Thaindian News

April 27, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Laura Silsby, one of a faction of missionaries from the western US state of Idaho, will face trial on the indictment of arranging irregular journeys of Haitian children into the Dominican Republic.

Silsby, along with her fellow Baptist missionaries, were detained on January 29 while they were endeavoring to take the children into the adjoining Dominican Republic by bus without the essential documents.

These missionaries, who are constituents of the New Life Children’s Refuge missionary group, have denied any wrongdoing. They have declared that they were only trying to assist orphans in the wake of Haiti’s destructive earthquake that slaughtered in excess of 220,000 people.

The Haitian establishment accused the group, a majority of which were members of a Baptist church in Idaho, of trying to abduct the children in the aftermath of a vicious earthquake. The Haitian powers that be later articulated that all the children, whom the missionaries attempted to take to the Dominican Republic, had parents and they were ultimately reunited.

Charges against the nine missionaries accused of abducting 33 children were eliminated and they were permitted to return to the United States. However, Silsby is still in detention in Haiti. She faces up to three years in a penitentiary if convicted.