Children Test Positive for STD in Haiti Orphanage.
| Autor | Rodriguez, George |
The fact that dozens of children at an orphanage tested positive to a sexually transmitted disease (STD) sounded the alarm in the US Senate, 10 of whose members have asked the US State Department to pressure the Haitian government into closing the place.
In a letter sent Jan. 29 to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, the senators also charged that children have been abused at the orphanage Notre Dame de la Nativite (Our Lady of the Nativity), located in Fontamara, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, the country's capital.
The home, which was badly hit by the devastating January 2010 earthquake that killed close to 70 children there, has processed adoption requests mostly from US and French families, and according to the senators, has been under investigation for more than a year by the government agency focused on child protection, the Institut de Bien-Etre Social et de Recherches (IBESR).
"While Haiti's social services agency has had an ongoing investigation into the orphanage for more than a year, nothing has been done to stop the abuse," the legislators wrote in their January letter.
Four days later, the Associated Press (AP) reported that IBESR official Andolphe Guillaume had shown one of its journalists a December 2017 report noting that at least six of 33 children tested at the orphanage had chlamydia and recommended further investigation.
"He said officials were surprised because the home had a good reputation. 'This creche is one of the best in Haiti. We don't know how this happened,'" the AP reported.
Nativite director Eveline Louis-Jacques acknowledged the positive chlamydia tests, stating that there was no confirmation about the children having been infected at the orphanage itself, and denied that the children were being abused at the home.
The minors "are very well treated," Louis-Jacques said, adding that "they're not in an orphanage" but "in my house, with me."
Nativite is not the only orphanage reported as a place where minors are abused, as a British charity foundation and IBESR revealed in reports issued less than a year apart.
Illegitimate businesses
In June 2017, the London-basedLumos Foundation--founded by J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter novels--released a report warning that many Haitian orphanages were operating as illegal businesses, and noting that more than 80% of the estimated 30,000 minors living in such institutions are not orphans.
"More than 75% of the children could be reunited with their...
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