File this one under, "the more things change, the more they stay the same". Right on cue, the opportunists have arrived to exploit the situation in Haiti. Like vultures they wait in the wings for the right time to slink in and exploit people when they are at their most vulnerable.
Each time the driver saw a child — especially a young teen — he would stick his head out of the window and shout, "Manje, manje," Creole for "eat." Pean says she watched the hungry kids, four or five at a time, hop into the back of the pickup, which then disappeared. "I saw the same man again a few days later in Carrefour," a poor suburb of Port-au-Prince, says Pean. "I asked him, 'What are you doing with all those children?' He said, 'Don't worry, we're going to put them in safe homes.' Then he drove off."
But Pean, a Haitian-American emergency consultant for the Andrew Young Foundation, doubts that altruism is the motive of the pickup driver and others like him who are now prowling Haiti's streets. The quake that has killed 150,000 people has left thousands of children orphaned and consequently vulnerable to being preyed upon by child traffickers and Haiti's shameful tradition of keeping child slaves, known as restaveks. "I really fear," says Pean, "that most of the kids you see being picked up on the streets in Haiti right now are going to become restaveks or victims of sexual trafficking."
These children who have already lost everything, their homes, their parents, are now in danger of losing their childhood and lives in the darkness of child slavery. The situation is perfect for the predators to operate. There is widespread chaos and fear, many different organizations and countries are all clustered together to help...making it confusing for a Haitian in need to know who to trust. In a world that has suddenly turned to rubble and confusion how is a hungry child to know that the foreigner offering help is not an aide worker but a child trafficker planning to wisk them off, never to be seen or heard from again.
Already the reports of people making a quick buck off of the suffering of Haiti's children via black market adoptions, or child slavery are trickling in.
At least 10 of the 33 Haitian children a group of American Baptists tried to take across the border into the Dominican Republic have parents, says the group taking care of them while the Haitian government investigates an alleged case of child trafficking.
Ten Americans are in custody and set to appear in Port-au-Prince court this morning, accused by the Haitian government of trying to take the children out of the country without proper documentation.
Aid groups have warned against hasty adoptions or transfers of vulnerable children in the wake of the earthquake that devastated Haiti's infrastructure.
The church organizing the transfer of the children says the group had only the best of intentions, that it wanted to put the children in a Dominican Republic orphanage and that it was sure all the children were parentless.
On Friday evening, a truck was stopped at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It was carrying 33 Haitian children, some as young as two months old.
The Baptist group said the children were going to a newly established orphanage - New Life Children's Refuge - in the Dominican Republic, where eventually 100 Haitian children were to be housed.
I'm sure for every report that does suface, there are hundreds more that go unreported and the children just disappear.
Haiti desperately needs more organization and cooperation between the organizations and governments offering aide to help prevent imposters from gaining the trust of the Haitian people. Although the rush to help for all corners of the earth are admirable, it can do more harm than good to Haiti's children.
