I’ve been meaning to post this addition to the Very Important Person Hall of Fame.
On January 29, ABC 4 in Salt Lake City reported a baby lift story that involves Very Important Persons in Utah and beyond. The Very Important Person Magnet is Stephen Studdert, (a VIP in his own right) an adviser to Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. You can read his bio on his Studdert Group webite.
According to the ABC 4 report Studdert started the Utah Hospital Task Force and negotiated the “release” of 125 “orphans (the figure was later corrected) bound mostly for Salt Lake City and presumably nice Mormon homes.
As a former mission president for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Studdert started the task force with a call to all former L.D.S. missionaries who served in Haiti to return in the aftermath of the earthquake to serve again, this time as volunteer interpreters. The task force was expanded to also include medical teams, construction workers and security personnel.
The Task Force doesn’t have a webpage, but it does have a blog and a Facebook page. It is working with Healing Hands for Haiti International Foundation, 501(3)(c), which seems to be an L-d-S organization, founded in Salt Lake in 1998. Its mission is fostering the expansion and quality of rehabilitation services for the benefit of physically disabled adults and children in Haiti. The Healing Hands facility in Port au Prince was severely damaged in the earthquake. Dr. Jeff Randle, founder and Chair of the Healing Hands Governance Committee has just returned from a week in Haiti. His blog is here.
According to ABC 4, the “orphan” evacuation had been “up in the air” for a week. On the 28th it was called off again when the adoption agency handling the children said that the Prime Minister of Haiti (why is it that US reporters can’t actually write his name?) Jean-Max Bellerive, had left the country without signing the releases. The Deseret News pouted, “The Haitian prime minister had run off to Canada.” The same article parenthetically informed us: “he was reportedly in Canada.” (NOTE: Google is your friend).
Bellerive, in fact, was in Montreal attending a conference with US Secreatry of State Hillary Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper and others to “review and improve the delivery of short-term aid as well as chart a course for long-term recovery”–hardly as important, of course, as expeditiously sending off a few dozen adoptables to be Mormonized and Caucasianized. The Miami Herald reported that after the Montreal trip Bellerive went to the Domincan Republic, presumably on business, not to live it up at someplace like Villa Castellamonte to spite USA paps.
On Thursday evening, around the time Studdert’s “rescue plane” landed, agency reps said they were informed Bellerive was returning to Port au Prince, but would not be available until some time Friday to finalize the authorizations. The “rescue plane” might be forced to return without its human cargo.
Then, like Jones, along came Studder. ABC 4 reports: (my emphasis):
The jet (Studdert’s plane) landed in Port au Prince late Thursday night with a task force of 110 Utah volunteers.
ABC 4 News has learned Stephen Studdert, the task force leader, went immediately into negotiations with both U.S. and Haitian officials on the fate of orphans from the Foyer de Sion Orphanage — 70 of whom already have adoptive parents waiting for them in the United States.
These negotiations continued through the early morning hours of Friday while the task force’s charter jet remained on the runway at the Port au Prince airport in violation of rules requiring relief aircraft to depart within 90 minutes of arrival.
Aid planes were delayed or diverted, so Steve Studdert could bring home the bacon to Utah.
On January 29, at 8:48 AM the Healing Hands blog posted a text message that the organization had negotiated the release of 125 “orphans” who were headed to Miami.
We have negotiated the release of 125 orphans bound for SLC and are on ramp in Haiti. Steve Studdert and Executive team along with full support from US Military and US Customs and ICE Agents made it happen. It is truly a miracle.
According to ABC 4, 70 of the “orphans” were going to adoptive parents waiting for them in the US. As usual, reporting was fuzzy and incurious with universal claims that the children had been adopted pre-earthquake, though it is more likely they were in the pipeline. Maybe.
The adoptions went through For Every Child. Here is its Haiti Adoption page. Agency rep Lori Timmerman told ABC 4 that the agency was scurrying to arrange for host families though social service agencies if “extra children do in fact make the trip to Utah.”
Extra children??? And how might they get through?
But wait! There’s more! Watch this video from the SLC Fox affiliate where we learn that the “release” was pushed through by Utah Senators Orrin Hatch (right), Bob Bennett, two other unnamed US Senators, the US Ambassador, and two unnamed former White House officials. Here is Hatch’s press release. In an entry dated Jaunary 29, 8:15 PM, the task force blog acknowleges assistance from Hatch and Bennett.
And we can’t forget God who created this massive orphan migration for his greater glory and to make the American middle class feel good about itself. Lori Rosenlof, a pap in waiting of two and Port au Prince orphan herder told the Deseret News, “God has had his hands all over this.”
Foyer de Sion publishes blog updates here and also mentions Hatch.
The number of children supposedly sent to the US varies greatly. Initially, the Utah Task Force said 150 would be taken out. The number has varied due to paperwork problems, final release authorizations, last minute changes, misstatements, and misreporting. 150 was downgraded to 141, 125, 70, and finally 66, a figure the task force says is correct. Other children reportedly will be airlifted by other aid agencies when the US government approves entry.
Jason Glen Taylor, a volunteer with the Utah Hospital Task Force hit the public’s panic button when he begged, during the Fox video, “These babies will not survive here. There’s babies dying in the streets. Let us take these babies home.”
But those babies are not dying in the streets–not those with a troop of task force nannies taking care of them. Instead babies are dying in streets, hospitals, and camps due to lack of medical supplies and other aid while privileged politicians, their cronies, and “desperate” US paps hog air space and tarmacs, twist arms and play Great White Hope.
It’s all about adoption! It’s all about us!
I am waiting for Utah to secede from the Union and declare itself a sovereign nation, created by God. The political and financial power wielded by the LDS is huge. We cannot ignore these arrogant a$$e$ any longer. They are getting dangerous.
I got hold of and read a small exerpt from the Mormon “binding” ceremony used when one of the faithful adopts. Chilling!
Just more human trafficking given the cute name: adoption.
It doesn’t matter how the ap’s get ’em. They WANT them and THEY ARE GOING TO GET THEM. (It reminds me of the girl in Willy Wonka who throws the temper tantrum wanting the “golden goose”.
Hello. I would like to interview you for my blog. Here is my email address, [email protected] if you are interested please email me so I can inturn, email you. Thanks. Carole Turner
I had heard on a CNN newscast that Haiti is considering sending them to USA for trial. I wonder if the PAPs and LDS can just pay their way out of this.
Robin, if you want to learn more about how screwed up and controlling the Mormon Church is, as well as their strange beliefs and ceremonies, go to
http://www.exmormon.org/
This is a site for people who have left the Mormon Church, but anyone can read and post. Lots of information, lots of heartbreaking stories and bright and interesting people. Adoption does come up from time to time, and there was a good thread on the recent Haiti incident.
This is just horrifying, though I am not surprised. I recently read a reliable statistic that 86% of children ion foreign orphanages are NOT in fact orphans, they have at least one parent living. This doesn’t count extended family. Nor does it account for the ways in which orphanages are used in very poor countries. Many times, parents leave children at an orphanage TEMPORARILY because their poverty is so dire. Only to come back and find they have been adopted out from under them. And even children without extended family to care for them are still the future of that country.
Shameful and shameless.
I live in SLC – where can I go to be a one woman protest? I wonder if I will get arrested – especially as I am not LDS.
CNN is doing a long piece about the 10 Americans arrested…will post it after it shows up on the CNN site.
The church members are trying to spin this, and some of the CNN reporters are sympathetic, but it’s just not making a lot of sense. I think Silsby made some extremely incriminating statements early on.
The PR guy for the Idaho church says “We’d like to just bring the Americans home, where they belong.” Oh the irony…
ABC News reports:
“Arrest of Americans Deepens Haiti Adoption Debate”
“The debate over international adoption, already a bitter one, has intensified in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake and the arrest of 10 Americans for trying to take children out of the devastated country without permission.
Some groups are urging a long moratorium on new adoptions from Haiti, saying there is too much chaos and too high a risk of mistakes or child trafficking. Other groups fear any long-term clampdown will consign countless children to lives in institutions or on the street, rather than in the loving homes of adoptive parents.
[Ah, the either/or argument.]
Chuck Johnson, chief operating officer of the National Council for Adoption, said the arrests of the 10 U.S. Baptists would probably undercut his organization’s push to expand adoptions from Haiti as soon as feasible.
“It was a critical mistake — the Haitian government has been very clear they did not want any children leaving without its express permission,” Johnson said Monday. “Maybe the Americans thought they were helping 33 kids, but now there’s going to be a much slower process and maybe even a ban on future adoptions — and that would be a tragedy.”
…
The consequences of rushing to help children leave Haiti can be severe, according to the Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
In one case, LIRS said, a 12-year-old boy who was allowed onto a U.S. military plane without documentation or relatives in the U.S. and is now in limbo while officials try to find out if he left family behind in Haiti. In another case, a 3-year-old boy arrived on a private plane with other orphans even though the family who had been planning to adopt him had changed their mind and abandoned the process.
“It’s an example of why it’s important to be patient and thorough,” said Olivia Faires, director of children’s services for LIRS. “It does add trauma, even in the midst of the chaos, to remove them from their customary surroundings.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wirestory?id=9721113&page=1
This is a decent article with a lot of back-and-forth, definitely worth reading in full.
Here’s part of the CNN piece:
http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/02/01/penhaul.haiti.americans.det.cnn
Also, a CBS News report:
“Haiti’s prime minister said Monday that 10 Americans who tried to take a busload of undocumented Haitian children out of the country knew that “what they were doing was wrong,” and could be prosecuted in the United States.
Prime Minister Max Bellerive told The Associated Press that his country is open to having the Americans face U.S. justice, since most government buildings — including Haiti’s courts — were crippled by the monster earthquake.
“It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents,” Bellerive said. “And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong.”
…
U.S. Embassy officials would not say whether Washington would accept hosting judicial proceedings for the Americans, who are mostly from Idaho. For now, the case remains firmly in Haitian hands, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington.
…
One of their lawyers said they were being treated poorly: “There is no air conditioning, no electricity. It is very disturbing,” Attorney Jorge Puello told the AP by phone from the Dominican Republic, where the Baptists hoped to shelter the children in a rented beach hotel.
[No electricity? Why might that be…OH YEAH it’s a disaster zone.]
…
Of 20 Haitian parents interviewed in a tent camp by the AP on Sunday, only one said she would not give up her children to give them a chance at a better life.
CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that a promise of just such a life was allegedly used by the Baptist group in Haiti. Families of five of the children reportedly showed aid workers brochures, allegedly provided by the Baptist group, promising a “better life,” including swimming pools and tennis courts.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/01/world/main6163513.shtml?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
I just read here…
http://christwire.org/2010/02/haiti-kidnaps-10-american-christians/
Is this for real? Sounds almost like a parody, but methinks it is real!! If it is a parody, let me know. Otherwise, Please, Somebody, save us from these Cheezis Crazies!!
Great pic in this report…
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/americans-questioned-over-child-kidnapping-3346980
More interesting statements in a NYTimes article:
“In the wake of the worst natural disaster in Haiti’s history, the authorities have opened the country to a flood of international assistance, some of it coming uncomfortably close to infringing on national sovereignty.
[an understatement.]
The 10 Americans, the authorities said, had crossed the line.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive angrily denounced them as “kidnappers” who “knew what they were doing was wrong.” Justice Minister Paul Denis said, “We may be weakened, but without laws the Haitian state would cease to exist.”
And the chief of the National Judicial Police, Frantz Thermilus, said: “What surprises me is that these people would never do something like this in their own country. We must make clear they cannot do such things in ours.”
more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/world/americas/02orphans.html
Just had to add this headline I saw on an exMormon list about the recent Mormon Babylift:
“Kiddie Kidnapping For Christ”!
says it all.
Carol–I can’t do anything for a couple days. I’ll drop you a line privately.
Some good news:
“Spain said on Saturday it will provide Haiti with a DNA testing system to help reunite lost children with their families and combat the trafficking of minors in the aftermath of the earthquake on January 12.
Haitian officials will take saliva or blood samples from minors separated from their families in the disaster, as well as from parents who have reported missing children, Spain’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“With these samples a database will be created which will be available for Haitian authorities,” it added.
Last week the UN Children’s Fund said there have been 15 documented cases of children disappearing from hospitals since the earthquake hit Port-Au-Prince and surrounding areas.
The genetic testing system, called DNA-Prokids, has already helped identify more than 230 victims of child trafficking in 12 countries, the ministry said.
It was developed by the University of Granada in southern Spain and was rolled out in several nations in 2009. Spain will provide it to Haiti free of charge.”
http://www.news24.com/Content/World/Haiti_Quake/3974/e96126d0b4124f1cab8077f39c545053/31-01-2010-10-16/DNA_test_to_reunite_Haitians
Robin~
It’s so funny you should mention seceding as i said these EXACT words yesterday. I don’t now how anyone who isn’t Moromon survives living in Utah..