Reports: Haitian Director of IBESR Fired; Children May Be Missing from Son of God Orphanage

By on 10-29-2011 in Adoption, Haiti, IBESR, International Adoption

Reports: Haitian Director of IBESR Fired; Children May Be Missing from Son of God Orphanage

We covered the Son of God orphanage story on October 18, 2011. A petition was set up and the orphanage closed shortly thereafter.

Now Evangelical sites are reporting that the director of the Institut du BienEtre Social et de Recherches (IBESR), the adoption authority in Haiti, Madam Jeanne Bernard Pierre, was fired on Friday October 28, 2011.

Sources: Seth Barnes blog and Haiti Update: Head of Haiti’s IBESR fired today [BeliefNet blog 10/28/11]

A new petition to investigate IBESR and to help find the 46 children that are possibly missing from Son of God orphanage when it was raided was set up by Seth Barnes. Find it here.

Georgia TV station WSBTV covered the story of the missing children yesterday  Mission group uncovers fraud, child trafficking after Haiti quake [WSBTV 10/28/11 by Manuel Bojorquez]

Specifics on the children were discussed on Seth Barnes blog entry 46 Haiti SOG orphans disappear  [10/27/11]:

“Just got off the phone with our Haiti staff guy. Here’s his report:

When the government took the kids away from the SOG orphanage, they left in one or two buses (we couldn’t confirm). They divided them up by gender, the girls in one orphanage and the boys in the other.
They didn’t tell us where they’d taken the girls, but we knew where the boys were. It was a very confusing situation. We had to drive around for 3 1/2 hours trying to find where the girls were.
When we finally found the girls orphanage, we counted just 31 there. We were gratified to see that they seemed to be doing well.
The story was not as positive with the boys – just a few there. The director of that orphanage had been initially encouraging, but when we arrived said, “You don’t have authorization.” He seemed upset and shooed us away.
As we looked around, we could see why he might be concerned. Some of the boys who looked to be 6 and 7 years-old were on some kind of work detail, swinging pickaxes.
All told, we are missing 46 orphans, 23 girls, and 23 boys. We don’t know where they were taken or how they are doing. One of them, Magdala, is especially precious to the Barnes family.
We don’t want to stop fighting for these kids until we know where they are and know that they’re cared for.”

Megan from Respire Haiti reported on her blog October 25 that “Although 39 children were removed from Son of God orphanage last Friday, we were missing 40 children. With amazing, relentless warriors working together we are now only missing 34 children.” She tweeted within the last day that “over 30” are still “missing.”

Whether the children have been taken for medical care, other organizations have re-settled them or they are actually missing, this points to the continuing lack of record-keeping in Haiti. Yet, adoptions are flourishing there.

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Corruption2

 

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