Christian Missionary and Internet Scammer Laura Silsby

Like a lot of people I’ve heard quite a bit about those Christian missionaries now sitting in a jail cell down in Haiti on charges of kidnapping for trying to take orphans out of Haiti and into the Dominican Republic. I spent about ten minutes on the Internet to find out the details surrounding this case and walked away thinking those missionaries now sitting in jail are exactly where they need to be.

They deserve to be in jail.

First of all, they weren’t trying to take these kids, these supposed orphans, to the United States so that they could be adopted by loving parents. No, their goal was to take them out of Haiti so that they could live in a brand new orphanage they were establishing in the Dominican Republic. Secondly, many of these kids aren’t even orphans. A good many have parents and family members in Haiti. A good many were temporarily in a Haitian orphanage not because they were orphans, but because of the earthquake, they had no where to live. Some of these orphans had parents, parents who were told that if they allowed their children to leave Haiti and go live in the Dominican Republic, they would be educated and live a much better life.

The leader of these Christian missionaries now sitting in jail is a woman named Laura Silsby, a 40-year-old Idaho businesswoman. It’s been her dream to build an orphanage down in the Dominican Republic for Haitian children. She’s a woman with a somewhat checkered past. She was recently sued by employees of her Internet based business Personal Shopper for unpaid wages.  According to the New York Times, the reasons she gave her employees for not paying them was “no money for payroll” and “fully investor funded and investors have been hit hard by the economy.”

Laura Silsby lost her $358,000 home in Meridian, Idaho in July 2009 to foreclosure.  In November 2009 she registered a new not-for-profit, the New Life Children’s Refuge, at the address of that same foreclosed house.  The New Life Children’s Refuge is the name of the organization behind the new orphanage in the Dominican Republic.  Currently, it’s a rented beach resort in the Dominican Republic.

I don’t feel sorry for Laura Silsby or the people she got to help her steal children.  If they were stupid enough to go down to Haiti and help pluck children for Silsby’s beach resort orphanage, they deserve to face the full brunt of the Haitian justice system.  Whatever that is.