Haitian 'Orphans' Return To Families

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) ― Joyful parents on Wednesday recovered the children that they gave to American missionaries about six weeks ago.

The 33 children had been living at the SOS Orphanage on Port-au-Prince's outskirts since police stopped a group of 10 U.S. Baptist missionaries from taking them across the Dominican border on Jan. 29 following Haiti's devastating earthquake.

Orphanage officials said all but one of the children were given back to 22 families. A remaining child, whose age and gender were not given, is awaiting further verification of her parents' identities.

The children had been underfed and some were incontinent from stress, the orphanage said. On Wednesday they were dressed in their Sunday best to return home with parents who had given them away to foreigners a month and a half before.

Many will go back to living under bed sheets or in tin shacks because their parents homes were destroyed by the quake. Some children and orphanage workers cried as they left. The parents, who have had some contact with the children in recent weeks, wore broad smiles.

Each family was given about $260 along with food and blankets. The orphanage has also been providing counseling to the children, who they fear will feel rejected, and to parents about the dangers of child trafficking, said spokeswoman Line Wolf Nielsen.


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