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Archives > Volume 8 Issue 10 - February 5, 2010 Haiti charges U.S. Baptists with kidnapping...Ten members of a U.S. missionary group who said they were trying to rescue 33 child victims of Haiti's devastating earthquake were charged with child kidnapping and criminal association on Thursday, their lawyer said. ABC News story here 
Edwin Coq said after a court hearing that a judge found sufficient evidence to charge the Americans, who were arrested Friday at Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic. Coq attended Thursday's hearing and represents the entire group in Haiti.
Group leader Laura Silsby has said they were trying to take orphans and abandoned children to an orphanage in the neighboring Dominican Republic. She acknowledged they had not sought permission from Haitian officials, but said they just meant to help victims of the quake. The children taken from the group, ranging in age from 2 to 12, were being cared for at the Austrian-run SOS Children's Village in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday. 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. Coq said a Haitian prosecutor told him the Americans were charged because they had the children in their possession. No one from the Haitian government could be reached immediately for comment. 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. Coq said that nine of the 10 knew nothing about the alleged scheme, or that paperwork for the children was not in order. "I'm going to do everything I can to get the nine out," Coq said. That would still leave mission leader Laura Silsby facing charges. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington the U.S. was open to discuss "other legal avenues" for the defendants - an apparent reference to the Haitian prime minister's earlier suggestion that Haiti could consider sending the Americans back to the United States for prosecution. Several parents of the children in Callebas, a quake-wracked Haitian village near the capital, told The Associated Press Wednesday they had handed over their children willingly because they were unable to feed or clothe their children and the American missionaries promised to give them a better life. Their accounts contradicted statements by Silsby, of Meridian, Idaho. In a jailhouse interview Saturday, Silsby told the AP that most of the children had been delivered to the Americans by distant relatives, while some came from orphanages that had collapsed in the quake. "They are very precious kids that have lost their homes and families and are so deeply in need of, most of all, God's love and his compassion," she said. In Callebas, parents said a local orphanage worker, fluent in English and acting on behalf of the Baptists, had convened nearly the entire village of 500 people on a dirt soccer field to present the Americans' offer. Isaac Adrien, 20, told his neighbors the missionaries would educate their children in the neighboring Dominican Republic, the villagers said, adding that they were also assured they would be free to visit their children there. Many parents jumped at the offer. Adrien said he met Silsby in Port-au-Prince on January 26. She told him she was looking for homeless children, he said, and he knew exactly where to find them. He rushed home to Callebas, where people scrape by growing carrots, peppers and onions. That very day, he had a list of 20 children. As they loaded children onto a bus in Callebas on January 28, the Americans took down contact information for all the families and assured them a relative would be able to visit them in the Dominican Republic. See vol8_iss8 and vol8_iss9 for more on this story. Caseworker visited Texas home day before Mom killed two boys... A child welfare caseworker visited the San Antonio home of two young brothers the day before police say their mother stabbed them to death. AP News story here 
There was no indication that Elyse Marsyl Colon, 22, might harm her children when the caseworker visited the home Monday, said Mary Walker, a Texas Department of Family and Protective Services spokeswoman.
Authorities say Colon calmly surrendered to police officers outside her home Tuesday evening and told them "I killed my babies." The officers found the bodies of 3-year-old Jose Luis Garcia and 1-year-old Guillermo Garcia lying next to each other in a bed in the home. "Words can't describe the scene," San Antonio police Chief William McManus said. "It was unspeakably sad." After Colon was placed in the patrol car, she allegedly told police, "Their father was in jail, I want him to know." Colon was being held Wednesday on two counts of capital murder. Her bond was set at $2 million, and she had no attorney listed in court records. She cursed at reporters while being taken to court for arraignment late Tuesday. Caseworkers had visited the family from time to time since 2006, when Colon was accused of using drugs while pregnant with Jose Luis, Walker said. The drug tests were negative. In other news... 
The U.S. Marshal's Service has added its Sex Offender Investigation Unit to the search for a missing 7-year-old Oklahoma girl and her stepfather. The Oklahoman news story here Authorities have been searching for 7-year-old Aja Johnson and Lester Hobbs since January 24 when Tonya Hobbs, 37, Lester Hobbs' estranged wife and the mother of the girl, was found beaten to death in a camper near Geronimo in southern Comanche County. Law enforcement officers conducted a house-by-house search Wednesday for the missing girl and planned to check every home in the area, said Marc Crawford of the Sex Offender Investigation Unit. An Amber Alert has been in effect since January 24 for Johnson after her mother was found dead. Hobbs, 46, was charged January 26 in Comanche County District Court with first-degree murder and kidnapping. Crawford said that the Sex Offender Unit became involved in the investigation after investigators received information that Hobbs could be sexually abusing the child. The Marshal's Service moved its newest command center trailer to Geronimo Sunday night. Crawford said the $1.3 million mobile command post, housed in Oklahoma City, serves the service for the western portion of the United States including Alaska and can be flown anywhere it is needed. The case was mentioned briefly on Saturday's episode of America's Most Wanted television show and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation was culling about 300 leads Wednesday, Jessica Brown, spokesperson, said. She said the investigation has been a step behind since its beginning due to the estimated 24-hour head start Hobbs had before the Amber Alert was called.
Ed Smart feels "sorry" for one of his daughter's kidnappers, but sidestepped whether he has been able to comply with Barzees plea for forgiveness. ABC story here Smart made it clear on "Good Morning America" today that he holds Barzee responsible for helping her husband Brian David Mitchell kidnap Elizabeth Smart in 2002 when she was 14 and hold her captive for a nine month ordeal in which Elizabeth was repeatedly raped. "When I think of Elizabeth being taken, Wanda certainly perpetuated this," Smart said on "Good Morning America" today. "[Brian David Mitchell] had built up this idea of what they were going to have and he was going to have all of these slave wives and she was going to be the queen. And she was very much of the opinion that this is what she was going to have and this was going to get her there. And she wanted that," Smart said. (For more on this story, see vol7_iss55.) Barzee's children detailed that cycle of abuse in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired Tuesday. The children called their mother a "monster" who once served the youngest daughter her pet rabbit for dinner. "I asked what's for dinner and she said chicken," LouRee Gayler told Winfrey. She remembered her mother Wanda Barzee and her second husband Brian David Mitchell just picking at their meals, "but she had a smile on her face the whole time," Gayler said. When Gayler went to feed her pet rabbit the next morning, she found the cage empty. "What happened to Peaches?" she asked her mother, referring to the pet. "You had it for dinner last night," she said her mother replied. Gayler, the youngest of Barzee's six children, was 14 at the time and had some of the harshest memories of her mother and her two husbands. She recalled being so starved for affection that she would turn to her dog, stay in the doghouse with the pooch and eat dog food out the dog's bowl. Her older brother Derrick Thompson, who wrote a book about his childhood entitled "Raised By Wolves," said he would escape the physical abuse and cold atmosphere in their home by staying in the large back yard, living there instead of in the house. He would use a pellet gun to shoot birds and cook them over a spit. Barzee's children either left home or were thrown out of the house by the time they were 13 or 14, they told Oprah.
Officers have arrested person-of-interest Tammi Smith in connection with the disappearance of baby Gabriel Johnson. KPHO story here Gabriel disappeared at the end of December in San Antonio, Texas. His mother, Elizabeth Johnson, sits in a Maricopa County jail on charges of kidnapping and custodial interference. Smith, 37, and her husband, Jack Smith, said they were going to adopt Gabriel, but Johnson's ex-boyfriend, Logan McQueary, would not cooperate. According to a statement from the Tempe Police Department, Smith was charged with conspiracy to commit custodial interference, custodial interference and forgery. For more information on this story, see vol8_iss2, vol8_iss3, and vol8_iss4.
Four Philadelphia social workers charged with fraud in a case linked to the starvation death of a disabled teenager defended their work as their trial opened Wednesday, saying they were not paid for any medical expertise. ABC News story here In an unusual criminal case, federal prosecutors are trying to prove the social workers defrauded the city of millions of dollars aimed at helping the neediest families on city welfare rolls. Danieal Kelly's family fit that description. Her unfit mother was raising six or seven children alone in a squalid two-bedroom rowhome. Danieal, who had cerebral palsy and could not walk, had once thrived in the care of her father and stepfather in another state. But before she died in the stifling apartment in August 2006, the 14-year-old was spending most of her time in bed, without much schooling, medical care or even sufficient food and water. She weighed just 42 pounds, and had severe, maggot-infested bedsores. Andrea Kelly is serving 20 to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to third-degree murder in state court. The federal defendants include the founders and supervisors of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc., which was paid $1 million a year to oversee a relatively small caseload of high-risk families. Federal prosecutors charge that they huddled in the hours after Kelly's death and created documents to purport they had made the required twice-weekly visits to the Kelly home and others. "This is a case about protecting children," Assistant U.S. Attorney Vineet Gauri said in opening statements. "It's about a company that said, 'Pay us, we'll be that safety net. We'll make sure these kids are safe.'" See vol6_iss51 for more on this story.
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