TWIN FALLS, Idaho (ABP) — With the last of 10 Southern Baptist mission volunteers released from a Haitian jail May 17, one of her "Idaho 10" co-laborers is breaking his silence and blames the whole ordeal on meddling by the United Nation's Children Fund, more commonly known as UNICEF.
Paul Thompson, pastor of Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho, told Baptist Press that things were going smoothly as the U.S. Baptists attempted to work out problems with documentation to allow the group to move 33 children from two earthquake-stricken areas near Port-au-Prince to a temporary orphanage in neighboring Dominican Republic until a group of workers wearing shirts with the UNICEF logo got involved.
Thompson said the widely broadcast video of the Haitian children crying and asking to return home was made right after a UNICEF representative told them in Creole the Baptists were kidnappers who wanted to sell the children into slavery or harvest their organs for the black market.
Thompson called the video "a complete setup" and said it was the beginning of building a case that eventually led to the group's arrest on charges of kidnapping and criminal association. Eight of the 10 were released Feb. 17. A ninth was set free March 8. The last one, team leader Laura Silsby, finally was allowed to return to Idaho after being convicted of a lesser crime and sentenced to time already served.
Silsby's church, Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, released a statement praising God for her safe return and expressing concern for her welfare and for her family to get back to normal.
The church co-sponsored the "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" with New Life Children's Refuge, a ministry started by Silsby to rescue and care for impoverished Haitian and Dominican children, including "opportunities for adoption into a loving Christian family."
Ironically, backlash from the ill-fated mission effectively ended inter-country adoptions from Haiti. Taking advice from UNICEF, Haiti's welfare agency temporarily suspended new adoptions not already being processed, citing concern that vulnerable children could be snatched from the country and sold into slavery, prostitution or illicit adoption.
It also renewed a long-running debate in the complex issue of adoption in an impoverished country where children are often given up by destitute parents. An estimated 300,000 Haitian children have been turned over to more-affluent families who treat them as slaves known in Creole as "restaveks" — literally "stay with" — or to child smugglers who force them into prostitution.
Many are handed over voluntarily by living parents duped into believing they were giving their children an opportunity for a better life. In fact, under Haiti's adoption system a true orphan is less likely to find a home overseas than a child with at least one living parent. Regulations require orphanages to document the ancestry of children before offering them for adoption, a lengthy process much harder than getting living parents to supply needed documentation.
Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, many children were being funneled out of Haiti through a maze of more than 200 largely unregulated private orphanages across the country. For that reason Marie de la Soudiere, coordinator for UNICEF's separated-children fund told Time magazine in February, "Our answer is 'no' to orphanages."
Diana Garland, dean of Baylor University's School of Social Work, said American society no longer removes children from their homes simply because they are impoverished, "because we know that children need to be raised in families."
"If we really love children, we need to help their families to develop the economic resources and stability to raise their children," Garland said.
Garland said in extreme cases where children are separated from parents, the next best thing is to place them with extended family members they know and love.
"When that fails we resort to foster care while we try to find a permanent family home for the children," she said. "Only in unusual circumstances and usually for short periods of time is an 'orphanage' the best choice for a child."
UNICEF's stated policy is that inter-country adoption in some cases may be the best solution, but the preference is for every child to have the right to know and be cared for by his or her own parents whenever possible. For those who cannot, UNICEF recommends finding an alternative family environment and views institutional care as a temporary measure of last resort.
Despite that, some conservative Christians accuse UNICEF of waging a behind-the-scenes war against adoption by lobbying for policies that reduce or close adoptions in some countries, increasing the amount of time that children are forced to live in orphanages or on the street.
"We have discovered and understand from visiting with people and communicating through reports that there is clearly a problem in Haiti with first-unit evangelical Christian orphanages and UNICEF and their abilities to work together," Thompson said in an interview with Boise television station KTVB.
KTVB received a statement from UNICEF saying Thompson's account is mistaken. "UNICEF played no role in the arrests of the Baptist group and UNICEF staff were not present at the arrests," the statement said. "UNICEF does not have the power to order arrests in Haiti or anywhere else." UNICEF said the workers probably were from a Haitian child-services organization, some of which wear UNICEF logos alongside their own.
The arrest of the 10 Southern Baptists came at a time when interest in international adoption is at an all-time high. That is particularly true in the Southern Baptist Convention, where a number of high-profile leaders have begun to promote adoption as a means to spreading the gospel.
This year's SBC Pastors' Conference just prior to the SBC annual meeting will include launch of a national campaign to raise money to help pastors pay for the cost of adopting a child.
"I have six children — three are biological and three are adopted," Pastors' Conference President Kevin Ezell told Baptist Press. "We just got home with a child from the Philippines six weeks ago, we have a little girl from China, and then we have a little girl from Ethiopia."
"We kind of look like the opening ceremony of the Olympics when we walk in," added Ezell, senior pastor of Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. "Adoption has changed my life personally. It brings missions home. I live with missions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. We have had over 120 children in our church adopted and it has helped our church focus on missions so much more."
Conference speakers include Russell Moore, senior vice president for academic administration and dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Last year Moore published a book titled Adopted for Life calling on Christians to adopt children as a "Great Commission priority."
UNICEF isn't alone in its view that children separated from parents by war or disaster should not be available for adoption until every effort is made to locate other living relatives.
Save the Children said wanting to help children from Haiti by evacuating them to foster and adoptive homes in other countries is "a natural instinct," but that "long experience tells us that it is almost always in the best interests of a child to remain with their relatives and extended family when possible."
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.