MERIDIAN, Idaho — Members of an Idaho church wept early Sunday as their pastor reported the Haiti rescue mission they helped launch only a week ago had taken a terrible turn.
Five members of the Central Valley Baptist Church were among 10 Americans detained Friday in Port-au-Prince as they tried to take 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic.
Senior Pastor Clint Henry told church members Sunday the Americans were trying to rescue children from an orphanage in the Haitian capital. But officials said they lacked the proper documents.
“They’ve been charged with child trafficking,” Henry said. “You need to understand that obviously those are serious charges, but they’re in a nation where this has been a practice, a wicked and evil practice.”
Drew Ham, an assistant pastor at the church, said they hadn’t had any contact with the team since Saturday, when the church members’ cell phones were confiscated.
No charges had been filed, though Haiti’s national secretary for security, Aramick Louis, said a judge had already done a preliminary investigation into the case.
“We are doing everything that we know to do,” Henry said. “We certainly are talking to our State Department. We have been in touch with the embassy down there.”
The 10 Americans include five members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho and at least two members of the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho, as well as people from Texas and Kansas.
The Americans face a Monday hearing before a judge, and Henry said he hoped they would be released.
The church became involved with the “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission” because the founders of the proposed orphanage for the children, Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter, were members of its congregation in southwestern Idaho, Henry said.
The 500-member church, where signs taped to large bins outside the pastors’ offices read “Donations for Haiti,” donated several thousands of dollars toward the mission, Henry said.
“This is something we’ve been talking about doing for a long time so it wasn’t specific to this earthquake,” he told reporters at a press conference after church services.
Since the Americans were detained, the pastors said the church is getting backlash through obscenity laced phone calls and faxes, condemning the group leading the rescue mission.
“People come back and say, ‘How could you be stealing children?’” Ham told The Associated Press.
Church members were asked to pray that the outcome of the Monday hearing will vindicate the detainees and their mission.
“The whole world is going to know that we weren’t there doing the kind of things we’re being accused of doing,” Henry said.
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