How Could You? Hall of Shame-Haiti-Michael Geilenfeld and LawsuitUPDATED

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 Port-au-Prince, Haiti, “a North Carolina man who founded a boys’ orphanage in Haiti has been arrested by Haitian authorities on allegations that he abused children. The arrest came just one month before a defamation lawsuit he filed in Maine against a Freeport man was scheduled for trial.

Michael Geilenfeld, 62, was arrested at the orphanage in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, on Friday on charges of indecent assault and criminal conspiracy, raising questions of whether his lawsuit against Paul Kendrick of Freeport will go forward on Oct. 7 as scheduled.

Kendrick has claimed in numerous postings on websites, radio broadcasts and hundreds of emails that Geilenfeld has sexually abused the boys living at the St. Joseph’s Home for Boys, which he founded in 1985 in Port-au-Prince. Geilenfeld filed suit against Kendrick last year in U.S. District Court in Portland, accusing him of “a malicious campaign of outrageous conduct.”

Geilenfeld’s arrest came just a week after a Maine judge ruled against Kendrick in a 54-page order, denying Kendrick’s argument that his accusations against Geilenfeld were made without malice and were protected speech under the First Amendment. Kendrick had requested the court dismiss Geilenfeld’s claims.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. cleared the way for Geilenfeld and Hearts with Haiti, his North Carolina-based nonprofit organization that raises money for the orphanage, to bring Kendrick to trial.

Woodcock’s order was unsealed Monday after the judge also scheduled a phone conference to be held Friday morning between attorneys for Geilenfeld and Kendrick to determine how the lawsuit will proceed in light of Geilenfeld’s arrest.

Geilenfeld’s lead attorney in the case, Peter DeTroy III, called the timing of his client’s arrest “suspicious,” given that it followed so closely after Woodcock’s Aug. 28 ruling against Kendrick. DeTroy, of the Portland law firm Norman, Hanson and DeTroy, would not say whether he thought Kendrick had something to do with Geilenfeld’s arrest.

“We’re confident that there is no basis for this arrest. It’s completely meritless,” DeTroy said Monday afternoon. “The timing is quite suspicious.”

Kendrick did not return a phone message left Monday. One of his attorneys, Brent Singer of the Bangor law firm Rudman and Winchell, also did not respond to a request for comment.

Geilenfeld was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police pickup truck and taken to a police station after his arrest Friday in Haiti, according to The Associated Press.

Port-au-Prince General Prosecutor Charles Kerson told the AP that Geilenfeld had been ordered detained after many complaints against the orphanage and that police would interrogate him. Kerson said a judge ordered the children removed from the orphanage earlier this year.

Alain Lemithe, Geilenfeld’s attorney in Haiti, said after the arrest that police have no evidence against Geilenfeld. He accused the prosecutor of detaining him without an arrest warrant.

“This is arbitrary and illegal,” Lemithe said. “They have no proof.”

Court records indicate that Geilenfeld and Kendrick have never met and that Kendrick had never visited the Haitian orphanage before he began his online campaign against Geilenfeld in January 2011, accusing him of child sexual abuse.

Kendrick, an advocate for child abuse victims, began his campaign against Geilenfeld after communicating with a Haitian journalist, Cyrus Sibert, who also has a Florida address, the judge said in his order.

In early February, Haitian police from the child protection unit and United Nations personnel went to the orphanage with a summons saying they were there to take the children into custody but left without them for reasons that were never disclosed, the AP reported.”

Orphanage founder’s arrest in Haiti could delay defamation lawsuit in Maine[Portland Press Herald 9/8/14 by Scott Dolan]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“The competing portraits of Michael Geilenfeld that his friends and enemies have painted for years could scarcely be more different.

The missionary’s Haitian orphanages have been funded by millions of dollars channeled through a Raleigh nonprofit, and also supported by several Triangle churches and hundreds of volunteers and donors here. He is either a saint who rescues street kids and child slaves or a sexual monster who pens them up to prey on them, depending which side you’re on.

The truth remains murky, despite Geilenfeld’s arrest this month in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. More than two weeks later, he still has not been formally charged, and his supporters argue that he is being illegally detained because allies of a man Geilenfeld is suing in the United States persuaded a prosecutor to use an invalid arrest warrant.

Geilenfeld, a former member of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity Brothers, started St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in 1985, eventually adding two more homes for kids, including one for disabled children, a school and a guest house frequented by missionaries.

His organization, St. Joseph Family, has a dance group called Resurrection Dance Theater of Haiti that tours the United States once or twice a year, often performing at churches, to help build the charity’s donor base.

North Carolina is known for sending outsized numbers of charitable donations and aid volunteers to Haiti, as Geilenfeld noted during an interview with The News & Observer in 2008 in Port-au-Prince. He said that his group’s financial heart was in the Triangle, where a host of churches have sent contributions and volunteers and where the nonprofit Hearts with Haiti acts as his U.S. financial wing, collecting donations.

According to court documents in Maine, Hearts with Haiti has raised nearly $5 million for his projects in Haiti.

“North Carolina is our hub,” Geilenfeld said at the time. “The majority of our support comes from there, and it’s not just us. Something is going on that’s pulling all these people here from North Carolina.”

His supporters, which include members of several Triangle churches, maintain Geilenfeld’s innocence. They say his arrest is part of a caustic, yearslong Internet campaign by an activist in Maine who campaigns against sexual abuse and who, without any proof of Geilenfeld’s guilt, has been trying to destroy him and his ability to raise money for his charity.

Even after years of allegations, the arrest was a shock, said several local people who have volunteered at Geilenfeld’s orphanages and known him for years.

“I got to know the boys, and they live in a healthy, strong environment with very strong Christian foundation, and I believe in the mission,” said Kay Leaman of Chapel Hill, who visits Haiti several times a year to work with Geilenfeld’s orphanages and has known him since 1999. “People in Raleigh and Chapel Hill who know him are appalled that this has happened, particularly because of the conditions he’s living in, and we truly believe that he is innocent.”

Geilenfeld’s attorney in Haiti, Alain Lemithe, is seeking his release. But hearings Wednesday and Friday were delayed, according to The Associated Press.

Claims spark lawsuit

The Rev. Lori Pistor, interim minister at West Raleigh Presbyterian Church, where Hearts with Haiti operates out of donated office space, was a founding member of the charity’s board, though she no longer works with the group. At a Sunday service after Geilenfeld’s arrest, Pistor held up a newspaper article about it, and told the congregation to feel free to ask church leaders questions about the case. She later wrote the congregation an open letter saying the accusations were unfounded, and that Hearts with Haiti tried to resolve the issues for years before deciding that it needed to file a lawsuit.

Geilenfeld and Hearts with Haiti are suing activist Paul Kendrick for defamation. The bitter case has been lurching through a federal court in Portland, Maine, for more than a year and a half, and is just weeks away from going to trial unless Geilenfeld’s arrest disrupts that.

Pistor said Hearts with Haiti had thoroughly investigated the allegations against Geilenfeld, found nothing incriminating, and only then decided to sue.

Kendrick and Cyrus Sibert – a Haitian journalist working for Kendrick – said in interviews that they have victims willing to testify in court in Haiti and the United States.

Such allegations have arisen repeatedly since 1987. Geilenfeld’s attackers say there are too many accusations for them not to be true. His supporters, meanwhile, say many of the reports were repeated by the same handful of cunning former street boys who snookered gullible Americans, and have proven to be not credible again and again.

Court documents, old newspaper reports and Geilenfeld’s supporters paint a picture of what was at first a simple scheme by former street kids to avoid returning to one of the poorest and most chaotic places on Earth. Later, Geilenfeld supporters say, Kendrick and his allies lent more fuel to the allegations by telling former orphanage residents that the accusations could bring a big court settlement.

In 1995, Detroit authorities briefly placed six boys from Geilenfeld’s dance troupe in protective custody during a 10-city tour after some of them told authorities they had been abused.

After a juvenile court investigated the claims and released the boys to him, Geilenfeld said there was nothing to the allegations.

“They are children from the streets,” he said. “They have honed their manipulative skills, and they know how to get certain reactions.”

Geilenfeld has flatly denied sexually or physically abusing children several other times, including in an affidavit filed with the Maine court, and by email to Kendrick.

A promise of witnesses

Geilenfeld’s supporters say that these early false allegations triggered Kendrick’s campaign to destroy the missionary and Hearts with Haiti. They came to his attention after a longtime Haiti relief worker in Raleigh, Bonnie Elam, sent the information to Sibert, who then gave it to Kendrick, according to court documents.

Kendrick, a financial adviser who lives in Freeport, Maine, has never visited the orphanage or met Geilenfeld. He began sending hundreds of caustic emails to board members, church leaders, volunteers and other supporters, some flatly stating Geilenfeld was a child molester, according to court documents. Sometimes, just days before or after sending such messages, Kendrick would write Sibert or Elam to say they needed solid proof.

Kendrick said that if the trial is held in October as planned, his defense will produce seven former residents of the orphanage as witnesses, and all of them will describe sexual abuse. Two of them will testify in person, he said, the rest by video from Haiti and Great Britain.

Valerie Dirksen, an Atlanta-area real estate agent, said last week in an interview that while helping the dance troupe with performances in 2011, one of the young men in the troupe confided in her about his abuse. She eventually took him and a second young man into her home.

Both, she said, told similar stories about being abused by Geilenfeld, as did other former residents of the orphanage who called to thank her for helping the two. She was deposed in the lawsuit; she said she made the same allegations in her testimony, but the deposition was sealed.

“They don’t want money,” she said. “They all just want Michael to be arrested and in jail, and for this to stop.”

Sibert, the journalist, said he has interviewed more than a dozen people who say that Geilenfeld abused them.

Kendrick said that Geilenfeld’s arrest should give pause to the Maine jury and anyone who has sided with the missionary.

“We’re glad to see that the Haitian government and law enforcement is listening, finally, to the voices of child abuse victims who have been trying to be heard … for 20 years,” he said.

Trouble for fundraising

Gielenfeld’s supporters, meanwhile, say that his arrest last week and a SWAT-like raid on the orphanage in February were orchestrated by Kendrick at junctures when the defamation case in Maine was going badly for him.

Just days before the arrest, Chief District Court Judge John A. Woodcock of Portland, Maine, issued a 54-page opinion rejecting Kendrick’s motion to dismiss the case, sending the matter to a jury trial set now for Oct. 7. Woodcock wrote that he was not taking sides, but he was repeatedly critical of Kendrick’s case in the order.

“At this stage, the Court is required to view the much-disputed record in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs …,” he wrote.

Each side has alleged bribery and improper influence in Haiti by the other, but Kendrick scoffed at the notion that he caused the arrest.

“It’s insane to think that Paul Kendrick, a local businessman in Portland, Maine, can transport the entire government of Haiti to arrest this man,” he said.

Until now, Sibert said, Geilenfeld’s influence had been enough to prevent his arrest.

“Understand in a poor country like Haiti, someone who runs an NGO can be a very powerful person,” he said. “They may have many thousands of dollars and have connections, and when we try to get investigation, we may find they have blocked it.”

Kendrick said he didn’t mind being sued for his tactics against Geilenfeld.

“Why doesn’t this group, all those lawyers and boards, say, ‘Let’s just be quiet for a few days and wait to hear what these men have to say’?” he said. “Finally, these poor, victimized men who live in Haiti will have the opportunity to testify in the safety of an American courtroom, and nothing else matters to me.”

Various investigations over the years – from the one in Detroit to another by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2012 – have found no cause to prosecute Geilenfeld. But even if he is set free by the Haitian authorities, it may be impossible to fully cleanse his reputation in court of the Internet, where milder allegations than those he faces could harm the vigorous fundraising it takes to keep his charity running.

“It’s not ever going to be the same, and there’s just no question about that,” Pistor said. “I think that over the years, the boys, the homes, Michael, they have developed a strong base, and that will get reinvigorated. It’s hard enough for nonprofits in the current economic climate, it’s an awful time now, but I’m hopeful that on the other side it’s going to be different.”

”

Missionary in Haiti,arrested on abuse charges, stirs strong emotions in Triangle and beyond[News and Observer 9/20/14 by Jay Price]

Update 2: “A civil trial set to begin Monday could justify claims that a former Catholic brother in Haiti sexually abused orphans for years or prove that a zealous advocate for victims of clergy sexual abuse has been defaming Michael Geilenfeld so vehemently that he was wrongfully imprisoned for 237 days.

Geilenfeld, 63, of Port au Prince, Haiti, and Hearts with Haiti, a North Carolina-based nonprofit that raised money for the orphanages he ran, sued Paul Kendrick, 65, of Freeport in February 2013 in U.S. District Court. The plaintiffs claimed Kendrick’s false allegations that Geilenfeld, an Iowa native, sexually abused children has defamed the organization and caused fundraising events to be canceled.

The civil complaint was amended after Geilenfeld’s release from a Haitian jail to include a request for additional damages because of his “horrific experiences in prison.” In a pre-trial brief filed last month, Geilenfeld’s attorney, Peter DeTroy of Portland, claimed his client’s damages “far exceed[ed] $10 million.” The charity has claimed losses of more than $2 million in donations, according to court documents.

Kendrick in April was sanctioned by U.S. District Judge John Woodcock for publicly sharing documents that had been gathered during the discovery process. The Freeport man has claimed that beginning in 2011 he spoke out through emails and on a colleague’s blog out of concern for the children in the Haitian orphanages after meeting with alleged victims in the United States.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in federal court in Portland. The trial is scheduled to take three weeks with a verdict expected July 23 or 24.

Originally scheduled to be held in October, the trial was delayed after Geilenfeld was detained in Port au Prince beginning Sept. 5 while a criminal investigation into abuse allegations was conducted, according to a previously published report. He was released April 29 but was not charged with a crime.

Justice authorities in Haiti told the Associated Press in May that an appeal filed by lawyers for the alleged victims had been granted and the case will be re-examined.

In the meantime, Kendrick’s attorneys have listed seven potential witnesses who are expected to testify that they were abused as children by Geilenfeld. Two are to testify in person. The videotaped depositions of five alleged victims are to be shown to jurors.

Geilenfeld and current and former members of the Hearts with Haiti board are listed as potential witnesses for the plaintiffs. Geilenfeld is expected to deny that he ever sexually abused children at the orphanages. The Rev. Shelley Wily of Enson, Ohio, a past president of Hearts with Haiti, will testify about how the organization investigated Kendrick’s allegations of abuse, according to court documents.

Since being sanctioned by the judge, Kendrick has continued to criticize Geilenfeld and his legal team, led by David King of Bangor, in emails to reporters and other advocates. On June 11, during a deposition of Geilenfeld, Kendrick threatened to have him arrested by homeland security, according to court documents.

In December 2008, Kendrick clashed with former Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland Bishop Richard Malone. Malone obtained a police order and threatened church sanctions against Kendrick because he felt the man’s words and actions were “threatening to me personally and harmful to my ministry,” according to a previously published report.

Malone said in a statement that he turned the other cheek for nearly five years as the Freeport man flooded the diocese office with emails and held vigils outside his residence, the chancery and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, where Malone often celebrated Mass.

But the final straw, Malone wrote, came on Dec. 16, 2008, when he needed a police escort to enter a building as Kendrick and others waited outside. A day later, Malone said he received a letter in which Kendrick threatened to become a distraction at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

“I decided that the line had been crossed beyond legitimate criticism of the church to what felt threatening to me personally and harmful to my ministry as your bishop. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but this kind of harassment is another matter altogether,” Malone wrote.

Kendrick claimed he was with the mother of an abuse victim who tried to speak to Malone on a sidewalk on Dec. 16, 2008, but the bishop walked by without saying a word. The advocate also has picketed the Falmouth home where Malone, who is now the bishop of Diocese of Buffalo, New York, lived.”

Defamation trial involving Maine man, former head of orphanages set to start[Bangor Daily News 7/6/15 by Judy Harrison]

“Shelley Wiley said from the moment they met, Michael Geilenfeld was upfront and open about the persistent sexual abuse allegations against him.

But she was not concerned because she never saw any signs of abuse, because Geilenfeld was a “good person, genuinely interested in helping youths, and because every investigation turned up empty.

“Did you believe that children were at risk or being harmed?” Geilenfeld’s attorney, Peter DeTroy, asked Wiley on Tuesday.

“Never,” she replied.

Wiley, who has served on the board of directors for the organization that helps fund Geilenfeld’s orphanage in Haiti, was the first witness called in the trial of his defamation lawsuit against the activist Paul Kendrick of Freeport.

Geilenfeld, an Iowa native, sued Kendrick in U.S. District Court in February 2013 for what DeTroy characterized in his opening statement Tuesday as a “campaign of vicious, unrelenting and merciless attacks,” based on discredited information.

Kendrick has defended his actions – which have involved a relentless series of emails and online posts accusing Geilenfeld of repeated sexual abuse of children – as necessary to fight for victims.

The trial got underway Tuesday in Portland and is expected to last as long as three weeks.

In their opening arguments, DeTroy and Kendrick’s attorney, David Walker, each outlined their side.

DeTroy said Kendrick, a longtime and admittedly zealous advocate for child sexual abuse victims, has deliberately used rumors and unfounded claims to “destroy” his client. Geilenfeld’s trial was even delayed last fall after he was imprisoned in Haiti while authorities investigated him, largely based on Kendrick’s claims.

Charges were dropped in April after Geilenfeld spent 237 days in jail, but Walker reminded jurors that the criminal case against Geilenfeld in Haiti is not closed.Authorities plan to ask for a new trial.

Walker, in his opening, said sexual abuse allegations involving Geilenfeld have swirled in Haiti and beyond for years. Indeed, he has been investigated more than once. Walker said Kendrick was simply asking Haitian authorities to aggressively investigate those allegations and challenging a nonprofit group, Hearts with Haiti, which provided funds for Geilenfeld’s orphanage, to look into them as well.

Walker also told jurors that he planned to offer testimony from seven people – two in person, the rest in video testimony – who claim that they were sexually abused by Geilenfeld.

That testimony likely won’t be heard until next week.

Jurors heard only from Wiley on Tuesday.

A church pastor from Ohio, Wiley said she has known Geilenfeld for nearly 20 years and has served on the board of Hearts with Haiti, the nonprofit group that helps fund his orphanage in the Caribbean island nation. She said she first traveled to Haiti and stayed at Geilenfeld’s orphanage in 1997.

“It was an incredible experience,” she testified.

Wiley has returned more than 30 times since.

She said Geilenfeld was open and honest about allegations against him, some of which dated back to the 1980s. But she was convinced that he was not someone capable of sexually abusing boys.

Wiley testified about the onslaught of emails she and others involved with Geilenfeld began receiving from Kendrick in 2011.

“They just started to appear out of nowhere,” she said.

Eventually, the board of Hearts with Haiti agreed to sponsor an investigation into some of Kendrick’s claims. But Wiley said that investigation “raised no concerns.”

It did, however, compel Kendrick to continue his campaign.

During cross-examination, Walker tried to establish that previous investigations of Geilenfeld were flawed and incomplete. That cross-examination will resume on Wednesday.

The trial is unusual in the sense that while much of the testimony and evidence will focus on whether Geilenfeld committed any abuse, he cannot be convicted of abuse in a U.S. court since the alleged abuse took place in Haiti.”

 Trial starts in lawsuit against Freeport man who accused orphanage operator of abuse[Portland Press Herald 7/7/15 by Eric Russell]

Update 3: “Michael Geilenfeld, the American founder of an orphanage for boys in Haiti, testified Monday that he had never heard of Freeport resident Paul Kendrick before Kendrick’s first email arrived on Jan. 31, 2011, accusing him of sexually abusing children in his care.

“I never sexually abused children anywhere,” Geilenfeld said. “I did not know what he was relying on. … This is the first time I had heard from him.”

Geilenfeld said that after that first email, he would awake nearly every day at St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince to find new “blitzes” of emails from Kendrick to more than 500 recipients claiming that Geilenfeld was a pedophile.

Geilenfeld filed a federal lawsuit against Kendrick in 2013, accusing him of defamation.

Geilenfeld’s testimony came as the defamation trial entered its second week in U.S. District Court in Portland. He testified all day Monday and is expected to return to the witness stand Tuesday.

The trial was supposed to begin in October but was delayed after Geilenfeld was imprisoned in Haiti while police investigated Kendrick’s claims. Criminal charges against Geilenfeld were dropped in April, but only after he spent 237 days locked up. Haitian officials have since told the Associated Press that attorneys for alleged abuse victims have petitioned to have the case re-examined.

Geilenfeld’s attorney, Peter DeTroy, said he expects to question Geilenfeld on Tuesday about his time in a Haitian prison before one of Kendrick’s attorneys begins cross-examination.

U.S. District Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. said he expects jurors will be asked to focus on two central issues at the end of the trial next week: whether Kendrick’s allegations against Geilenfeld are false and, if so, whether Kendrick made those allegations negligently.

Geilenfeld sat just feet away from the jury of eight women and two men Monday, describing his childhood in Iowa and early missionary work abroad before finding his calling in Haiti.

Geilenfeld told the jurors that he is gay and that Haiti is a “very homophobic” country. His sexual orientation has led to his being accused of child sex abuse several times in the past, though those allegations were quickly dispelled, he testified.

“There was a perception in Haiti that a homosexual was a freak of nature and also equated to a child molester,” Geilenfeld said.

Geilenfeld founded the orphanage in 1985 and was first accused of abuse in 1987, while on a fundraising tour with some of the boys in Boston. The boys who made that first allegation against him recanted within 24 hours, he testified.

Geilenfeld was accused of child sex abuse again in 1990, and the Haitian Department of Social Services determined that those allegations, too, were unfounded, he said.

Then in 1995, he was accused again of sexual misconduct while on another fundraising tour with boys in Detroit. He said he was cleared again after a court hearing and returned to Haiti with his orphan charges.

“These allegations to me were just vicious, vile lies,” Geilenfeld said.

Geilenfeld said he was particularly struck by the date of Kendrick’s first email to him on Jan. 31, 2011, because it came on the 26th anniversary of his founding of the orphanage, which was a time of yearly celebration.

DeTroy showed jurors an enlarged reproduction of Kendrick’s first email on a projector screen in the courtroom and read aloud one line that Kendrick wrote: “There are substantiated reports that he is sexually abusing children in Haiti.”

DeTroy read aloud another email that Kendrick wrote that same day minutes later: “We know you are raping innocent Haitian children.”

“This had the potential to blow up and destroy not just me but the whole family, the work I have given my life to,” Geilenfeld testified of his reaction to the emails. “(Kendrick) never has set foot to this day at St. Joseph’s.”

Geilenfeld’s lawsuit claims that Kendrick’s accusations have resulted in the loss of at least $2 million in donations to Hearts of Haiti, the nonprofit organization that raises money for Geilenfeld’s orphanage. While the suit was pending, Geilenfeld added a charge of wrongful imprisonment, accusing Kendrick for his imprisonment in Haiti.”

Orphanage founder testifies at Freeport man’s defamation trial, ‘I never sexually abused children’[Portland Press Herald 7/14/15 by Scott Dolan]

Update 4: “Orphanage founder Michael Geilenfeld describes the first cell where he was kept during his 237 days in a Haitian prison as “my picture of hell.”

There were 95 men yelling and fighting, sweating and smoking, while crammed so tightly together in a single room with overflowing sewage that they could not lie down, he said.

Geilenfeld told members of a jury about his imprisonment while testifying Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Portland in the trial of his lawsuit against Freeport resident Paul Kendrick.

Geilenfeld has accused Kendrick of defamation for an email campaign falsely alleging he sexually abused the boys at the orphanage in Haiti and for using those false allegations to have him arrested and imprisoned by Haitian authorities.

“Literally like sardines, you were shoulder to shoulder. You could kneel on the floor, but you couldn’t stretch out,” Geilenfeld testified, describing the first prison holding cell in Haiti where he was held for six days.

Tuesday was Geilenfeld’s second day on the witness stand, first answering questions Monday and Tuesday morning by his attorney, Peter DeTroy, followed by cross-examination by Kendrick’s attorney, David Walker.

Geilenfeld testified that he learned in an email from Kendrick in February 2014 that a lawsuit in Haiti had been filed against Geilenfeld accusing him of child sex abuse.

“It made me understand that Paul Kendrick was serious about his intent to have me put in jail,” Geilenfeld said.

Kendrick and Geilenfeld had never met at that point, though Kendrick had been sending nearly daily emails to numerous recipients since 2011 making accusations against Geilenfeld. Geilenfeld filed the defamation lawsuit against Kendrick in Portland in 2013, and the case had been slated for trial in October 2014.

But a month before the scheduled start of the trial in Portland, Geilenfeld was arrested in Haiti. Police in Port-au-Prince rushed onto the property of St. Joseph’s Home for Boys and took him into custody at gunpoint, he said.

“It was a shock beyond description. I was sitting in the garden reading and armed men with black masks over their faces with just eyes showing and guns pointed at me,” Geilenfeld said. “I was put in back of an open pickup truck.”

After his arrest, he was brought first to a city jail for three days, then brought to prison, where he was kept until a Haitian judge dismissed the case and declared Geilenfeld innocent,

“It was an experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone in this room, and that includes Mr. Kendrick. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” Geilenfeld said of his imprisonment.

Geilenfeld described the charge against him in Haiti as sexual molestation, but he said the basis of the allegation was that he is a homosexual and was putting children at risk because of his sexual orientation.

Under cross-examination, Walker questioned Geilenfeld about numerous other allegations of child sex abuse that have been brought against him by former residents of his Haitian orphanage since he founded it in 1985.

Walker questioned Geilenfeld about sex abuse allegations in 1987, 1990, 1995, 2004, 2006 and 2007. He named 17 young Haitian men who made those allegations.

“You agree it’s not Paul Kendrick’s fault before 2011 that these young men came forward and made these allegations?” Walker asked.

Geilenfeld agreed.

But after Walker’s cross-examination, DeTroy questioned Geilenfeld again about an investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012 following Kendrick’s accusations.

The U.S. investigators opened two cases, first into possible sexual abuse of minors and later into the possible production of child pornography and child sexual tourism. Both ended the same way, without finding evidence of wrongdoing. DeTroy showed jurors documents from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of North Carolina indicating that the second case closed on June 28, 2012, more than two years before Geilenfeld’s arrest in Haiti.

Geilenfeld testified that the U.S. investigators interviewed the same former orphanage residents whose allegations were used as a basis for the Haitian charges. Geilenfeld said the Haitian judge interviewed those same former orphans and reached the same conclusion before dismissing the case against him.

The defamation trial is expected to continue for the rest of the week and possibly into next week.

Geilenfeld’s lawsuit claims that Kendrick’s accusations have resulted in the loss of at least $2 million in donations to Hearts with Haiti, the nonprofit organization that raises money for Geilenfeld’s orphanage. While the lawsuit was pending, Geilenfeld added a charge of wrongful imprisonment, accusing Kendrick for his imprisonment in Haiti.”

Orphanage founder describes imprisonment in Haiti at defamation trial in Portland [Press Herald 7/14/15 by Scott Dolan]

Update 5:“A Maine activist who publicized sexual abuse accusations against a Haiti orphanage founder defamed the man and a U.S. charity, a federal jury ruled Thursday, awarding them more than $14 million combined in damages.

The jury ruled against Paul Kendrick even though seven accusers testified that they were sexually abused by orphanage founder Michael Geilenfeld in Haiti. Geilenfeld was awarded $7 million in damages, while Hearts with Haiti, a charity that provided funding for his orphanage, was award $7 million.

Geilenfeld said Kendrick made unsubstantiated accusations that were “vicious, vile lies.” He blamed Kendrick’s campaign for him being imprisoned for 237 days and for costing Hearts with Haiti several million dollars in donations.

Geilenfeld’s lawyer, Peter DeTroy, said Kendrick was never out to get at the truth but instead wanted to destroy the man with unsubstantiated accusations.

“He has one goal: ‘I’m going to destroy you. I’m going to bring you down. I’m going to put you in prison.’ And he did,” DeTroy told jurors Thursday in his closing arguments.

The trial in U.S. District Court painted two different pictures of Geilenfeld: One was the former Catholic brother who was inspired by his work with Mother Teresa to do good works. The other was of a man who sexually abused some of the street kids who came to him for help.

Geilenfeld testified that he’d been dogged in Haiti by false abuse accusations because he was a gay man in an island nation that he described as homophobic. He said all accusations were dispelled.

Kendrick, an activist for sexual abuse victims, launched a campaign in late 2011 in which he sent out email blasts to hundreds of people accusing Geilenfeld of being a serial pedophile and Raleigh, North Carolina-based Hearts with Haiti of refusing to do anything about him.

DeTroy likened the accusations to an indiscriminate Scud missile attack that rewrote the adage, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

“The computer keyboard is a lot mightier than the pen and the sword,” he told jurors. Half-truths, exaggerations, distortions and outright falsehoods spread via electronic communication “can eviscerate one’s reputation and one’s life work,” he said.

Geilenfeld was released from jail in Haiti in April after a judge cleared him of criminal charges during a one-day trial. Haiti’s justice minister has said the verdict was improperly reached, and lawyers for the accusers are appealing the outcome.

The accusations surrounding Geilenfeld, 63, had existed for years before Kendrick learned of them and went on the offensive, said David Walker, Kendrick’s lawyer.

Kendrick, 65, of Freeport, helped to form the state chapter of lay group Voice of the Faithful at the height of the clergy sex-abuse crisis that rocked the Roman Catholic Church.

“Mr. Geilenfeld is here to sue Mr. Kendrick for ruining his reputation. At the end of the day, Mr. Geilenfeld has a reputation that he deserves,” he said.”

Jury: Maine activist defamed Haiti orphanage founder with child sexual abuse allegations[Fox News 23 7/23/15 by Associated Press]

Update 6:“A U.S. citizen who founded a Haiti orphanage for boys returned to the Caribbean country Wednesday after a U.S. jury ordered an activist to pay $14.5 million in damages for falsely accusing him of sexually abusing children in his care.

A lawyer for Michael Geilenfeld said the orphanage founder feels “very happy and vindicated” by last week’s jury verdict in Maine and is looking forward to resuming his work in the impoverished nation.

Attorney Peter DeTroy said he told Geilenfeld and other leaders of the orphanage to make no public statements until after any appeals have been resolved.

“When the dust finally clears, I suspect my clients may be more comfortable speaking,” he said in an email.

Geilenfeld, a 63-year-old Iowa native and former Roman Catholic brother, founded the St. Joseph Home for Boys in the 1980s. He and Hearts With Haiti, a North Carolina charity that raises money for the home, filed a defamation suit against Freeport, Maine activist Paul Kendrick, who led an email and blog campaign publicizing past allegations of sexual abuse that they said were false. The U.S. jury returned the verdict last week.

There is a possibility that Geilenfeld will face a new criminal trial in Haiti. He was held for 237 days in a Haitian lockup before a judge freed him earlier this year after a brief trial.

Haitian Justice Minister Pierre-Richard Casimir has criticized the judge’s decision, and told The Associated Press on Wednesday that an appeal filed by lawyers for Geilenfeld’s accusers was “following its normal route in the justice system.” He said the country’s supreme court will decide whether to grant a new criminal trial.

Manuel Jeanty, a lawyer for the five accusers, now adults, said he expects the court to make a decision in the next three months.

During the defamation suit, Geilenfeld testified that he had been dogged by false accusations in Haiti because he was a gay man in a country he described as homophobic. He said all accusations were dispelled by previous investigations.”

Feeling exonerated, orphanage founder returning to Haiti [Portland Press Herald 7/30/15 by EVENS SANON AND DAVID MCFADDEN/associated press]

Update 7:”Haitian investigators say they’re looking into new allegations of sex abuse against a U.S. man who founded an orphanage for boys.

The move comes shortly after an earlier case accusing Michael Geilenfeld of abusing youngsters was sent to an appeals court in the Caribbean country.

A few months ago, a U.S. jury ordered a Maine activist to pay $14.5 million for falsely accusing Geilenfeld of sexually abusing Haitian children.

The Iowa native founded the St. Joseph Home for Boys in Haiti’s capital decades ago. He denies the allegations of sex abuse that have dogged him for years.

Haitian police on Friday searched unsuccessfully for Geilenfeld at a private residence and a home for children. A government official showed reporters an arrest warrant for Geilenfeld signed by a prosecutor.”

Haiti officials looking into new allegations of sex abuse against US man who founded orphanage [FOX News 10/31/15 by Associated Press]

Update 8:“Haitian authorities on Thursday closed an orphanage for boys founded three decades ago by a U.S. citizen facing accusations he sexually abused children in his care.

Police padlocked the doors at the St. Joseph Home for Boys in the Delmas 91 neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. About two-dozen shouting men tried to prevent the closure, but a government agent scattered the group by firing a gun into the air.

Police and judicial officials locked the main door of the orphanage before the men, many of them employees and former residents of the home, returned to try again to stop the shutdown.

Haitian investigators looking into new allegations of sexual abuse against orphanage founder Michael Geilenfeld have sought to detain him in recent days but have been unable to locate the Iowa native and former Catholic brother. He has had travel restrictions placed on him by Haitian authorities but it is not known if they seized his U.S. passport.

In an Oct. 29 court order seen by The Associated Press, Judge Bernard Sainvil allowed all of Geilenfeld’s charitable operations in Haiti to be shuttered by authorities due to allegations of “rape and sexual aggression.”

The order covered the orphanage closed Thursday as well as the Wings of Hope home for physically and mentally disabled children and young adults in the hills above the capital and a newer facility called Trinity House in the southern coastal city of Jacmel. It was not immediately clear if police also shuttered those facilities Thursday.

Geilenfeld has repeatedly denied accusations of molesting boys under his care in Haiti.

He filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. in which a jury in late July ordered a Maine activist to pay $14.5 million in damages to him and North Carolina-based Hearts with Haiti after finding he defamed them by leading an email blitz accusing Geilenfeld of sexually abusing Haitian children.

In the trial of that case in Maine, Geilenfeld testified he believed the accusations of sexual abuse lingered against him in impoverished Haiti because he is a gay man in what he described as a homophobic country.

Haitian officials say they are looking at evidence from a new batch of alleged victims and re-examining an initial criminal case against him.

Geilenfeld spent 237 days in detention in the earlier case before being released in April by a Haitian judge who dismissed the charges in a brief trial that was not attended by the accusers, now adults. But the justice minister granted a re-examination of the case and it is now in court again on appeal.

During the orphanage’s closure Thursday, Haitian investigators were accompanied by Valerie Dirksen, a real estate agent from the Atlanta area who asserts Geilenfeld is a serial abuser of children. She sponsors two young Haitian men who grew up in Geilenfeld’s care and she insists there are many alleged victims who passed through the orphanage.

Dirksen said the latest arrest warrant for Geilenfeld was issued after a magistrate judge visited the St. Joseph Home for Boys and found three youngsters residing there with him, a violation of an earlier mandate by Haiti’s child welfare authority.

She said a second criminal case against Geilenfeld in Haiti should get its first court hearing in about three months. The alleged victims are aged between 18 and 28 and she says she has the support of the administration of outgoing President Michel Martelly.

“We have an ironclad case,” she asserted as two employees of the orphanage shouted insults at her.”

Haiti officials shut down boys’ orphanage founded by US man amid molestation allegations [Star Tribune 11/5/15 by David Mc Fadden]

Update 9:“An orphanage founder in Haiti who faced past accusations of abusing boys in his care is facing criminal charges in the U.S. after an investigation revealed that he traveled to the Caribbean country to sexually abuse minors, federal officials said Tuesday.

Michael Geilenfeld, 71, previously sued a Maine activist over accusations he abused boys in Haiti, calling the claims “vicious, vile lies,” before an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI led to an indictment contending he traveled from Miami to the island nation “for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person under 18.”

Geilenfeld, who was arrested in Colorado, is expected to have a detention hearing in Denver on Thursday before being flown to Miami, where the case originated, officials said. His Massachusetts lawyer, Robert Oberkoetter, declined to comment.

Geilenfeld and North Carolina-based Hearts with Haiti sued the activist, Paul Kendrick, who accused Geilenfeld of being a serial pedophile after speaking to young men who claimed they were abused by Geilenfeld as boys in Port-au-Prince, where Geilenfeld founded the St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in 1985.

In a federal civil lawsuit in Maine, Geilenfeld and the charity blamed Kendrick for Geilenfeld’s 237-day imprisonment in Haiti, damage to his reputation and the loss of millions of dollars in donations.

The activist’s insurance companies ended the lawsuit in 2019 by paying $3 million to Hearts with Haiti, but nothing to Geilenfeld.

Kendrick had praise Tuesday for those who stood up to the man who held the purse strings to their education, food, shelter and clothing.

“It took an unbelievable amount of courage for them to come forward and report their abuse,” he said.

The conduct cited by the grand jury happened between November 2006 and December 2010, when Geilenfeld was operating the orphanage.

The charge of traveling in foreign commerce for illicit sexual conduct has a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

Authorities in Haiti have long investigated sex abuse allegations against Geilenfeld, who was arrested in the Caribbean country in September 2014 but released a year later after his case was dismissed.”

The alleged victims, who did not appear in court in Haiti, were granted an appeal, but the case has yet to go to trial as Haiti’s judicial system continues to crumble amid widespread corruption and a spike in gang violence.”

Former orphanage founder in Haiti faces federal charges of sexually abusing minors
[LMT online 1/23/24 by AP]