PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The last of 10 Americans detained
while trying to take 33 children out of Haiti after the Jan. 12
earthquake was freed Monday when a judge convicted her but
sentenced her to time already served in jail.
Laura Silsby, the organizer of the ill-fated effort to take the
children to an orphanage being set up in the neighboring Dominican
Republic, returned to her cell briefly to retrieve belongings
before quickly heading to the Port-au-Prince airport.
"I'm praising God," Silsby told The Associated Press as she
waited for a flight out of Haiti. She declined to answer further
questions before clearing immigration and heading through a gate to
catch a plane to Florida.
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The Idaho Congressional delegation — U.S. senators Mike Crapo
and Jim Risch and U.S. representatives Mike Simpson and Walk
Minnick — issued this statement about Silsby's release:
“We are pleased the Haitian judicial process for Laura Silsby
has concluded and that she will be returning home. This has been a
trying time for her family and friends, and they will undoubtedly
be happy to have her back in Idaho.”
The Idaho businesswoman had been in custody since Jan. 29. She
was originally charged with kidnapping and criminal association,
but those charges were dropped for her and the nine other Americans
who were previously released. Silsby she was convicted of arranging
illegal travel under a 1980 statute restricting movement out of
Haiti signed by then-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.
Prosecutor Jean-Serge Joseph said she was convicted and
sentenced to the 3 months and 8 days she spent behind bars. Last
week, the prosecution had recommended a six-month sentence and she
faced a maximum of three years on the charge.
"She is free," Joseph said.
The 40-year-old Silsby told the court earlier she thought the
children were orphans whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake.
But she lacked the proper papers to remove them from the country at
a time when the government was restricting adoptions to prevent
child trafficking in the chaos that followed the disaster.
An AP investigation later revealed all the children had at least
one living parent, who had turned their children over to the group
in hopes of securing better lives for them.
Silsby and others in the group, mostly members of the same
Baptist church in Idaho, insisted they had only come to Haiti to
help. They unwittingly helped draw attention to the dark side of
the adoption industry in Haiti, where children for many years have
been abandoned by their parents or sold into slavery.
In February, a Haitian judge released eight of the Americans
after concluding they had not knowingly engaged in any crime. The
judge released a ninth member, Silsby's friend and former nanny,
Charisa Coulter, in March.
Silsby was held the longest because she organized the venture
and prosecutors insisted she knew that she did not have the proper
authorization to take the children out of Haiti.
