Reporter: Haiti a hellish 'waking nightmare'

CAMAS, Wash. – Two months after a strong quake leveled Port au Prince in Haiti, most people have heard many heart-wrenching tales of loss and heroism.

President Obama recently spoke about a “second disaster” of devastating hardship if aid to the island nation slackens just as bad weather moves in and supply lines see shortages.

The United States has pledged $700 million in aid and that figure could climb to $3 billion over time.

But a freelance reporter who recently returned from quake-hit Haiti said her experience was a far cry from a city full of merciful angels working to help their fellow citizens.

The journalist, who asked KATU News to conceal her identity since she typically works undercover, was reporting for News of the World, a publication in Britain.

The reporter told KATU News that the selling of children, the story she was there to investigate, was commonplace, with some features – such as blue eyes – commanding a premium.

She said in her many travels around the globe, the situation on the ground in Haiti, both in terms of destruction and human behavior, was the worst she has ever seen.

“I've traveled the world,” she said. “ I've done this type of story before, but this I had never seen.”

Photos taken by the reporter show human remains still litter streets and building rubble two months after the 7.0 quake struck.

“But they were able to get the computers out, the laptops, the sofas, they were able to get those things out [of the rubble],” she recalls, “but they weren’t able to get the people out.”

She said she and other foreigners there to help the people were bullied, ripped off and threatened on a regular, even daily, basis.

She cited her hotel as one example. The hotel continued to charge her over $430 a night for accommodations, even though the building had partially collapsed and they could not stay there.

“I said “we’re here to help you.” They didn’t care. It [the earthquake] was a way to make money for them,” she said.

“They have no gratitude,” she said.

Reports from the country, one of the most impoverished in the world even before the quake nearly leveled the capital, indicate many Haitians could be entering a waking nightmare of disease, hunger, violence, and corruption.

Street gangs loot by day and have gun battles at night. Relief supplies are guarded by the military. Rapes are common. Dead bodies are stripped of everything, including their clothes.

“The only innocent victims are the children,” she said, adding “I would never go back.”

KATU News spoke with Medical Teams International, and their spokesperson expressed surprise at the report, saying their experience has been the opposite of the undercover reporter’s.

Mercy Corps officials said some of the events the reporter described do go on, but that was to be expected in any area when people get desperate to survive.

The child the reporter was offered to purchase is now in United Nations custody.