Haiti’s Children and their Traffickers

As you may well know by now, 10 American missionaries from the Central Valley Baptist Church in Idaho have been charged with child trafficking for attempting to whisk 33 Haitian children, most of them not even orphaned, across the border to the Dominican Republic. I, for one, hope that Haiti and the U.S. throw the book at them. I don’t believe for a second that they didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong. "Honestly, it's been a confusing process. We have tried to figure out exactly what they wanted from us," said one of the women arrested. I’m sorry, but if you even know someone who is related to someone whose best friend’s brother’s second cousin has tried to adopt, you’d have some inkling that it’s confusing, and that, in fact, parents spend years trying to produce the paperwork foreign governments want when they go through the legitimate adoption process. And if you have no experience in adoption, what makes you think you’re qualified to take 33 children away from their families with nothing but purported “good intentions” to back you up. And answer this, my dear missionaries: If there are dozens of legitimate aide organizations supporting children in Haiti, including those who have actually been orphaned in the country, why was it so important that you so quickly remove these 33 children from the country? And, by the way, your pleas of ignorance are wearing thinner every day. A Pulitzer-prize winning American journalist reports that she warned you you’d be stopped at the border. And, after all, you are American. Have you ever tried to file your taxes, get a driver’s license, or even a fishing permit? Government paperwork can tend to be confusing. And believe it or not, people get pretty persnickety about it when it comes to taking children away from their homes. So, while you’re in your jail cell bemoaning how you’ve misunderstood, just think about the 33 children whose lives you have further traumatized, and the thousands of Haitian children who need adoptive homes, and the thousands of families who want to adopt children in need, and the millions more who are trying to adopt and be adopted all over the world, and how much harder, longer and more trying you’ve made it for them. Then perhaps you can rethink what your mission really ought to be.

--News Mom