— In tent camps where thousands of people are living in the Haitian
capital, women approach aid workers and journalists with a desperate
request:
Take my baby.
“I love him, but I have no choice,”
In a country where many parents had abandoned their
children even before the earthquake in hopes they would be adopted by
parents in a more prosperous country, the practice has now become a
matter of life-and-death.
Parents don’t have enough money to buy food. Suffering is widespread and death imminent. Orphanages don’t have enough beds.
“It’s an unbelieveably common occurence,” said
“The country was a disaster to start with,” DiFilipo
said. “Now you are living in a camp where there is no sanitation,
disease is rampant. Then you get a chance to get your child out of that
— and it may be the only thing you’ve got. You want to keep your child
alive, but there’s only one way to do it: try to get your child into
another country.”
Prior to the earthquake, about 380,000 Haitian
children had lost one or both of their parents. Experts believe the
number has doubled.
Child-welfare officials are now expressing concerns
about orphaned children being trafficked into prostitution or slavery.
Last week, Prime Minister
“We are trying to do something about this,” said
Bellerive. “There are few chances these children will ever get to the
States and that in some occasions they are going to end up in bordellos
in
In addition, the U.S. government is only allowing
children with valid adoption papers or children who were in the process
of being adopted to enter the country. Other countries have designed
their own policies.
Even if a foreigner agreed to take a Haitian child,
the Haitian government would likely not allow it. Many Haitian
officials believe that some parents are being encouraged to sell their
children by intermediaries.
On Sunday, 10 U.S. citizens were detained for trying to take 33 children out of
without documentation. Members of the group said they were not
kidnapping the children, but rather bringing orphaned Haitian children
into safe homes. They remained in custody on Monday.
“We are working in a more institutional approach but
the arrest on the border of 10 Americans is a consequence of these
measures,” Bellerive said.
At the Maison des
adoption director Jean Kuislin Alexis said more than 100 parents had
knocked on the doors since the earthquake, each seeking help finding
homes for their children.
The orphanage isn’t accepting new children now.
“If we say that we’re receiving children, there will be a line out the door,” he said.
His priority is finding homes outside the country for the orphanage’s 135 children.
As of Monday, only 27 remain in his care.
After the earthquake, Diliane Florial, 35, brought four of her children to a
orphanage. Thinking their photographs would be taken, the mother bathed
her children and gave them clean clothes to wear, she said.
When the family arrived at the orphanage, they were
told there were not enough beds. The director took the mother’s phone
number, but never called.
“It hurt me so much,” Florial said. “I want them to go to school and learn something so they will not be like me.”
Florial was still hoping to have Lender, 13; Jhenica, 12; Beverly, 9, and Tailor, 8, adopted — hopefully by a family from
“This is not a good place for children,” she said of
the makeshift tent in the city center, where she moved her family after
the quake. She pointed inside.
Flies buzzed around the children, the stench of garbage and human waste thick in the air.
“I think Haitian people love their children more — and more unselfishly — than we do,” said Boni.
People in
often express scorn for parents who simply give up their children — but
they can’t comprehend what it’s like to raise a child in crushing
poverty, she said.
“A lot of birth parents are often shunned and
scorned by their neighbors” for giving up their children, Boni said.
“But when you are watching your child die, your neighbor’s opinion
matters a little less.”
—
(c) 2010, The Miami Herald.
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