Eight U.S. Missonaries Released after Controversy

Eight of the ten American missionaries detained in Haiti's capital, were released on February 17 after charges against them were dropped. The missionaries were charged with child abduction and conspiracy.
They were arrested on January 29 after their bus full of 33 children was stopped at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic due to lack of proper documents. The children ranged in age from months old to thirteen years old.
The group's leader, Laura Silsby, and her nanny, Charisa Coulter, had visited Haiti last summer with plans to set up an orphanage across the border in the Dominican to help struggling children. But, when the earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, Silsby got a group of people together to help.
Their plan was to rent a hotel across the border where they would care for orphans in desperate need that they picked up from the street. The problem was that some of the children weren't orphans. They had parents who supposedly signed them away for a better life. This has become a large problem after the earthquake. Many of the children in the Haiti orphanages are not orphans, their families are so poor that they sent them there in hopes they would be saved.
Silsby was warned of her plans by Carlos Castillo, the Dominican Republic's consul general in Port-au-Prince. Castillo said that Silsby had applied for a permit to cross the border, but Castillo found no documentation supporting Silsby's claim. Castillo warned Silsby that she needed Haitian documents to be allowed across the border. He also warned her that without the necessary documents she would be accused of trafficking children. Silsby continued to follow out her plan despite Castillo's warning.
The missionaries had a break in their case when family members of some of the children told the court that they had handed their children over to the group. This meant that the family knew they were giving away their children to the group and that they had not been abducted. In his testimony, Johnny Antione (father who gave his 10-month-old baby away to the group) said, that Silsby had "No reason to be in jail."Silsby and Coulter are being kept in jail to answer questions as to why they went to Haiti before the earthquake.
One of the problems with this case was that it created so much attention that it distracted people, including the media, from the real problems of rebuilding Haiti. This case should not have become as popular as it did. Many people were, and still are, in need of help. Cases should not distract the real goal that is to rebuild Haiti.
Should these missionaries have been charged with child trafficking even if they had permission from the parents? You can vote here to voice your opinion. My opinion, is that they should have been charged with child trafficking because they went about this process in an improper way. Do I think they had good intentions? Yes, I do. But, if they planned on setting up an orphanage they should have investigated more into the legal work and proper documents required. I don't think it was right for the missionaries to take the children away. Their parents were desperate and they gave their children away for a better life. I think the missionaries, despite trying to help, were taking advantage of these poor parents who had lost almost everything in the earthquake.