How Could You? Hall of Shame-Haiti-Thomas Osbeck and Maylon Foshee

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

From Fort Myers, Florida, 70-year-old Christian missionary, Thomas Osbeck,” appeared in Miami federal court on Thursday to answer to charges that he traveled from the U.S. to Haiti to sexually abuse children, records show.”

“Haitian authorities also accuse Thomas Osbeck, who public records indicate lives in Fort Myers, of running an illegal orphanage in the country, telling the Associated Press that he was arrested there on Sept. 30.

According to a federal criminal complaint, the FBI “received a complaint from a member of a nonprofit anti-trafficking/exploitation organization” in March 2025 that Osbeck “was suspected of traveling from the United States to Haiti for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors,” leading to interviews with witnesses and potential victims.

Authorities said Osbeck has “repeatedly” traveled to Haiti since the 1990s. FBI agents said he “founded and directed” an organization called Jesus in Haiti Ministries in 1998 before being given “an ultimatum to either step down or remain in Haiti but work in a different capacity,” in 2015, leading him to resign.

According to the complaint, a prior board member told the FBI that he learned of sexual abuse allegations against Osbeck in 2010. The complaint doesn’t state whether those allegations were ever reported to U.S. or Haitian authorities.

Osbeck then founded Ignite Your Faith Ministries in Cap-Haitien and opened a ministry called “Tom’s House,” in which he “had taken in many orphaned and abandoned children,” the complaint states.

“According to the website, (Osbeck) had 18 boys in his care and ‘to these kids, he is not just a missionary, he is their Pappy,’” FBI Special Agent Cindy Barrois wrote in the complaint.

Osbeck was the “only non-Haitian staff member on-site,” Barrois noted.

According to the FBI, agents were able to get in touch with one victim after Osbeck sought to obtain a foster parent license in Florida, “mention(ing five) young Haitian men he raised who were now residing in the United States.”

Authorities said they interviewed that victim in June 2025, who said he moved into Tom’s House when he was 13.

The complaint states that the victim told agents that Osbeck “often made him feel uncomfortable” by caressing his back, but he continued the “unwanted touching” despite pleas from the boy to stop.

According to the complaint, when the boy would play soccer outside without a shirt on, Osbeck would “caress (his) bare chest” and “later text him, ‘I like it when you take your shirt off.’”

Authorities said Osbeck would send the boy text messages implying that he sought sexual favors and in one instance, Osbeck summoned the victim, then 16, “to come to (his) room to get a non-alcoholic drink.”

The complaint states that Osbeck answered the door wearing only underwear and when the boy tried to leave, he blocked the door, grabbed the victim’s hand and tried to place it on his penis.

After the victim pulled away and said “no,” authorities said Osbeck replied, “Oh, you not gonna give me anything before you go to sleep?”

“(Osbeck) then told Minor Victim 1, ‘Just make it hard,’” the complaint states.

Agents said they interviewed a second victim this August. According to the complaint, he told investigators that from around 2004 to 2007, when he was 8 to 10 years old, Osbeck would make the boy touch his penis. When he was 11, Osbeck made the boy perform another sex act, it states.

The victim “explained that (Osbeck) used various forms of coercion, including withholding privileges or opportunities, to compel compliance,” for instance, denying him an allowance or the ability to go out, Barrois wrote in the complaint.

When the boy was 12, “he would make bracelets as a side business to sell to tourists,” authorities said. Osbeck, they said, “told him he was going to break his business if (he) did not perform sexual favors.”

Witnesses make additional disturbing allegations

Authorities said witnesses backed up the accounts and described inappropriate behavior that they experienced, including more unwanted touching.

In one instance, a former resident described hearing another boy, described in the complaint as “Witness X,” telling Osbeck that he would “go to a journalist with a video depicting (Osbeck) having sex with (him)” if he didn’t give the boy “a large sum of money,” the complaint states.

The former resident told the FBI that he saw Osbeck giving a check to an unidentified person described in the complaint as “Subject 1.”

That resident, authorities said, saw “SUBJECT 1 enter OSBECK’s room and give WITNESS X’s phone (identified as such by a screensaver depicting WITNESS X) to Osbeck” and “reported that WITNESS X was kidnapped and killed during this time and that (he) had overheard SUBJECT 1 discussing the ‘set up’ while at Tom’s House.”

Authorities said another former resident told them that a person identified as “Subject 2,” who worked for Osbeck as the home’s director, had “Witness X,” along with another victim, “killed” for “blackmailing” Osbeck with videos of their sexual abuse.

Phone searched at MIA

According to the complaint, on June 26, 2025, after Osbeck arrived at Miami International Airport on a flight from Cap-Haitien, customs officers searched his cellphone.

On the phone were “images of index cards containing handwritten names and dates of birth of what appear to be Haitian children,” including a specific resident born in 2008, later seen in a “screenshot of an image from TikTok depicting what appears to be that same minor, a teenage male with no shirt in a swimming pool, with the caption, ‘You think I’m handsome.’”

Later, on July 10, 2025, authorities said they obtained a search warrant for Osbeck’s phone and found messages between Osbeck and a person described as “Witness W,” where he tells “Witness W,” “you are the most handsome son I ever had” after sending him a photo of another “shirtless young male.”

Orphanage raid, arrest in Haiti

According to the complaint, on Sept. 30, the Brigade for the Protection of Minors of Haiti’s national police force and the country’s Institute of Social Welfare and Research conducted an “operation” at the Ignite Your Faith Ministries home in Cap-Haitien.

The agencies “initiated the intervention due to multiple reports of alleged child exploitation,” as well as the “absence of any authorized operating license and a pattern of the home relocating frequently since its creation,” the complaint states.

“The inspection revealed that the home has no authorization to operate, maintains no legal placement documentation, follows no approved procedures for child intake or reunification, keeps no registry of admitted children, and employs no qualified personnel, such as social workers, psychologists, or medical staff,” it states. “Investigators found no evidence of regular medical care, and staff could not identify any facility providing alleged medical services to the children. There were also no security personnel present.”

Agents also described poor conditions at the home.

Authorities said they found 14 children at the home, aged 7 to 17, including the director’s two children.

“The population includes orphans, street children and children who reportedly left their homes due to mistreatment,” the complaint states.

Osbeck and the unnamed director were taken into custody.

Missionary appears in Miami federal court

The complaint states that Osbeck was placed on a flight to Miami on Wednesday and appeared in court on Thursday, facing federal charges of illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place and attempt to engage in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place.

Each charge could land him in federal prison for up to three decades.

Making his initial appearance on Thursday in front of federal Magistrate Judge Marty Elfenbein, prosecutors requested Osbeck be held in pre-trial detention ahead of a scheduled hearing on Tuesday.

He’s then scheduled for an arraignment hearing on Oct. 29.

Records show that Osbeck was being held in the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami as of Friday afternoon.

Osbeck’s arrest comes soon after the arrest of another American missionary on similar allegations.

Federal agents arrested Maylon Foshee, 23, of Mansfield, Louisiana, in late September, accusing him of “illicit sexual conduct with several minor victims under his care” during mission trips in Haiti.

He, too, faces a charge of engaging in illicit sexual conduct overseas.”

Miami FBI agents accuse Florida missionary of sexually abusing Haitian boys

[Local 10 10/16/26 by Chris Gothner]

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