Eight Baptist Missionaries Accused of Kidnapping in Haiti Land in U.S.
Feb. 18, 2010— -- Eight American missionaries climbed out of a military cargo plane overnight and stepped on American soil for the first time since they were arrested in Haiti on charges of child trafficking.
After spending nearly three weeks in a Haitian jail, the exhausted missionaries were greeted by a crush of reporters at Miami International Airport.
It was so chaotic that a lawyer for the group did a headcount. But he knew that two of the group were missing -- the group leader, Laura Silsby, 47, and Charisa Coulter, 24, remain in the Haitian jail.
"They're very tired," Caleb Stegall, a district attorney in Kansas who spoke with some of the missionaries, told The Associated Press. "They've had quite an ordeal and they're obviously looking forward to a soft bed, a hot meal and a warm shower."
The 10 missionaries were arrested on Jan. 29 for allegedly kidnapping dozens of Haitian children and attempting to take them out of the country. The group claimed they had been granted permission to bring the children to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
The case took a twist when investigators discovered many of the children were not orphans at all and had parents in Haiti.
Earlier this month a lawyer representing the missionaries laid blame on Silsby and claimed the rest of the group was "naive."
Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said he released the eight because the parents of the children the group had taken testified that they voluntarily gave their children to the missionaries. But he would not release Silsby and Coulter.
