Church faces accusations over Haiti fire - The San Diego Union-Tribune en Español

For a limestone mantel from a Waldorf Astoria fireplace, the Church that owns Olde Good Things antique stores is asking $8,500.

But for each child's death in a home fire it operated in Haiti, the children's parents said the Church itself offered to pay only $50 to $100 in family compensation, plus $150 for funeral-related costs, like new clothes and transportation.

The wealth of the Bible Understanding Church in America has long contrasted with the neglect of its two children's homes in Haiti, which for years have broken the law and failed two state inspections. But the gap became more apparent on Feb. 13, when the fire left 13 children dead, as well as two adult caregivers who the Church's attorney said were disabled. Authorities suspect the fire started because the home used candles instead of a working generator or battery in a country where power failures are common.

The deaths devastated parents like Eustache Arismé, 33, who took her two daughters home shortly after they were born because her left arm was withered and she couldn't find a job. Ella's daughters Nedjie, 4, and Vanise, 3, died in the fire at the home, which is called an orphanage in Haiti even though most children in those homes have at least one living parent.

Like Arismé's daughters, most of the children in Haiti's children's homes are given up voluntarily, often as babies, by parents who feel they cannot support them. They do not lose legal custody, and they say the pain of separation is offset by knowing that at least their children receive basic food and shelter. Children's homes usually allow parents to visit and often offer food and other help.

“At first, I was happy to see the girls grow up in the orphanage. But now I deeply regret my decision,” Arismé said. “When we took our girls to the orphanage, the owners welcomed us. Now, after this tragedy, they sent a lawyer to take care of us.”

The church's attorney, Osner Fevry, said she is being unfairly accused by critics in Haiti and abroad. The Church may send less money to the Caribbean country than some people would like, he said, but many other US groups solicit donations on behalf of Haitians in need and send only a fraction to the country, after paying staff salaries and administrative expenses. , he added.

"This is happening to hundreds and thousands of US organizations working in Haiti and raising millions of dollars on behalf of churches and non-governmental organizations" in the country, she said.

Fevry said the Church members who ran the homes left for the United States a few days after the fire, not to avoid a lawsuit, but because they were harassed by local police and media.

"I don't think the Church can recognize its legal responsibility, but it can recognize its moral responsibility," Fevry acknowledged. "Morally, how could there be a candle to light those children?"

Households have been in trouble before. A series of inspections beginning in November 2012 found that they did not meet minimum health and safety standards, with overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and insufficient trained staff. The Haitian authorities took away their accreditation.

When Church members brought in outside experts, one said they had “not the slightest idea of ​​what it takes to care for so many babies.”

"I'm surprised none of them died," the woman said.

The orphanages failed another round of state inspections in 2017, but Fevry was hired to prevent them from being shut down, according to Haitian child welfare authorities. They said closing an orphanage can take months or years, especially if the management has money or influence.

Through its spokesman in the United States, the Church declined to comment on specific allegations of neglect and abuse at its children's homes in Haiti.

“We are devastated by the tragic fire that claimed the lives of our children at our orphanage in Haiti. Words could not express our immense pain and grief," the Church said in a written statement. "We take this very seriously and are moving forward to help everyone affected by this horrific accident."

I CRIED BITTERLY

On the night of Feb. 13, 61 children slept inside the church's two-story house in the town of Kenscoff, located in the mountains near the capital Port-au-Prince, according to the Social Welfare Institute. A 16-year-old boy who lived there told authorities that he and a caretaker went to buy candles, which they lit in each of the rooms full of children, and then went to sleep.

A short time later, around 9 pm, the orphanage was filled with the smell of smoke. 13 children between the ages of 3 and 18 died, as did a 39-year-old woman and a 34-year-old man.

Among them was Ricardo, Tania Caristan's 6-year-old son.

Caristan makes a living selling items on the street and doing laundry for neighbors. She moved back in with her parents, and said that she had to leave Ricardo with her husband, from whom she was separated from her.

It was only two months later that she learned that her ex-husband had placed the child in a Bible Understanding Church home. Horrified, she went there with a copy of the birth certificate to retrieve the baby from her.

But a white man told her through an interpreter that she couldn't take him because she wasn't one of the people who had left him at the orphanage, she said.

“I tried everything to convince the person in charge of the orphanage,” she said quietly, as she watched her youngest daughter play outside the shack where they live. "I wept bitterly."

A security guard opened the door and asked him to leave. One of her sisters tried to get the child back later, but also failed.

But Caristan never gave up hope. She always thought that one day she would see her son again.

She never saw him again.

The day after the fire, the boy's father told Caristan's sister that he had died. Caristan ran to the hospital to see her son's face one last time, but he had already been taken to the morgue. She said no one from the orphanage or her state has contacted her since.

“Regardless of my situation, it would have been better to have my son with me,” she said. “I would have eaten crumbs from my piece of bread… if I had known that his father was going to take him to an orphanage, I would have kept my son.”

Through a spokeswoman, the Church declined to comment on Caristan's story.

Haitian prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the church homes, which had 154 children at the time of the fire, according to the National Institute for Child Welfare. The Institute finally closed the homes after the incident and took 28 children into custody to reunite them with their parents or relatives. More than 100 children have fled.

Some children raised in the orphanages say they were generally treated kindly. Others describe conditions of mental and physical abuse, including isolation and beatings.

Anaika François, 19, told The Associated Press that she entered the homes at age six because her parents were too poor to care for her and her younger sister. She said that children around that age who wet the bed were physically punished. In the worst cases, they were placed on a table where they were beaten by the orphanage manager or director.

“That often left marks, in which case the manager would give you a hot salt bath,” she noted. "The marks disappeared in two or three days."

Fedania Charles, 20, said that when she lived with the church, children were beaten on the buttocks for wetting their beds and then washed in hot salt water.

"You could see the bruises for at least 24 hours," she said.

James Dindin, 36, said he was delivered to the orphanage when he was about nine months old. He said that when he was a teenager, he would be put in a “detention room” with a single window along with a dozen other children for two or three weeks, and an employee would escort them to the bathroom. Sometimes rebellious children were expelled and forced to sleep on the streets, he recalled.

He said the trauma does not leave him and other children he grew up with in the homes.

“Every time I see one of the kids I grew up with on the streets begging for money… I remember everything,” he said. "Almost every day".

The Church declined to comment specifically on the former residents' claims.

Haiti has more than 700 "orphanages" housing more than 25,000 children, and only 35 of them meet the standards of the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children, according to the Haitian Institute for Child Welfare and UNICEF.

Advocates for Haitian orphanages say that, despite any flaws, the homes help children who would otherwise be worse off with desperately poor parents who could not feed or clothe them. But child welfare advocates say orphanages harm children by creating incentives to separate them from their parents. By one estimate, Haitian orphanages receive more than $100 million a year in donations, but another study has shown that a single grant of $220 can help a poor Haitian family keep a child in decent conditions in their own home. .

“No child should be placed in an orphanage,” said Maria Luisa Fornara, the UNICEF representative in Haiti. "I would ask any of these organizations that come in and maintain orphanages, would they want their children to be in those places? ... I don't think so."

FOREVER FAMILY

Bible Understanding Church was founded under the name “Forever Family” by Stewart Traill, a former vacuum cleaner salesman, in the early 1970s. When he was about 35 years old, he began preaching in the streets of Philadelphia and New York, creating a series of longhouses in the northeastern United States that attracted young people and children who had run away from home.

It was not a comfortable life. Former members said they were crammed into cramped rooms, slept on mats on the floor and discouraged from dating, attending school or doing anything outside of Church activities. Members worked for Church business, and in return received a modest salary.

In September 1982, four Church members were found guilty in Philadelphia of whipping Traill's 13-year-old son with a belt and board so harshly that he had to be hospitalized.

The Forever Family grew to 10,000 members at its height in the mid-1970s, according to the Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions. Traill, who died in 2018 at age 82, renamed it the Bible Understanding Church in 1976, and is now believed to have between 30 and 50 members.

Over the years, the Church ran a number of businesses, including a carpet-cleaning company lampooned in an episode of the television series “Seinfeld” about a cult-linked business hired by one of the main characters. . Contracts to demolish old buildings became a business to sell old architectural elements.

That became Olde Good Things, which has a thriving online business and retail stores in New York, Los Angeles and at its headquarters in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Offers vintage and vintage home décor items such as crystal chandeliers up to $22,000. One of the least expensive items on sale this week is a pair of antique brass hinges for $55.

Olde Good Things, which says on its website that it donates half of its profits to the church's mission work in Haiti, announced plans last year to open a new flagship store on West 52nd Street in Manhattan.

Public tax documents show that the Church and the business have considerable overlap. In its most recent statement, the Church reported revenue of $6.6 million and expenses of $2.2 million. He reported a net loss of $125,537 from Olde Good Things, and the Church lent $3.7 million to the business.

The church filed assets of $19 million, which include a 12,000-square-foot home in Coral Springs, Florida, where Traill lived with his wife, exempt from state property taxes for religious reasons, records show. public.

The Church says in its tax records that "a large part of our operation is to finance our missionary work," operating the two homes in Haiti's capital and distributing food in rural areas. The Olde Good Things website says, "We appreciate our customers and want them to understand that the proceeds from their purchase go directly to support this valuable work."

The Church also received more than $579,000 in food grants from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) between 2003 and 2012. USAID denied its grant application as “non-competitive” in 2013, the same year the Haitian government said its children's homes did not meet minimum standards. It has not been renewed.

Former members and employees say the work in Haiti has always been a focus of the Church and the business.

Church members often spoke on Olde Good Things about their work in Haiti and bringing children from their homes to the United States for medical treatment, said Rashida Lovely, who worked as an accounting secretary and supervisor for the company, saying that they treated her well. She recalled using a check from the business to buy toiletries and medical supplies for the children's homes, which were then shipped to the Caribbean country on a Church-owned plane.

Any problems in the homes, Lovely said, were probably the result of reduced Church income, or because most of the work in Haiti was done by older Church members.

“They did the best they could so far and there are not enough young people to back it up,” she said. "They're too old to keep doing it."