A mistaken attribution fixed from Randy Bohlener to DownshoreDrift)
God continues to stick it to Laura Silsby and her combination cellie and live-in nanny Charisa Coulter. One or two more days in jail.
Various news sources (I’m mostly using AFP via Raw Story, Verdict on US missionaries in Haiti imminent: US official with a little backup from the AP’s Haiti judge not ready to release 2 US missionaries), report that Judge Bernard Saint-Vil has heard testimony from his three unnamed witnesses (Why do we know who they are, but the MSM won’t name them: Hildago, Chenvert and Sanvil?) and now needs only to send the evidence to the prosecutor general’s office for a final go-over.
“The final decision is mine,” Saint-Vil said. And from all accounts, the dynamic duo intend to be home soon.
According to the AP:
The two women were in good spirits while waiting for the hearing, dressed in casual shirts, shorts and sandals, chatting with members of their legal team and eating sandwiches. Afterward they filled out U.S. Embassy and court forms before boarding a Haitian police truck that took them back to jail.
“We’re waiting on the judge’s decision and on our God,” Silsby told reporters as they left.
Silsby, wearing her customary well-scrubbed and blissed-out exburban Baptist face, flashed her Bible to reporters, reciting Psalm 33:20: “Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.”
In a separate AP article Tuesday, Detained, US missionary: I’d come back to Haiti, Silsby absurdly declared her desire to return to Haiti, presumably while she thinks her iron is hot:
Oh yes, both of us would come back to Haiti because there is so much need here, especially for the children,” Silsby told an AP reporter at the airport-side police station where they are being held.
“We would definitely come back to help them once this misunderstanding or whatever you want to call it is sorted out.”
Whatever you want to call it?
We realize that Silsby hasn’t the amenities she’s accustomed to at the moment, like Google. She might want to type her name in when she gets back to the US.
And, hold on to your hats:
The missionary said she wants to go ahead with setting up that orphanage, taking in both earthquake victims and the children of Haitian migrant sugarcane cutters in the Dominican Republic.
Those orphans and cane cutter kids will have to stand in line behind about $2 million worth of creditors and a lot of ungrateul former employees eager to steal the food out of the mouths of children. Those no-pays are probably a misunderstanding or whatever you want to call it.
I’d like to point you to Baby Love Child’s Central Valley Baptist Church used its tax status for Laura Silby’s New Life mission, too. Looks like there was a little misunderstanding or whatever you want to call it about the New Life Children’s Refuge tax status and fundsraising practices. 
This is a big story we hope (dare I say it?) the IRS picks up. It could be just a matter of the church acting as fiscal agent, but why do I think it’s more? BTW, why does Sean Lankford insist that he never paid Jorge Torres Puello a dime, when there is ample evidence to suggest that a lot of money was wired to DR?
We’re looking forward to a decision from the judge. This is a sovereign decision of the Haitian government,”…We are in touch with the authorities here and we’ll be looking for that decision, hopefully soon.
…There are complicated issues in play here”…
…”It’s not an easy question when we’re talking about minors and orphans, welfare and disasters…
…We need to be very actively involved in seeing that all the procedures that are in place to protect the welfare of minors are followed to avoid confusion and misunderstandings,” he said.
Then, he really went into diplomatic overdrive:
He explained the media attention the missionaries’ case had generated in the United States was educating the US public about the issues involved in adoption outreach in disaster-struck countries.
Unfortunately, instead of visiting the State Department’s Adoption Disaster Teleclassroom, Team Silsby and hundreds of other DIY orphan savers took up the cross of disaster evangelism and have converged on Haiti since the earthquake, in person or vicariously via the Internet. Instead of doing something useful, like helping to keep a family together or building a bathroom, they spend a lot of their time blogging and tweeting about how UNICEF and its “anti-international adoption agenda,” is not only responsible for TeamSilsby’s arrest, but strongarms governments to keep their children at home when they would much prefer to export them to far away places with strange sounding names.
Of course, this really isn’t about UNICEF and adoption (even if it is). It’s about Biblical American hatred of the god-hating UN which, depending on how far you’ve fallen off the meter, is run by Communists, Jews, Muslims, atheists,Freemasons , bankers, the Illuminati, eugenicists, or worshipers of Zeus. Or a mixture. That’s a topic for another time, but here is a random page of anti-UN blathering, and it’s one of the saner ones. Here’s one of the more insane.
There are a lot of adoption disaster busybodies clogging up bandwidth. Their adoption theology is complicated, goes beyond The Great Commission, and and difficult to grasp without a lot of history and context, which is beyond the scope of this blog. Without that context, I almost hesitate to post some of their Haitian thoughts, but I think it’s important to read the mentality we are dealing with. I’ve downloaded a lot of their pontificals. Here’s a few examples:
Doug Phillips: Doug’s Blog. Doug manages (why not?) to link sound trauma treatment and best practice child welfare to abortion:
On the ground in Haiti, Christian orphan relief workers and missionaries are experiencing opposition from UNICEF, an international abortion provider, and formal opponent to American adoptions of Haitian children.
Step One in UNICEF’s anti-adoption strategy was to attempt to confound the huge outpouring of compassion and adoption interest by the international community, by voicing their concerns and opposition. Step Two was to politicize the capture of ten American missionaries transporting Haitian orphans over the border to the Dominican Republic, by mounting a media campaign to raise concerns about sex trafficking. Given the tremendous financial input of the United Nations, and their massive presence in Haiti, it is understandable why the Haitian government has often been in lock-step with UNICEF priorities.
Mommy Blogger and serial Haiti adopter Watching the Waters: Mrs. Waters moans over the Haitian requirement that each child scheduled to be shipped off for adoption needs her or his case investigated and then to be approved individually by the president, not shipped off on the next plane by collectivist roundup.
UNICEF continued to push their anti-adoption agenda on the Haitian government, until the government insisted they needed to approve each child on a case-by-case basis. Now, I am 110% in favor of ensuring that each child coming out of Haiti actually be eligible for adoption. But this is not what this is about. These families, who have now been sleeping on the floor of the US Embassy in Haiti with their children for days, have paperwork proving that they have adoptions in process. But UNICEF feels that Haitian children should stay in Haiti. That it is better for a child to stay in the country that they were born in, even if it means they are raised in an orphanage. And the Haitian government is being cowed by the pressure.
Randy Bohlender serial adopter, cultural imperialist, and intercessory missionary (i.e.,unemployed; please send donations) and founder of the adoption ministry Zoe Foundation (not to be confused with the other odious Zoe’s Ark): Redeeming Orphans: (For a more extensive look at Randy go here.) Randy calls UNICEF’s “anti-adoption” promotion nothing more than “nation pandering” and thinks Haitian and other Third World people are just too dumb to know what’s best for themselves.
What would UNICEF do? In their perfectly ordered world, an orphan child would go through a process to verify that it’s an actual orphan. Then, they would try and match that child with an aunt, uncle or some other family member. If that fails, they look for another family in the country. If none shows up, they would look for a foreign national living in the child’s country of origin. If they can’t find a foreign national, then begrudgingly, they might be in favor of that child moving across a national border to a loving family.
The UNICEF perspective is that children in poverty-stricken condiitions are better off if they stay in orphanages in their native culture than if they leave their native culture and go to families in other countries. You can debate this all you want, but that is what is behind the fact that Haitan orphans are not being allowed to leave right now. UNICEF saw an opportunity to spread their philosophy to Haiti and they have a lot of money that the Haitian government needs. At least that is the story that is being reported by people in Haiti who are in the know.
God, probably distracted momentarily by a same sex marriage announcement in the New York Times or a San Berdoo bastard’s unsealed birth certificate, put scads of children in the wrong tummies, and now people like the above gang and Silsby have to clean up the mess. What would God do without his helpers?
Finally a short update on Paul Thompson, returned hero pastor of the Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls. Thompson (who I’ll write about in a backburner blog soon) preached his first sermon since his return from jail, and it was covered by the Twin Falls Times-News. The important part of the article comes toward the end where Thompson frames the TeamSilsby arrests and incarceration as a stage for evangelism and conversion as in Rahm Emanuel’s “You never let a serious crisis go to waste”“Lord, that’s the kind of displays of our lives that we want to the watching world,” he said.
There is much more to write about. I’ve got several half-written entries, which I hope to get up soon. Of course, there’s always new news pouring in.
Wow. Just. Wow. Silsby is completely insane. That she would even consider continuing her quest is indicative of serious mental disease. What does it take to stop people like this? She is apparently blissfully unaware that all of her dirty laundry has been publicly displayed. I can only hope that someone will talk some sense into her and prevent her from returning to a country that clearly DOES NOT WANT HER.
Thank you for helping keep this story at the forefront. I’m not sure if the comment I left on “babylovechilds” posting that you mentioned in your article had made it through moderation at the time you linked to it, but she did feature it in her follow up the next day.
http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/03/02/laura-silsbys-pipedreams-of-a-future-in-the-child-containment-industry/
If you scroll down to the bottom, you will see that I left a comment including some additional links to bogs by akopsa and restlesswanderings that discuss a similar subject. Again, thank you for continuing to address what may be the “behind the scenes” action of what is really going on with this whole debacle.
Teresa
The more I read the more amazed I become at the audacity and word-twisting abilities of the evangelical fundies. The state department, also with its own spinmeisters, is choosing its words, carefully, I notice. What a show, and I didn’t even have to buy a ticket.
Laura Silsby is still trying to spin her way out of this mess and still hoping to make lots of money off Haiti’s children. I am in shock over her latest comments – I just can’t imagined being jailed for over a month now, having the audacity to say they expect to be free (that is the judge’s decision, not hers), and just plain unwilling to own up to her mistakes! This woman is evil. I know she doesn’t look evil to some but she is, look at her actions, don’t be fooled, evil can be disguised as a white middle aged proclaiming to be a Christian woman! As for all of the Christians who don’t want to judge, give me a break, God gave us common sense for a reason! There is enough here that if she is set free, no one should support her new quest for an orphanage, anyone who directly supports her efforts to “save children” is funding evil. Make her right her wrongs to her creditors, her family, etc., that alone will take her years. I frankly hope Haiti has enough evidence of criminal intent and does prosecute her. On a side note, I wonder if the judge has been stringing her along, getting her to drop her guard…Good job reporting on this – thank you for posting this entry today.
Silsby is making that judge look like a fool, plain and simple.
If he lets her go now, just as she is publicly declaring her desire to basically repeat her crime, no one in Haiti could possibly take him seriously. Unfortunately, that may be exactly what happens.
I actually got a chuckle out of the UN being called an international abortion provider.
Thanks for your update. I was thinking about a little guessing game, with predictions on:
1) When will Mother Teresa and her disciple be sprung?
2) Which network’s private jet will they board? Which show will get the exclusive?
3) Where & when will Jorge/Yoram/ Yehuda, Puello/ Torres/ Migdal be apprehended. What name will he be using, and what religion will he be?
I’ll begin:
1) The dynamic duo will leave Haiti on March 10th, (2015) after signing documents swearing never to come back to Haiti and the DR.
2) They will fly back on G-d’s wings. The exclusive will go to Pat Robertson, and he’ll solicit contributions for the Laura Silby New Life Rescue Foundation for orphaned cats and dogs.
3) Yoram’s new name will be Yasser, and he’ll be located in East Jerusalem. While he entered the country as a pretend Jew, he became a pretend Muslim after discovering that his grandfather had been the Grand Mufftah. By the time the US Marshals find him, he will have departed to another undisclosed location.
Hi everyone. Yes Silsby is insane. I saw the article yesterday on CNN and I just couldnt believe shes still babbling. I just couldnt understand her babbling about the migrant sugarcane workers. What a loon! Maybe Haiti has a real nice insane asylm just for her.
Damn! You mean we could have gone to the UN? Just kidding.
In the comments on a recent Silsby article in the Idaho Statesman, someone wrote that the judge in Haiti has a Wheel of Fortune wheel that Silsby and Coulter spin each day. They pray for “Go Home” to come up, and it never does. They keep saying God will decide, etc. Well, maybe God has decided, and he’s happy with where they are? DId that ever occur to them? Yeesh.
Anonymous 3:36, those are some astute guesses, LOL.
Jorge Yoram should get a job working for the Witness Protection Plan, as he has seemingly found a way to be totally protected and hidden from the US Marshals even while conducting an entire PR campaign on the internets! Not to mention cold-calling half the press corps on the phone, ordering pizza to an undisclosed location etc. (not really). I mean, seriously, the US Marshals need to get Tommy Lee Jones out of retirement and start searching every every warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in the area…
Thanks for keeping this story on the front burner. Is there no level too low for this woman to sink? I would wish that God would get his smiting skills dusted off for this one!
I know of no one in the Haitian adoptive community who supports Laura Silsby. The woman is a nutcase. What she did is illegal, immoral, and unconscionable. You are correct that my husband and I adopted five children from Haiti, although I find the term “serial adopter” offensive, as I’m sure you meant it. Our children’s mothers made choices for them just as we believe women worldwide should have the right to do. We maintain contact with our children’s mothers and provide them with financial support (not that this is your business). I am not sure that you have a full (or any) understanding of the Haitian people or their culture, and I question how much time you have spent in Haiti, while you feel so free to pass judgement on what goes on there.
Regardless, the comment you made about me was with regards to my opinion about UNICEF, therefore I feel that I should have the chance to CLARIFY what I said. In the case of the children who were waiting at the embassy at the time of the referenced blog post, ALL of those children had been declared BY THE HAITIAN GOVERNMENT “legally eligible for adoption.” They had all been matched PRIOR to the earthquake with American families who had been approved for adoption by licensed adoption agencies. Were there still steps in the adoption (and immigration) process to be completed? YES. And there ARE, still. (Humanitarian parole is an immigration status, ONLY.. contrary to popular belief, these children’s adoptions have NOT been expedited.. they are still IN THE PROCESS of being adoption.. all HP does is allow them to come to the US and to live in a safe, stable environment while that happens.) I believed THEN and I believe NOW that to require those children to stay in Haiti was unnecessary. I believed that the longer that those children stayed in the country when they were experiencing strong aftershocks day after day (as well as having to ration food and water), the more likely it was that they would experience trauma (and I fully understand the effects of that trauma, given that I have two children with RAD and PTSD), and I believed that it was in the children’s best interest to evacuate those children to safety as quickly as possible.
I stand by my position. In addition, I think that UNICEF has its priorities woefully out of whack in Haiti. The fact is, fewer than 300 children a year come to the US from Haiti to be adopted. Yet there are more than 300,000 restaveks (child slaves) in Haiti, and without a doubt, their life is a billion times worse than that of any child adopted to America. Why UNICEF focuses SO MUCH of their attention on shutting down adoption, which my children’s mothers CHOSE, participate in, and support… and focus so little attention on SHUTTING DOWN child slavery.. I will never understand.
Respectfully,
Corey Waters
First of all, not here to defend Silsby. It’s atrocious that people wold try and leverage this disaster for their own fame and finance as it appears she has.
As for the ‘serial adopter’ moniker, If that means I’ve got a track record of embracing the fatherless, I’ll take it, no matter how you meant it.
Quick side note – did you intend to attribute the entire italicized section to me? Because it would appear it was written by one writer….except that it wasn’t. The first two paragraphs are mine. I’d never read the third one until I saw it here. It’s one thing for you to put words in my mouth, but to include them in my quotes is pretty brazen.
First of all, Randy, thanks for letting me know about the misattribution. When I was moving text around in the final draft, I accidently erased the link and left the text right under your quote and didn’t catch the error. It was no brazen attempt to put words in your mouth. I’ve fixed it on both sides.
About orphans, most “orphans” are not orphans at all, and no one is fatherless. Those of us who are aodpted know quite well we had fathers ,who were often denid their right to parent by law and culture.
I’m curious about how you got the name Zoe Foundation. For those of us familiar with international adoption it jumps out as linked to the notorious child stealers in Chad, Zoe’s Ark.
BD – Thanks for letting me know about the link fix. I appreciate it.
I’ll agree with you that the words orphan/fatherless are loaded ones used without full thought. I sometimes use the phrase ‘functionally fatherless” when describing situations like the children I adopted. Obviously they had biological fathers, but when approached about their children, they were quick to insist “They’re not mine, and if they are, where do I sign?”. Yes, my children had bio fathers but when they weren’t functioning as fathers and were quite vested in separating themselves from any responsibility. If, as young adults, my children want to attempt a reconnect, I would certainly support their attempt in a safe manner.
The Zoe Foundation was named for our first daughter. Never heard of the other guys, and they’ve probably never heard of us. The term ‘Zoe’ is fairly ubiquitous. I’m sure a dozen others are using it who I may or may not want to be connected to. Mark Twain said “in any great argument in life there are people on your side who you wish were not.” This might be one of those cases. 🙂
Maybe it is best Silsby stay in a Haitian jail…then she will not have to answer all the charges back home in Idaho related to her business (Personal Shopper) of fraud, non payment to employees and a armfull of other charges.
Like driving without insurance.
I guess Silsby thinks laws only pertain to us little people not some great child savior caught transporting a busload of children into the Dominican Republic with tape on their shirts identifying them like cargo.