Amid more violence, gangs take aim at disabled children
Born with cerebral palsy and a build-up of fluid in his brain, Wasserman, 7 years old, hadn’t eaten in days when he and two other severely disabled children were rushed from their orphanage outside Port-au-Prince to a hospital in the Haitian capital because they were suffering from uncontrollable seizures.
As they passed a soccer field near a shantytown along a major thoroughfare, their truck suddenly stopped. Heavily armed men had taken over the road and were ordering traffic to turn back.
“The gangs cracked our windshield and threatened to shoot our tires if we didn’t turn around,” said Susie Krabacher, who has been caring for Haiti’s disabled, abandoned and orphaned children since 1994 and was tracking the trip three weeks ago from her home in Aspen, Colo. “Even though we had a dying kid in the car, they were just laughing at us.”
By the time the truck made the hourlong trip back to Krabacher’s HaitiChildren orphanage, Wasserman was dead. The other two, Jean Claude, 14, and Babette, 20, died soon after.
“We’ve had three kids die within three days of each other and another one this morning because of all this violence,” said Krabacher, who co-founded the orphanage with her husband.
Two years after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, the violence in Haiti by all accounts grows worse daily.
More than 80% of the capital is controlled by armed gangs continually battling over turf. Children are unable to go to school, families are starving and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes amid an unending frenzy of rapes, kidnappings and killings.
And yet, even among a population facing daily depredations, the country’s abandoned and disabled children stand out.
Solution elusive
There is a solution at hand for the 62 disabled kids and adults at HaitiChildren, a lifesaving opportunity that would get them out of the country and into the care of an internationally renowned charity in Jamaica until it is safe to return. A respected Catholic priest, a former U.S. ambassador and the prime minister and foreign minister of Jamaica are pushing for the move.
But as with all things in Haiti, nothing is easy.
Krabacher has been trying to move the children, many of whom she has been watching over since they were infants, into the care of Mustard Seed Communities in Jamaica since June.
But her efforts are being blocked by an entrenched Haitian bureaucracy, a troubled child-welfare system and a disturbing history of children being whisked out of the country in times of crisis never to be seen or heard from again.
Abandoned by their families in hospital wards or on roadways, the children at HaitiChildren have been diagnosed with a variety of disabilities, including Down syndrome, multiple sclerosis, autism and brain injury from seizures. At least one little boy is HIV positive.
Those who do not use a wheelchair have difficulty walking. They are conditions that not only require specialized care but also make them outcasts. Stigmatized, they are called kokobe, meaning “cripple” in Creole.
A gang invaded the orphanage last week, pointing their guns and searching the place as they taunted the children in wheelchairs.
“The gangs have been shouting, ‘You need to put those kids out of their misery or we will put them out,’” Krabacher said.
Arielle Jeanty Villedrouin, the director of Haiti’s child welfare agency, the Institute for Social Welfare and Research, said the matter is “very complicated.”
Other than a letter from Mustard Seed and a single phone call from Krabacher, Villedrouin says she doesn’t have anything official from the Jamaican government and no one has come to see her about moving the children. Instead, she said, Krabacher and her supporters have pursued a pressure campaign involving Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry, believing it will get her to agree to ship the children off to another country.
‘Problematic’
Henry, one of the country’s few neurosurgeons, has spoken to Villedrouin about the request but has not said what he plans to do. She calls the situation “problematic.”
Villedrouin said if she were to “open this door” she doesn’t know what will happen to the children, adding, “I have no control over what is happening in the other country, and I don’t know what they will do with the children.”
It’s not that she isn’t sympathetic to the plight of children caught in the cross-hairs of Haiti’s violent armed gangs, Villedrouin said. She has agreed in some circumstances to allow sick children to leave Haiti, but decisions are made on a case-by-case basis and after doctors and caregivers “have come and explained the situation.”
In their telephone conversation, Villedrouin said she explained to Krabacher that as the chief protector of Haiti’s children, she just can’t throw the country’s doors open for everyone who wants to leave. She also noted that every time Haiti finds itself in crisis, children become prey for exploitation and traffickers.
That was the case after the catastrophic 2010 earthquake when children, in an unprecedented baby airlift, were taken out of Haiti, some without the consent of the government or their parents.
“Up to this day, we are trying to document children who left after the earthquake,” Villedrouin said. “We don’t know who left and who didn’t.”
Another complication
Some of the children are technically not orphans.
A 2017 study by the London-based nonprofit Lumos, founded by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, estimated that there were at least 30,000 children living in orphanages in Haiti. However, more than 80% are not actually orphans because they have at least one living parent, the study said. Because of the country’s deep poverty, parents often place their children in these institutions believing they will be better cared for.