubling questions in a country which has long suffered from child trafficking. According to Unicef, as many as 2000 children may have been trafficked in Haiti last year through criminal gangs.

The fear is that this may just be the tip of the iceberg, with many children, including orphans, vulnerable to exploitation, black-market adoption and child prostitution rings.

The village of Calebasse is located in the hills above Port-au-Prince, looking down on the mile after mile of rubble that is the capital. In interviews with GlobalPost, Moise and other residents described what happened when she and other residents relinquished their children in exchange for a promise that they might be better off.

Moise said her sons, Volmy and Kimley, were taken by the American Baptist missionaries, believing they would return to Haiti when they were older.

Moise, like other parents from the Haitian village of Calebasse, said she didn't believe she was putting her children up for adoption.