Earthquake Opens Doors, Fears of Child Trafficking
Earthquake Opens Doors, Fears of Child Trafficking
International
BY SHANTELLA Y. SHERMAN - WI STAFF WRITER
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2010
The consensus among African Americans has long been that children of color belong with families of color. Even when the children are of different nationalities, the belief is that cultural differences spoil the stew simmering inside the “melting pot.” Ironically, African American adoptive parents, particularly of immigrant Black children is rare. The recent arrest and detainment of 10 relief workers smuggling Haitian children from the country in the wake of a catastrophic earthquake has brought the plight of Diasporic adoptions and child trafficking to the forefront of the world media. Still, the dilemma remains: How best can the international adoption community answer the call for placements amid accusations of kidnapping and abuse?
More than 300 of Haiti's children are adopted by American families through legitimate adoption services; however, in the wake of a devasting earthquake, many of its children have been left vulnerable to child traffickers and abuse. Courtesy Photo
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LACK AND NEED
Even before four hurricanes slammed Haiti in 2008 and ruined almost 60 percent of the country’s harvest, many of its children, suffering under international embargoes and economic disenfranchisement, were in need of food and medical aid. And as families increasingly sought the support of mission schools and charities to house and feed their children, many could have been categorized according to Western standards as “orphaned” or “adoptable.”
Christopher Marius, of Silver Spring, Md., a social theorist who spent most of his childhood in Haiti, said that it is not uncommon for Haitian families to help rear family members for years to allow the children’s parents to gain financial footing. As a matter of perception, many outside of Haiti simply do not understand how parenting is assumed by the entire nation.
“There are many people in Haiti who don’t have certain things that other countries feel are essential, but a lack of something is not necessarily a need. My parents were living in New York and I was left with my father’s sister and her husband. If their household did not have enough rice on Monday, it was borrowed from a neighbor, who may need rice on Friday. That is a red light for social services in America, when it is simply a more communal lifestyle there,” Marius said.
Orphanages, according to Marius, have also been used as temporary housing and food sources in Haiti, similar to boarding schools, with a full knowledge that the parents of the children remain alive and well and can retrieve their children whenever they like. Marius, 46, said that when natural calamity strikes, the process of pairing parent with child creates a space for unintended kidnapping. Complicating that reunion is the belief that every child needs certain things that Haiti’s children don’t even know exist.
“When you have major devastation, the first goal is to save lives and reunite families. Well, if the children are being housed away from their parents anyway and someone who does not speak the language is trying their best to create a happy ending, things can easily go wrong. The idea may cross the minds of the relief workers that the child is better off being shipped off to America and placed with a nice, White family who will feed them, introduce them to X-Boxes and television, and at least be able to keep track of them,” Marius said.
AMPLE QUANTITIES & AVAILABLE NOW
While Marius’ assessment may be a bit harsh on relief workers, it is hardly a case of emotional sentimentality. According to State Department data presented by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Jan. 18, while extending a “humanitarian parole policy” toward Haitian adoptions, U.S. international adoptions from Haiti in fiscal year 2009 (from October 1, 2008, through September 30, 2009) was 330. In 2008, U.S. citizens adopted approximately 301 children from Haiti, including infants, young children, teens and special needs children.
But as Napolitano’s parole policy sought to immediately benefit children who might be in need of medical care or who were deemed in dire straits, it also opened the door to renegade activists to attempt to exit the country with Haitian children and without the consent of the nation.
In one such attempt, 10 members of an Idaho-based church group who said they were trying to rescue 33 child victims of Haiti's devastating earthquake were charged with child kidnapping and criminal association while trying to flee to the Dominican Republic. The group’s leader, Laura Silsby, claimed to be rescuing the children from the devastation, without the knowledge or permission of any Haitian officials.
An attorney for the group, Edwin Coq, said in a statement that a judge found sufficient evidence to charge the Americans. Coq said that under Haiti's legal system, there won't be an open trial, but a judge will consider the evidence and could render a verdict in about three months. Each kidnapping count carries a possible sentence of five to 15 years in prison. Each criminal association count has a potential sentence of three to nine years. It is unclear whether the group will be extradited back to the U.S. to face prosecution.
Despite what may have been the best of intentions, Silsby and the others, in taking advantage of a natural disaster to secure children that would ultimately end up in American homes, was tantamount to trafficking. Haitian-American Karine Bennett, of Northwest, said that without informed consent and in the midst of chaos, many parents could have been pressured to turn their children over to missionaries. Bennett, 36, said it was a form of child slavery that the world tends to turn a blind eye against.
“It is not an unselfish act to take someone’s children. There are a lot of children being torn from Port-au-Prince under the guise that they can do better in more affluent areas or in America, when a lot of times there are vile people who do nasty things to these children. Slavery is a reality in Haiti and these people who tried to take them should be locked under the prison,” Bennett said.
The slavery to which Bennett speaks is a practice known in Haiti as restaveks – a Creole term meaning “to stay with.” The term also is inextricably tied to child slavery in which the children are used as forced laborers and subject to physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
INFORMER CONTINUING COVERAGE OF HAITI: IN THE AFTERMATH
Part II – A Continuing Look at the Midwest Adoption Agencies that Struggle to Place Haiti’s Orphans Amidst Fears of Trafficking.
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