Haitian girl taken by Idaho group: 'I am not an orphan'

MERIDIAN, Idaho – Ten Americans, mostly missionaries from Idaho, remain jailed in Haiti after being accused of kidnapping dozens of Haitian children. 

The group still says it was just trying to help the 33 children start a new life. They say they were undertaking an orphan-rescue mission crossing the Haitian border into the Dominican Republic by bus Friday night.

The children, however, have a different story, according to Haitian authorities.

"An elder girl, maybe 8 or 9 years old, told us crying, 'I am not an orphan ... I do have my parents,'" said George Willeit, a spokesman for the SOS Children's Village orphanage where the children are now being housed.

Willeit said the girl told him she thought she was on her way to boarding school or summer camp.

Everyone in the group has been charged by the Haitian government with child trafficking. They appeared before a Haitian judge Monday afternoon. As of Monday, Haitian officials now are talking about sending the Americans to the U.S. for prosecution.

No documentation
The Haitian Prime Minister said he thinks the group knew it was wrong to take children out of country. Indeed, the mission group’s spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, admitted to an Associated Press reporter that she knew they had not obtained the proper Haitian documents for the children.

However, the Americans still insist it is all a misunderstanding. When ABC News asked the Baptist missionaries to respond to the charges against them, one quoted from Philippians 1:13, saying "I am in chains for Christ."

The Haitian Prime Minister, Max Bellerive, said it is not about Christianity – but criminality.

"For me it's not Americans who've been arrested," Bellerive told ABC News. "It's kidnappers who have been arrested."

The pastor of the church heading up the effort – Clint Henry at Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho – says the group was intending to drop of the children at an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. "I can assure you that the intent of our group had absolutely nothing to do with kidnapping," Henry said, "but everything to do to help out with a desperate situation there in Haiti."

The Haitian government just one week ago clamped down on overseas adoptions. They cited two worries: one that children would be swooped into child trafficking and two that those children may still have parents looking for them.

"We came here simply to help these children," said arrested missionary Laura Silsby. "We went to the border, based on the approval of the Dominican government, to take the children into the Dominican Republic ... the pastor entrust[ed] these precious children to our
care because his orphanage collapsed and his churches collapsed, and he had nowhere for these children to go."

Part of the arrested group of Americans wait at a Haitian police headquarters after being charged with child trafficking: