Latest news with #orphanage
CBS News
3 days ago
- Politics
- CBS News
Haitian Americans desperate to return home amid violence and travel restrictions
Haitian Americans stranded in the U.S. say they are growing desperate as ongoing violence and the shutdown of commercial flights into Port-au-Prince keep them from returning to their home country. Despite a Level 4 travel advisory and mounting dangers, many say their lives and work are in Haiti and they're willing to risk everything to go back. It's been several months since any commercial airline has landed in Haiti's capital, leaving families separated and humanitarian efforts stalled. The situation became more dire after a Spirit Airlines plane was shot at while attempting to land in Port-au-Prince last November. "As soon as the airport is open, I will go back" Pastor Jean Rigaud and his wife, Melande, have been stuck in Miami since February of last year, waiting for a safe way back to Haiti, where they run a church, school, and orphanage. "As soon as the airport is open, I will go back because they are waiting for me so I'm more effective in Haiti," said Jean. His wife, Melande, says she shares that urgency - even though she knows the risks. "This is hard to say. I may go; they may kill me too, but this is my country." The Rigauds say, despite the chaos and bloodshed, Haiti is where they are needed most. Their orphanage houses 50 children, and their school serves hundreds more. "Life in Haiti is very hard, very tough. There is no life. The children cannot go to school. They're not safe. There is no hospital. They destroy everything," said Melande. Asked why she still wants to return, she simply replied, "This is my country!" Jean added, "I dedicate my life to stay in Haiti to minister to the good people in Haiti and to help mostly children." "It's very dangerous to get to Port-au-Prince" Though the airport in Cap-Haïtien remains open, only one airline currently flies in and out - and it's on the opposite end of the country. Reaching Port-au-Prince by road is treacherous, especially with widespread gang activity. Sylvain Exantus, who lives in Tabaire near Port-au-Prince, says gangs burned down his home. Now stuck in Miami, he too longs to return but says it's impossible. "By normal roads, it's very dangerous to get to Port-au-Prince," he said. Fear for the future amid TPS concerns Many Haitian Americans are now speaking out in desperation, hoping for stability in Haiti and concerned about their immigration status in the U.S. The Trump administration's plan to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Haitians has added urgency to their situation. Despite the violence and uncertainty, those like the Rigauds and Exantus say their heart is still in Haiti - and they will return as soon as they can.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Yahoo
Colorado man sentenced to 210 years in prison for abusing children at orphanage
A Colorado man who founded a Haitian orphanage four decades ago is set to spend the rest of his life in prison after he was convicted of sexually, physically, and emotionally abusing multiple children under his organization's care. Michael Karl Geilenfeld, 73, of Littleton, was sentenced to 210 years in prison after a federal jury found him guilty of several counts committed at the St. Joseph's Home for Boys in the Caribbean, the Department of Justice announced on May 23. He was arrested in Colorado back in January 2024. Geilenfeld was convicted last February of one count of traveling in foreign commerce with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, as well as six counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place, the Justice Department confirmed in a news release. Each of the six counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct relates to six separate victims who were children at the orphanage between 2005 and 2010. All six victims, now adults, testified against Geilenfeld as well as other former child victims who were not subject to the related charges. "For decades, Geilenfeld used his position of trust and access to exploit vulnerable children under the guise of humanitarian work," FBI Assistant Director Jose A. Perez said in a news release. "We are grateful to those victims who came forward to report their abuse. The FBI is committed to pursuing those who commit crimes against children no matter where they occur or how long ago they were committed." USA TODAY reached out to attorneys listed as Geilenfeld's representatives for comment. In 1985, Geilenfeld founded the St. Joseph's Home for Boys, which he operated for more than 20 years, according to the Justice Department. He repeatedly traveled back and forth from the U.S to Haiti, where he sexually abused the children at the orphanage entrusted to his care, prosecutors said. Geilenfeld also physically and emotionally abused the children in the home through physical assault and other forms of punishment, prosecutors said. Victims and witnesses testified that Geilenfeld implemented manipulation tactics to ensure his orphanage was financially supported. "The defendant's sustained sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of some of the most vulnerable children in the world is intolerable," said Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. How to protect minors from sexual abuse: The predator is usually someone you know One of the men who testified in the case said he was 12 years old when Geilengeld abused him, the Miami Herald reported. The man testified that Geilenfeld brought him into his bedroom so he could "help him learn a prayer" but instead proceeded to sit him down in a chair, kiss him on the mouth, fondle his genitals and tried to have sexual relations with him, according to the Miami Herald. Geilenfeld reportedly operated multiple orphanages in Haiti until 2014 and opened another one in the Dominican Republic, the Miami Herald reported. In 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents found photos of the victims when Geilenfeld was traveling through Miami International Airport to the Dominican Republic, court records obtained by USA TODAY show. Investigators told the judge some of the photos showed victims in the indictment, which they said Geilenfeld planned to use to "intimidate victims to not testify against him." It's unclear whether the photos were sexually explicit. Contributing: Fernando Cervantes Jr., USA TODAY This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Colorado man gets 210 years in prison for abusing minors at orphanage
CBS News
24-05-2025
- CBS News
Colorado man sentenced to 210 years in prison after sexually abusing boys in orphanage he founded
A 73-year-old Colorado man was sentenced to 210 years in federal prison on Friday after a federal jury in Florida convicted him of charges related to his sexual abuse of boys in an orphanage he started and ran in Haiti. Michael Karl Geilenfeld started the St. Joseph's Home for Boys in 1985 and ran the orphanage for over 20 years, investigators said. During that time, he flew back and forth between the U.S. and Haiti multiple times and physically and sexually abused at least six boys in his care. He was convicted in February of one count of traveling in foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct and six counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place. "The defendant's sustained sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of some of the most vulnerable children in the world is intolerable," Matthew Galeotti, head of the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division, said in a statement. "This prosecution demonstrates the Department's commitment to securing justice for children harmed by criminals who travel abroad from the United States to commit their crimes. We thank our partners for working with us to ensure that the defendant can never harm another child." Michael Geilenfeld, following his arrest in Colorado in 2024. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Six of the victims, who were minors at the time of the abuse but are now adults, testified at Geilenfeld's trial. Additional victims testified, but prosecutors say Geilenfeld was only charged for his actions against six of them. Geilenfeld, originally from Iowa, was arrested in Littleton in January 2024. Geilenfeld operated several orphanages in Haiti until 2014, according to the Miami Herald, and opened another in the Dominican Republic. U.S. citizen Michael Karl Geilenfeld waits in handcuffs as the manager of his orphanage sits with him in the back of a police truck outside the St. Joseph's Home For Boys after police closed it down in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, Sept. 5, 2014. Geilenfeld, who founded the boy's orphanage in 1985, was taken into custody on charges including indecent assault, according to authorities. The children had been previously removed from the orphanage, according to Port-au-Prince General Prosecutor Charles Kerson. Dieu Nalio Chery / AP Prosecutors and investigators celebrated the conviction and Friday's sentence. "This sentencing marks the end of a case built on the courage of survivors and the dedication of investigators," Jose A. Perez, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division, said. "For decades, Geilenfeld used his position of trust and access to exploit vulnerable children under the guise of humanitarian work. We are grateful to those victims who came forward to report their abuse. The FBI is committed to pursuing those who commit crimes against children no matter where they occur or how long ago they were committed."
New York Times
24-05-2025
- New York Times
Separated as Toddlers, Raised on Opposite Sides of the World
The men who came to snatch the toddler were from an agency known as Jisheng Ban: Family Planning. The child's aunt was home alone with her on the late-spring morning when the intruders began flooding through her door. Her village, amid the rice paddies and pomelo orchards of China's Hunan Province, was isolated. But now the outside world threatened. Some of the assailants held the woman's arms and legs; others ripped the 21-month-old's grip from the hem of her shirt. The men then climbed into a waiting car with the child and sped away. The story of the stolen child — known as Fangfang as an infant and Esther as an adult — is the subject of Barbara Demick's entrancing and disturbing new book, 'Daughters of the Bamboo Grove.' It follows the girl's grotesque odyssey from a Chinese orphanage, to which she was brought by the human traffickers, to the home of the evangelical Christian family in Texas who adopted her. To make matters even more dramatic, the girl eventually came to discover that she had an identical twin sister who'd been raised by her birth parents back in China. Demick, a former foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and author of several other books, including the National Book Award finalist 'Nothing to Envy,' about North Korean defectors, is one of our finest chroniclers of East Asia. She hammers together strong, solid sentence after strong, solid sentence — until the grandeur of the architecture comes into focus. Demick's characters are richly drawn, and her stories, often reported over a span of years, deliver a rare emotional wallop. It is impossible to forget, for instance, the young lovers in her North Korea book who look forward to power outages so that they can spend time alone together in the dark. This book, too, will inspire strong feelings. Its backdrop and context are China's ambitious and misguided attempts to limit family size — referred to, somewhat misleadingly, as its 'one-child' policies. Starting in 1979, and continuing for the next 36 years, Chinese authorities policed the most intimate of activities — procreation — sometimes through brutal tactics including forced sterilization, late-term abortions using formaldehyde syringes, vandalism of violators' property and even kidnapping. Monitors who kept track of women's menstrual cycles were derided as the 'period police.' By one estimate, around 83 million Chinese worked in some capacity for Family Planning units by the 1990s. Human rights advocates sounded the alarms. American evangelicals, in particular, viewed the initiatives through the prism of domestic abortion politics. Opponents chafed at traditional Chinese society's preference for male children, who were relied upon to provide for their parents in old age. (Tellingly, a common girl's name in China is Yaodi, which means 'want little brother.') In a widely circulated incident in 1983, a Chinese father, hoping for a son, threw his daughter down a well as she screamed, 'Baba!' The episode outraged Americans, spurring some activists — including the parents who raised Fangfang — to adopt Chinese children as a form of rescue. 'What God does to us spiritually,' 'he expects us to do to orphans physically,' the megachurch pastor Rick Warren declared, 'be born again and adopted.' There is plenty to be appalled by in China's enforcement. But the horror stories also have a way of feeding Cold War-style orientalism. The rescue narrative — civilized West, backward East — distorts a great deal. To start, China's policies were themselves rooted in Western science and economics, as the scholar Susan Greenhalgh has shown: They were conceived by Chinese rocket scientists seeking to reduce its population and thus raise its G.D.P., making the nation more competitive in global markets as China liberalized. They were a product of capitalism as much as communism. This was certainly true when it came to the market for babies. In 1992, Beijing opened its doors to international adoptions, eventually fueling a black market for trafficked children. As a journalist working in China at the time, Demick was early to raise awareness of the problem. She wrote a story in 2009 headlined 'Stolen Chinese Babies Supply Adoption Demand,' and then followed one lead after another until she was able to identify Fangfang's family in Texas. Demick herself is a central participant in this drama. Initially, upon discovering the girl's identity, she had to sit on the news. The adoptive family, fearing the potential upheaval, did not want to talk, and Demick made the difficult decision to conceal the child's exact whereabouts from the birth family. Years later, however, a member of the adoptive family sent Demick a tantalizing Facebook message; they were ready to discuss the case. The twins ultimately reconnected, meeting up in video calls and later in China. But the encounters never feel wholly without tension. At one point the girl's birth father asks her adoptive family, 'How much did you pay for her?' Demick is at her most coolly analytical when she writes in economic terms — including about herself. The essayist Joan Didion was once asked how it felt to encounter a 5-year-old child who was tripping on LSD as she reported one of her pieces. 'Let me tell you,' Didion replied icily, 'it was gold.' One has the sense, reading this book, that Demick knows she is in possession of gold. It is an extraordinary yarn, the kind reporters dream about. But journalists, too, are subject to the imperatives of production and consumption. 'My finances weren't flush,' Demick acknowledges at one point, calculating how much it would cost for her to reunite the girls herself. She persuades her editors to foot some of the bill; the price, of course, is that she will share the intimate details of their reunion with the world. If there is a flaw in this excellent book it is only that the story of a single family — even, and perhaps especially, a story as dramatic as this one — is not a great vehicle for understanding Chinese family-planning policies as a whole. The initiatives, spread over three and a half decades, were too diverse, varying from region to region and time to time, to be grasped through a single sensational experience of this kind. Fortunately, Demick resists the impulse to tie things up in a neat bow. She leaves us uncertain about who is better off — the twin raised in China or the girl who grew up in Texas. That sense of uneasiness, born of an impossible desire for something whole, is a hallmark of Demick's work. We long to be part of families and nations and churches — part of something larger than ourselves. But American or Chinese, we live in a market-driven, hyper-individualistic world. In a way, we are all orphans in exile.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Yahoo
‘Worst of the worst,' Miami judge says as Haiti orphanage founder gets 210 years
One by one they spoke of their pain, their nightmares and shame, and the suicidal thoughts. Amid pleas for psychological help and justice, they described how the American founder of their Port-au-Prince orphanage lured them in with promise of an education and a better life. But Michael Karl Geilenfeld, who operated several orphanages and a home for the disabled in Haiti over a span of 30 years, was no 'man of God,' the 10 men told a U.S. federal judge inside a Miami court room. Instead, he was a criminal, a 'diabolical psychopath,' who used cookies and trips to the U.S. to steal their childhood as he sexually and physically abused them. Then he used his power, money and the white color of his skin to shut them down when they tried to get help. 'This orphanage destroyed my childhood,' a 24-year-old testified on Friday morning about the St. Joseph's Home for Boys. 'There is no amount of love that can make me forget. The only thing that can make me forget is, I have to leave this earth. Only death.' On Friday, after the young man and nine other victims of Geilenfeld detailed the sexual, physical and verbal abuse they endured at his hands — and their lingering trauma, including guilt and shame — U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz sentenced Geilenfeld to 210 years in prison. The sentencing, which amounts to life imprisonment given Geilenfeld's 73 years of age, was 'excessive,' defense attorney Raymond D'Arsey Houlihan III said. Houlihan had tried to get a reduced sentence, citing Geilenfeld's age, bouts with high blood pressure and glaucoma, and a 'modest existence.' 'He lived quietly in Colorado from the time he returned to the time of his arrest,' Houlihan said, referring to the former missionary's return to the United States from the Dominican Republican, to which he fled with the help of the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince after he was jailed in Haiti on sex-abuse allegations. Houlihan plans to appeal his client's conviction. For years, allegations of Geilenfeld's appetite for young boys dogged him as he took in street boys into his orphanage and secured thousands in charitable gifts. But for years, he managed to avoid jail time and conviction, even winning a million-dollar civil suit in Maine. One of his victims spoke of how he was told to shut his mouth when he complained to a Haitian official at the child welfare office, and how police were deployed to arrest him and another young man when they went to a local radio station to complain. 'You managed to have all of the judges, police who were corrupt,' the man, 45-years-old, said in Creole directly to Geilenfeld, who was wearing an olive-green prison uniform. 'Four-hundred years will not be enough for what this monster did to kids.' In the end, Leibowitz gave Geilenfeld, the maximum he could as the room burst into applause. The one-time missionary had 'testified and lied' on the stand and obstructed justice, the judge said about Geilenfeld. Even on Friday, when offered the opportunity to say something to the court and to his victims, Geilenfeld, did not. 'That says all you need to know about the history and characteristics of this defendant,' Leibowitz said. 'The defendant preyed upon some of the most vulnerable children in the world. That's what he did. That's not a metaphor: the trials, crises and tribulations of the country of Haiti and all that it's gone through,' the judge said. After years of evading justice in both Haiti and accusations in the U.S., Geilenfeld was arrested last year in Colorado after Homeland Security Investigations was joined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take another look at the allegations. He was flown to Miami where he was denied bond by Leibowitz. After a three-week trial in February, where he came face-to-face with some of his accusers about abuse dating back to the 1980s, a 12-person federal jury found him guilty of six counts of engaging in illicit sexual contact with minors in a foreign place and one count of traveling from Miami to Haiti for that purpose. Leibowitz, who was visibly moved during the two hours of testimony, said Geilenfeld used domination and exerted control over them. When they got out of line, he then threatened them. 'He used his power. He used the color of his skin,' Leibowitz said. Then, quoting one of the gentlemen who read his comments from a prepared letter, Leibowitz said Geilenfeld had an effect 'of being a man of God.' The 9-year-olds who were taken in by him because they had nowhere to go 'did nothing to deserve this' said the judge. Outside of the victims, others have tried to bring Geilenfeld to justice for years. He responded with separate defamation lawsuits, one in Atlanta, which he lost, and another in Maine that he eventually won. The Atlanta suit was against Valerie Dirksen, a child advocate who had worked in Haiti's orphanages. She became aware of the abuse in 2011 and had worked hard for the victims. In the Maine lawsuit, he was a co-plaintiff alongside the North Carolina nonprofit, Hearts with Haiti, which donated to his orphanage. They sued Paul Kendrick, a Maine resident who had accused Geilenfeld of being a serial pedophile and had led a campaign demanding justice for his Haitian victims. Kendrick's insurance company in the fall of 2019 settled the six-year-old defamation case, and agreed to pay Hearts with Haiti $3 million but nothing to Geilenfeld. Hearts with Haiti previously told the Miami Herald that 'Geilenfeld was never an employee, volunteer nor member of the Hearts with Haiti Board of Directors.' 'Hearts with Haiti has no knowledge regarding the guilt or innocence of Michael Geilenfeld concerning these federal charges,' the organization said after his arrest. This time around, there was 'so much evidence' in the case, the judge said, because the brothers of the St. Joseph's Home for Boys made a decision that they were not just victims. They protected themselves and they protected others. 'He took something from them,' Leibowitz said, noting that using charities, one of which was connected with Mother Theresa, as 'a plaything' needs to be deterred. 'This is the worst of the worst.' Leibowitz said he had prepared a speech before the sentencing. But after listening to 10 of Leibowitz's victims, some of whom had testified during the trial about how Geilenfeld spent years discrediting them, there wasn't much left to say. Looking straight out into the courtroom, he offered a closing statement: 'He did not beat you. You beat him.' Geilenfeld's relationship with Haiti dated as far back as the 1980s. During that time, he operated at least three different facilities. It was his involvement at St. Joseph's, an orphanage that took in street kids, that was most problematic. Some of the children were taken there by other agencies and others by relatives who couldn't care for them, a common practice in the poverty-stricken country. 'Sometimes you feel you are not human, you are not from this world,' said one of the first individuals to provide a statement. 'When you are a victim, you are a victim for life. This, you are going to live with it, you are going to die with it and you hope your kids never know.' Throughout their testimonies on Friday, there were common themes: The abuse was so traumatizing that those who are married haven't shared what happened with their wives and pray their children will never learn the truth. Instead of an education, they received lifetime scars. Decades later, they still have nightmares. Though the men have now formed a bond and have compiled their own list of victims, they still can't confide in each other about what they underwent. And years later, the older ones still feel guilt about being unable to protect their younger brothers despite confronting Geilenfeld about whether he was still abusing children. At one moment, one of his first victims broke down while listing to another testify. Later, he said, he had mixed emotions. It was a good day, but also a bad day in having to relive what happened. 'We've been telling our story for years and nobody believed us,' said Maxceau Cylla, who said he wasn't sexually abused by Geilenfeld but was often beaten up by him before he escaped in 1995 during a trip to Michigan. 'They told us we were ungrateful, and Michael was doing good things. 'Why would you lie on him like that?'' 'It's been 30 to 40 years,' said Cylla, 49, who was 12 when he went to the orphanage and was part of a dancing troupe that Geilenfeld would bring to the United States to raise money. 'A lot of people when they go to Haiti, they prey on kids. We don't have a government but I am hoping the Haitian government will step up and start cracking down on those groups.' Daniel Madrigal said if there is a lesson from what has happened it is that people should listen to their children. 'When you have kids that tell you something, just believe them,' he said. 'We tried so hard for the last 20, 30 years but nobody understand, nobody believed. People thought it was about the money. 'It's not my fault [that] I grew up in the streets,' he said. 'It's not my fault to have no mother, no dad. Somebody takes me to the orphanage and I think they are going to save my life and what they do is they destroyed my life.' One of the victims testified that Geilenfeld still has supporters in Haiti, where they are depending on him for rent and food. He told the judge that after individuals learned he was testifying against Geilenfeld, his wife was kidnapped, raped and burned. 'Michael, you are a coward,' said one the men. He read from prepared remarks in which he also told Geilenfeld he was 'a diabolical psychopath' who reminded him of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, where he now lives. 'You did your best to break me. For a long time, I blamed myself,' he said, adding: 'After all, you were such a good storyteller. Michael, you stole from everyone you met ... you stole my identify. You stole who I am.' Breaking down in tears, the man told the judge he was there on behalf of all the other victims, of whom be believes there are 'hundreds.' He was begging for justice. Geilenfeld not only deserves the full stance of 210 years, he 'deserves this 10 times over,' the man said. 'He needs to spend his remaining days locked up, and throw away the key so he cannot abuse any more children.'
