Haitian Orphan Rescue—The Story behind the Story

By Maurine Proctor

Photography by Scot Facer Proctor

Originally published in Meridian Magazine

When a team of 125 Latter-day Saint volunteers flew to Haiti last Thursday, they intended to send back the empty plane to the United States full of orphans ready for adoption.  These were not the children newly orphaned by the earthquake, but orphans whose hopeful, adoptive parents had been working three to four tedious years to try to bring them out of the broken country where orphans languish and die for lack of nutrition and care.

What the LDS team could not have anticipated was that rescuing these children and saving their shattered lives would become a harrowing, dramatic race against time, where every minute counted and events had to come together in a perfect orchestration.

Some background:
Haiti teems with orphans, brown-eyed children, who scramble for survival.  Orphans are Haiti’s most flourishing crop.   Even before the earthquake, of Haiti’s 8.3 million population, it is estimated that 380,000 of them were orphans.  Now, no one can be sure of the number, as these children roam the streets and crouch untended in hidden corners, but guesses are that number may have doubled.

Our LDS team has seen a truck bed full of babies, too dazed to whimper, too hungry to cry anymore expecting that someone will care for them.  Two boys, newly orphaned by the quake, come into the military camp where we live, hoping to tell a joke or sing a song to find a meal.

So with this heart-rending problem, one would think the Haitian government would expedite the adoption process, and get these children into homes where they could be cared for.  Not so.  The adoption process in Haiti is gummed up with red tape, hurdles to cross, and frustrating delays.

One woman, clutching a three-year-old, she was adopting, told me that she had begun working on the adoption process since her child was two-days old. Scott Gordon, a father from Bellingham, Washington, who is adopting two little girls, said it took him fourteen months to get a single signature that he needed on a document.

Scott said they had tried to adopt one little girl named Gracie.  She was to be Gracie Gordon, but she died of sickness and malnutrition before they could clear the Haitian adoption hurdles.  They tried again to adopt a little girl and as time went on, she too, became sick.  The frantic Gordon family sent down a special medical and nutrition regimen for the child that would save her life, but the orphanage where she lived passed the food out as a treat to all the children, and she, too, died.  “I’m not going to lose another child,” he declared, holding the hands of the two little girls he had been working hard to bring home.

At this time, the prime minister, himself, has to sign the papers on each child that is going to be adopted from Haiti to other countries.

The plodding of this process is, in part, the way developing nations function with defeating and sometimes heartbreaking inefficiency. Since the earthquake, it is worse as the shattered seat of government has been moved from the collapsed palace to a police station in Port-au-Prince and hardly can begin to meet the needs of a bleeding country.

In part this glacial adoption speed, however, is Haiti’s way of expressing concern for its children.  Human trafficking abounds in Haiti, and Lear jets, land on hidden airstrips transporting the innocent, who have been rounded up from Haiti’s streets, into the most despicable human slavery.  Others are whisked away to have their organs harvested. These beautiful children have their body parts taken by the highest bidder.

Robert Henry Louis, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff said that the day before, an executive from UNICEF had been yelling in despair in a meeting because so many children are being whisked away into the darkest night.
Yet the glacial movement of the adoption process is not Haiti’s alone; the rules by which the United States operates are full of hurdles and their plate is full dealing with Haiti’s chaos.

This past week adoptive parents, seeking for documents they have struggled years to obtain, have camped out in the halls of the U.S. embassy unable to get movement.  Lindsay Crapo, who is on the board of an orphanage run by Guesmo Mardy, a counselor in the Haiti mission presidency, said she had spent every day, all day at the U.S. Embassy, including 16 hours the day we arrived with no progress. 

Part 2

No Orphans

We left Salt Lake for Haiti with carefully-detailed plans for bringing out orphans.  Many of them would be from President Mardy’s orphanage.  Of the three buildings that make up his center, two have been utterly destroyed in the earthquake, and the swelling number of orphans are now crammed into one building and some tents.  Though the documentation on the children we had hoped to rescue had long been in process, the lives of these children are on the line.

Calls were going back and forth between our jet and Haiti as we flew from Salt Lake City to Port-au-Prince, but the word came back that despite every effort, the papers still lacked signatures, including the key one from Haiti’s prime minister, who was currently in the Dominican Republic.

“We will not be bringing out the orphans.  No orphans.”  The word traveled back through the airplane with heaviness and burning disappointment as we flew closer to Haiti.  The plan had been for the orphans to be loaded during our plane’s hour turn-around in Haiti, but it seemed that it just could not be. Timing had to be precise.

Planes had to take off.  These papers, long in process, still lacked signatures.

But we are Latter-day Saints on this plane who know how to pray.  It is nearly unheard of for a chartered plane full of passengers to pray together before they leave for a destination or to have a devotional featuring a song, “Because I have been given much, I too must give.”  Yet, we are travelling as a community, already connected by our shared faith and unspoken bonds.  We are united by a willingness to volunteer for something that we all know could be very difficult.

Before we left Florida we decided to join our faith and heartfelt yearnings for these orphans and pray again.  We said, “Dear Heavenly Father, please give us a miracle.  Please orchestrate events so this empty plane can be filled with orphans.  Please save their lives. Please orchestrate events so we can save these children.  Please be in the details.”

Still, the situation seemed impossible. 

The LDS team arrived in Port-au-Prince after midnight, the city dark except where an occasional generator lit up a patch.  The plane had to turn around and go.  No orphans.

Steve Studdert met with the President’s own body guards at our camp.

But Steve Studdert, who spear-headed this expedition and gathered these 125 doctors, translators and construction workers, was not about to give up.  He has served in the White House with three administrations, and his team member, David Hoopes, has also served in the White House, overseeing among other things the flow of documents.  They have seen how to get things done, and with lives on the line, they were not about to stop now.

They had been in contact with the Utah senator’s offices. Senator Orrin Hatch called the owner of Sun Country from whom the plane had been chartered.  The plea was a big one.  Instead of having your pilot, crew and plane leave immediately, could they just wait until morning? 

Remarkably, the owner agreed.  This just doesn’t happen when an airline has a schedule to keep and a plane due somewhere else.

After the plane unloaded, Steve sat down with the pilot to get his buy-off and the series of remarkable events continued to fall into place.  It “just so happened” that this pilot had a friend with a child adopted from Haiti, and he had great sympathies for our plight.  He had a heart for the orphans and did not want to leave without them.  Though they had federal regulations to follow, they could stay until tomorrow at 11:00 AM.

That was not enough.  The U.S. Air Force officers currently administering the Port-au-Prince airport are dealing with an overloaded and strictly scheduled airport.  Would they agree to have a plane sit there until morning?
 

Except for a 20-minute nap, lying on concrete, Steve stayed up all night having conversations with key people in the military and in Washington running the airport, asking permission for the plane to stay.
 

With the plane’s owners and pilot in sympathy and agreement, this bought precious time for Steve and his team to meet with the prime minister in the morning at 9:00.  

Part 3
Meeting with the Haitian Government

The clock is ticking, the deadline looming for the plane’s take off as Steve and a few others taxi to the government offices at the police compound the next morning.

Off we went in a police escort and taxi.

Everything has to work together with precision, down to every detail, to get the papers signed and the travel documents for these orphans.
 

We are hoping for signatures that others have been seeking for weeks and months.  How could we possibly get them in a few minutes? So many things had to go right in a convergence to get these orphans out.  These variables are things beyond our ability to control, things that all the strategy, skill and effort in the world cannot bring to pass.

The seat of the Haitian Government is now located in an old police station.  The Presidential Palace collapsed in the earthquake.

Time has run out to get these papers signed unless heaven intercedes.

It was duly noted that we had arrived.  Leo Montes is on left talking to Steve Studdert.

We checked our watches and tried not to feel tense, thinking about the lives of these orphans on the line as we wait in the hot, bright sun of the police compound for the prime minister. 

That we even have this meeting, exactly when we need it, is something nobody could have planned. This meeting is made possible because “it just so happened” that one of our LDS team members, Leo Montes, a native and returned missionary from Haiti “just happens” to have a best friend who is the Prime Minister’s personal body guard. 

Then we saw, in a divine orchestration, how God can be in the details. It was as if it were a dance, with each player called on the stage at the perfect moment to say his speech. It was as if all the stars aligned and sung, all things working together as each played his part, and then, in turn, introduced the next necessary player in the sequence.

It was the parting of the Red Sea.

Part 4

Within minutes we met the Minister of Cultural Affairs,

And the chief of staff for the Prime Minister.

Then, enter stage right, came the U.S. ambassador over USAID in Haiti,

next the U.S. ambassador,  Kenneth H. Merton, whose signature we also needed.

(l-r) Steve Studdert, Ambassador Merton, David Hoopes, Robert Henry Louis and Leo Montes. 

He signed the orphan’s papers and initialed every one, lest there be a mistake.

We are waiting on the Prime Minister.

Then, as if on cue, came the nation’s President, Rene Preval.

The President was warm, friendly and in a great hurry.  His nation is in ruins.

Next appeared the gracious First Lady,

and, by her side, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

We are waiting on the Prime Minister and the clock is ticking.

We shook our heads in disbelief at the constellation of people who have come to our aid as if heeding an invisible call.

“This just doesn’t happen,” said Steve.  “I’ve represented the President of the United States in 100 nations and things still never come together like this.  It doesn’t happen.”

The elegant First Lady was wearing a smart green suit.  She told us that she has chosen it as a symbol of hope.  “We have been through tragedy and much is lost, but our strength is in our children,” she told a reporter.  “ We must give every assistance we can to our orphans.”

“We have come to try to help,” says Steve Studdert.

It was 10:00 now.  The Prime Minister should be here any minute, but, if these orphans are to make the plane, they have to be at the airport. His chief of staff promises that when he comes, he will surely sign the document with all these leaders behind it.   That is fine and good, but where is he?

Another plane flew overhead, reminding us that planes fly, planes leave on a schedule.  You cannot hold a Sun Country plane forever, nor keep the forbearance of the U.S. Air Force who are lending us the airport space.

We called the orphanage and told them to ready the children and hustle them to the airport.  The only possession they will bring, as the legacy of their meager lives, are the bright wrist bands marked with their names and the names of their new parents.

As we wait for the Prime Minister, we were given documents for 141 orphans.  Knowing that every detail must be correct, we pored over them, checking every line.

The U.S. executive, who thought he signed them all, accidentally missed two.  One of them is the two-year-old Lindsay Crapo is working to adopt.

At this point the group split up.  Steve Studdert waited for the Prime Minister.  David Hoopes  rushed to the U.S. Embassy to have these last two papers signed and obtain the travel documents.  Some of us were sent to gather members of the LDS team to make a mad dash to the airport to watch the orphans while they are waiting for the plane.
 

Part 5
Orphans at the Airport
 

Those LDS team members at the airport each take charge of a couple of orphans to entertain and hold, while we wait for David and Steve to bring the paperwork that will set them free.

Eleven o’clock has now long past.  The intense heat of the noonday tropical sun baked us as we counted the minutes.  We strained our eyes looking for any sign of those bringing documents and hoped that the plane would stay.
 

We checked our watches.  Time is relentless; it does not stop, even for orphans.  12:30, then 1:00.  No documents.

“It feels surreal,” Lindsay said, “that we have any chance of bringing these kids home.  I won’t believe it until we are actually on the airplane.”
 

Meanwhile our hands were full of toddlers and children, who fell on each of us as if they were in love.  They were eager to hold our hands, nuzzle their small heads into our necks.  They clutched our hands as if for dear life.

If we put them down for a minute because our arms were aching, they held up both hands begging to be held again.
 

I was holding a handsome little boy with wide eyes, named Sneider. “Be careful, he is a runner,” one of the helpers from the orphanage told me.  He was holding so tightly to me, I didn’t worry that he’d wander.

They clung to us like rag dolls, flopping their heads across our shoulders.  Some were worried, tearful and disoriented.
 

The noise of the C17’s starting up on the runway blasted every tender eardrum and Lindsay Crapo passed out ear plugs for the children.
 

Some members of our team made balloons out of the surgical gloves we have brought with us to help the children pass the time in the sweltering heat.  Some sang songs or did finger games.

Scott Gordon told me that one little girl, peacefully asleep on my lap had been already used as a domestic slave and treated very badly.  It will take her much to heal.
 

It is 1:00, and then 1:30.  The immigration agents, called ICE, have waited with us for all this time, and they announced that they were going to shut down the operation.  They could wait no more.  Understandably, they had other work to do.  We begged and pled for a few more minutes.

Finally, in a frantic cross-town, careening drive where it seemed only two wheels were on the road and the other two on the curb, Steve and Dave arrived with all the finished paperwork, including the Prime Minister’s signature.  141 orphans had been cleared and 66 of those would be on this plane.

As each orphan is processed, his or her relieved and tearful new parent carried them to the plane, if they were in Haiti.  If not, these fragile children were wrapped up in the arms of the burly ICE agents, who carried them with marked tenderness to the plane.

A feeling swept the little crowd taking the orphans to the plane.  It was a mix of happy tears and laughter, of relief and disbelief.  This was impossible, and yet it happened before our eyes.

God had heard the prayers of so many for these children.  He had spared them in a convergence of events that was too remarkable to be anything but his signature.  Our clumsy, mortal efforts could never have created this orchestration.

A joyous team in tears at the base of the airplane ready to leave with the precious cargo.

I stepped into the cockpit to thank the pilot for his patience and concern.  It was 3:00 and we had the orphans and their parents and caretakers ready to leave.  He said, “The company just called to say they would give me two more minutes before I am yanked out of here.”

The timing had been perfect.  Of course.

We waved goodbye to the orphans as they flew away and said, “You’re going home. Now you have a home.”