Counterpoint: When Does Compassion Become Criminal?

The recent events in Haiti have no doubt awakened a dormant sense of compassion in many people across the U.S. and around the world. As hundreds of thousands suffer in a country wrecked by poverty and the ruins of the place they call home, it’s only natural that so many others have tapped into their sympathy and empathy and felt a strong urge to run straight to the source and fix what is wrong. However, in a flurry of compassion, it becomes difficult to see the fine line between caring for those in need and overstepping the boundaries of duty.

The recent kidnapping allegations in Haiti are a prime example of people crossing that line.

The fears of trafficking and kidnapping are entirely legitimate, given Haiti’s history of child trafficking and unwanted foreign intervention; however, the Baptist missionary group charged with kidnapping has repeatedly denied any criminal intentions, stating they were just trying to do what’s best for the children. Though the real intentions of the group’s leader, Laura Silsby, are under scrutiny because of certain financial improprieties back in Idaho, for the purpose of the argument, let’s assume they are being honest about having good intentions.

Does the fact that this group of five men and five women from Idaho supposedly had nothing but “good intentions” pardon their actions? This boils down to a question of morality, and while it may have been seen from the perspective of having a sense of duty, whether moral or religious in nature, there is no amount of perceived moral or religious duty that can justify illegally removing human children from another country. Imagine a disaster happening in the United States and a foreign group coming to U.S. soil to take children away from the aftermath, just because they felt a calling or desire to help. No matter what the intentions are, it’s simply unacceptable to decide what’s best for someone else’s situation.

After all, to what extent can anyone really claim to know what’s best for another person’s child? Given the fact that many of these children still have living parents and family members, and some of the kids even thought they were simply going off to a camp or boarding school, the American missionary group drastically overstepped their boundaries. Both the children and the Haitian government, whose child welfare organizations would be a more effective tool in locating lost family members and protecting the children, were violated.

It is not the missionaries’ “duty,” as they seem to feel, to take responsibility for a group of children simply because they feel a sense of heroic capabilities. They performed their “rescue” without any documentation, leading to suspicion and worry that such unprecedented actions will make Haiti’s tens of thousands of other children more vulnerable to the dangers of child trafficking and illegal adoptions. Moreover, they lied about exactly what they were doing – they actually told parents of some of the children who were taken that they were simply taking their kids on a holiday from all of the earthquake devastation.

Experts on the subject of child welfare believe the rescue effort was a dangerous act. Deb Barry, a protection expert for Save the Children, said, “the possibility of a child being scooped up and mistakenly labeled an orphan in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster is incredibly high.” She has called for a moratorium on adoptions to prevent children from being separated from their own families who would otherwise care for them once reunited. Others have questioned the very idea of removing children from the place they are familiar with in the first place, even in light of a disaster.

If the missionaries wanted to contribute to an effective solution for caring for lost or orphaned children, they should have re-evaluated their means. Instead of taking a drastic pseudo-solution into their own hands, perhaps they could have worked with child welfare groups within Haiti to establish a fund and temporary safe-haven in the country for children, one whose efforts are concentrated on reuniting kids with lost families, rather than separating them forever.