My pal Joel Millman has a nice piece in the Wall Street Journal about Laura Silsby, the American charged with child abduction for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti, first on the grounds they were orphans, then with the claims that their parents consented, hoping the children would have a shot at better lives. What a brutal choice that would be, but in any event, the piece clearly shows that Silsby, whatever you think of her intentions, was unqualified to do the job for the most pedestrian of reasons, including the inability to float her own businesses or keep her house out of foreclosure, a multi-million dollar runaway kid center that smells like pure delusion, and an unforgivable naivete about international law. Silsby has not, in the past, let her inadequacies faze her, as when she told a creditor unsuccessfully trying to collect a $320,o00 debt, "But for God, we wouldn't be getting through this tough time."
Silsby's created another tough time for herself, one the State Department is having to foot at least part of the bill for, saying it will "continue to provide appropriate consular assistance and to monitor the developments in the legal case." I don't know about you, but I don't feel like paying for others' salvation fantasies. If you read the comments on the WSJ site, you will see this attitude identified as the heart of the problem.
What do you think?
She needs some serious Hatian jail time and her passport revoked for life. I think she is delusional, which combined with arrogance and grandiosity can lead to Jim Jones syndrome.
Posted by: Eric | February 05, 2010 at 09:03 AM
Magical thinking is magical thinking, no matter to whom or what you pray.
Posted by: KateC | February 07, 2010 at 06:14 PM
I think a lot should depend on her intentions. Not that I approve of breaking the law (although I'm not sure if the law in Haiti really qualifies as such), but if she was really trying to help these kids by taking them away from what has to be one of the worst places in the world to grow up, then she should be helped. There's not much that could be worse than growing up in that poor, violent, criminal enviroment, grown even more dysfunctional now with the earthquake - and these kids without parents to boot! - so most likely she was doing these kids a huge favor.
Posted by: Zev | February 08, 2010 at 07:47 AM
Here are(and what I expected) the results of Silsby's despicable and immoral(in my opinion) actions-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/world/americas/09airlift.html?hp
Posted by: Michelle | February 08, 2010 at 11:24 PM
Thanks, Michelle. A unique and deadly twist on the "no good deed goes unpunished" rule. A clip from the Times' piece:
"Before 10 Americans were arrested trying to take children out of Haiti late last month, the largest pediatric field hospital in Haiti was airlifting 15 injured children aboard private flights to the United States each day.
"But since the arrests, it has been able to evacuate only three children on private flights to American hospitals, according to Elizabeth Greig, the field hospital’s chief administrative officer, who has been in charge of trying to get the necessary Haitian and American approval.
"At least 10 other children have died or become worse while waiting to be airlifted out of the country, she said. Dozens of children are in critical need of care, and there has been no shortage of American hospitals or pilots willing to take them."
Posted by: Nancy Rommelmann | February 09, 2010 at 08:33 AM
In other words, the Haitians would rather let the kids die than let them be airlifted out. Some country to have to grow up in. Silsby was doing them a favor.
Posted by: Zev | February 09, 2010 at 10:15 AM
Well Zev, let's remember that the U.S. has played a big part in making Haiti such a great place for children(and adults for that matter).
Silsby can rot in jail for all I care. There are legitimate non god-blind people trying to help over there.
Posted by: Michelle | February 09, 2010 at 12:18 PM
"let's remember that the U.S. has played a big part in making Haiti such a great place for children(and adults for that matter)."
That may be true, or not. Either way, it's irrelevant to the point I made.
Posted by: Zev | February 09, 2010 at 03:20 PM
"There are legitimate non god-blind people trying to help over there."
Since when is one's belief in God a reason they should not be allowed to help the needy? You seem to think it would be better that children not be helped than that they be helped by believers. So very rational.
Posted by: Zev | February 09, 2010 at 03:22 PM
I heard a fantastic program on the radio yesterday, interviewing two doctors -- one from Stanford, the other from an East Bay Hospital -- who went with their medical teams to Haiti. They both said, the most important things were to find out which organizations had great infrastructure -- they named some international health org. and CARE as examples -- to quickly find out how to best work within these channels, and then figure out how to be a help, rather than a hindrance, another mouth to feed or body to shelter. They also commended the extraordinary work of the US military, as well as teams of doctors from Switzerland and other places. They all quickly got up to speed and have done and are still doing worlds of good. I don't see Silsby as fitting in anywhere here. She and her group went in, took some kids (some with parental authorization, some without) and tried to leave the country. She has not done any good. She has hurt the system. I am not saying the systems in place are great, but just because one has good intentions (so-called; have you read the WSJ article about Silsby's past? She's delusional) does not mean one gets to act on them in defiance of all else. I don't think we would have felt much compassion for foreigners coming into the US after Katrina and spiriting away children on the grounds that they could give them better homes in, say, Yugoslavia.
Posted by: Nancy Rommelmann | February 09, 2010 at 03:38 PM
I said up front that I don't approve of lawbreaking. The question posed was not whether Silsby did the right thing, but whether she should be helped now in her current plight or whether she should be left to rot in jail. I say her good intentions should count. That in no way means that she should have acted on them in the way she did.
I read most of the Times piece. I don't think it paints her as a bad person; more as an inept or an unlucky one. Even the fellow dunning her for the 320k spoke well of her. I see mean-spiritedness in some of the comments here.
Posted by: Zev | February 09, 2010 at 04:21 PM
"I don't think we would have felt much compassion for foreigners coming into the US after Katrina and spiriting away children on the grounds that they could give them better homes in, say, Yugoslavia."
That's b/c life in Yugoslavia would be worse not better. Not so in the case of the Haitian kids. Also, you're assuming she spirited them away. She claims she obtained permissions. Perhaps she did. Do you know otherwise?
Posted by: Zev | February 09, 2010 at 04:24 PM
A column from today's WaPo, which I realize will not settle the discussion, but some good information:
Anyone sitting in a dank, fetid Haitian jail for any reason probably deserves at least a measure of sympathy, so in that sense I feel sorry for the Baptist missionaries from Idaho charged with kidnapping 33 "orphans" and trying to take them out of the country. But what the do-gooders allegedly did was not just misguided. It could be criminal, and Haitian authorities are right to hold them accountable.
Even in the midst of a terrible natural disaster, spiriting away a busload of kids in that manner -- with vague plans to worry about the "paperwork" later -- is no act of charity. The missionaries' misadventure can only make the work of those truly interested in the welfare of neglected or abandoned children more difficult.
It doesn't help the missionaries' case that their leader, 40-year-old Laura Silsby, has, according to the Idaho Statesman, "a history of failing to pay debts, failing to pay employees and failing to follow Idaho laws." The newspaper reported last week that Silsby has been the target of eight lawsuits and 14 claims for unpaid wages, mostly relating to an Internet business that she founded in 1999, and also that she had received four traffic citations since 1997 for having failed to register or insure the vehicle she was driving.
The Statesman also reported that "the $358,000 house in a Boise suburb where [Silsby] founded her nonprofit New Life Children's Refuge in November was foreclosed on in December." What's interesting about that isn't the foreclosure but the time frame: Silsby's initiative to establish her own orphanage or "refuge" for Haitian children was just weeks old. The group planned to set up a facility to house, educate and outplace the orphans in the Dominican Republic.
When the Haiti earthquake struck, Silsby and nine others flew down, assembled a group of 33 boys and girls, and headed for the Dominican border. That was where Haitian police stopped them and discovered they had none of the documents required to take children out of the country.
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According to reports from Haiti, it has been established that many, if not most, of the children were not even orphans. Silsby is believed to have had "permission" from at least some of the children's parents or guardians to take them away. But in no instance, authorities say, did the missionaries have the proper documentation needed for a surrender of parental rights. And reports from Calebasse, the small town near Port-au-Prince where most of the children lived, indicate that some were handed over by adults who were not their parents -- a brother, a godmother, an informal guardian.
Did the Haitian authorities overreact? Not given the fact that thousands of Haitian children are effectively sold into servitude each year, mostly as domestic workers. Known in Creole as restaveks -- from the French reste avec, or "stays with" -- the children are vulnerable to psychological, physical and sexual abuse. Mostly they are exploited in Haiti, but restaveks have been rescued from the Dominican Republic as well. At the border, Haitian authorities said there was no way to be sure that these people from Idaho had the children's best interests at heart.
But let's assume they did. Let's assume that neither the missionaries nor the Haitians who signed the children away had any kind of nefarious intent. Even if we assume that all anyone wanted was for the children to have better lives, what allegedly took place was still wrong.
Silsby's intention, according to news reports, was to find American families to adopt the children. I am a huge advocate of adoption, be it international, cross-racial or cross-cultural; the bottom line should be the best interests of the child. But giving up a son or daughter is one of the most wrenching decisions a parent can face, and it has to be done right, with ample time to think about it. No parent or guardian should ever have to surrender a child under duress.
I can't imagine more duress than trying to provide for a family in the days after a disaster of the magnitude of the Haiti earthquake. It was a moment of overwhelming need and despair -- precisely the wrong moment to expect a parent or guardian to make a permanent, life-changing decision.
True charity would have been to help those families care for their children -- not to put them in a bus and drive them away.
Posted by: Nancy Rommelmann | February 09, 2010 at 04:34 PM
Well spoken Nancy.
Posted by: Eric | February 09, 2010 at 04:42 PM
"Did the Haitian authorities overreact? Not given the fact that thousands of Haitian children are effectively sold into servitude each year, mostly as domestic workers. Known in Creole as restaveks -- from the French reste avec, or "stays with" -- the children are vulnerable to psychological, physical and sexual abuse. Mostly they are exploited in Haiti"
So the Haitians have thousands of children being sold into slavery each year in their own country, by their own people, to their own people, and the only people they can find to arrest are these ten do-gooding foreigners. Interesting.
Posted by: Zev | February 09, 2010 at 06:35 PM
I don't think anyone here has claimed Haiti is a paragon of virtue, Zev. It's not. It's been a political, economic and social hellhole in many ways since I have been alive. You seem to believe the Silsbys of the world are part of the solution. I disagree. I think she's another parasite, of a different kind, and one who claims -- and obviously, she's not alone -- her aims are unassailable because she only seeks to do God's work. You believe her. I believe she's delusional, and ineffective, and as proof offer her present state, backed up by her past. You can say, well, she's just a little bit off with her finances, and had not all the other crooked people in Haiti, with an assist from the media, left her in peace, her mission would have been successful. But how? She'd botched her previous business, and by her own account, the orphanage/refuge had been planned but weeks before, and did not yet exist. How was this all just going to work out? And what about all the stories you read daily, or I read daily, about people working months and years to get these kids to safe homes -- are they fools? Should we just all go down, find some sorry looking folks, and say, here I am, good woman that I am, to take your children to better lives? Why is Silsby any more trustworthy than those who sell kids into slavery -- because she says she is? Where is the proof?
Here's a motto: Say what you do, do what you say, and prove it. Silbsy has failed on all counts. I wouldn't trust her with anyone's kid, certainly not my own.
Posted by: Nancy Rommelmann | February 09, 2010 at 10:06 PM
I don't think you're understanding my point at all. I'm not saying that Silsby should be trusted with people's kids, or that what she did was a good idea, or that she's not delusional, or that she's a paragon of virtue, or that she's part of the solution, or any of the other things you say I say. What I am saying is that if her intentions were good, even if misguided, she should be helped, so that she need not spend years in a hellhole of a Hatian jail. (Try to imagine what that must be like. I'd support her doing federal time in a US prison if it turns out she broke the law. But no way she deserves what awaits her in Haiti if convicted.) And it's altogether possible that her intentions were good. People who know her say that she's a good person. Hell, even the person dunning her for hundreds of thousands of dollars says that she seems to be a good person. Yet, you have decided that no, she's evil, and deserves really severe punishment in the worst way, and no help from us at all. Sorry, I'm not buying.
As for the Haitian government, it's not just that they are utterly corrupt and cruel, and entirely without morals, it's that they themselves are likely implicated in the "thousands" of real kidnappings and enslavements of children that take place there "every year" (as per the Wapo article you cited). If you think any endeavor of that size and profitability happens in a place like Haiti without governmental complicity, you're naive. And yet, Silsby and her do-gooder compatriots are held up as evil exploiters. It's laughable. But all too believable in a country that, after the earthquake, was accusing its rescuers of colonialism. I suspect that what's going on here has nothing to do with protecting Hatian children. More likely they are grabbing an opportunity to showcase the evil of the white, American exploiters. The Hatians have got their hands on some lily-white, American colonialist missionaries, and they are going to make them pay. The gang is pretending to be a government, but there's no reason for us to go along with the pretense.
Posted by: Zev | February 10, 2010 at 08:08 AM
I can agree with a lot of that, Zev; I haven't addressed whether the punishment she is getting is just (others here have). And I agree with you: the Haitians likely are using her as an example, and I would be happy for her to serve her time, if it's time that should be served, in the US. The problem is, she committed the crime (and of course can quibble about whether she has, and if so, whether she was cognizant of said such) in another country. We only have so much jurisdiction. Yes, yes, of course we can sway justice when it suits us, and yes, the system is always corrupt and favors those power chooses to favor. C'est la guerre. But the US is a Christian nation, and if Silsby has a chance of getting out, it seems to me she has a lot of allies here that will push for this. Also, if you read the Christian news ((I am not Christian but I did peruse a few stories about Silsby yesterday at different online sources) you will see there is a groundswell of support for her. I highly doubt there will be any longterm rotting in a Haitian jail in her future.
Posted by: Nancy Rommelmann | February 10, 2010 at 08:16 AM
That's all I'm arguing for; that if she meant well, we should try to help her, even though she behaved like a fool. We should not be swift to condemn her to rot in a Hatian jail, as some here have wished for. I certainly agree that in going about things as she did, she is all kinds of a fool, and perhaps worse.
Posted by: Zev | February 10, 2010 at 09:46 AM
"...let's remember that the U.S. has played a big part in making Haiti such a great place for children(and adults for that matter)."
That is ahistorical, blame-America-first nonsense.
Posted by: Mike LaRoche | February 10, 2010 at 04:10 PM
It turns out that the parents handed over the kids voluntarily, in the hope they'd find a better life outside Haiti. Eight of the ten have already been freed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35441854/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake
Posted by: Zev | February 17, 2010 at 04:40 PM