The missionaries, most of whom belong to an Idaho-based Baptist church, were arrested last month trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border to the Dominican Republic 17 days after a magnitude 7 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
They were charged last week with child abduction and criminal association. Hearings that could lead either to their release or a decision to move ahead with prosecution were scheduled to resume on Tuesday and a judicial source said a ruling was unlikely before tomorrow.
“I am trusting God to reveal all truth and that we will be released and exonerated of charges, and we are just waiting for the Haitian process, legal process, to complete,” the group’s leader, Laura Silsby, said after yesterday’s hearing.
The five men and five women have denied any intentional wrongdoing and said they were only trying to help orphans left destitute by the quake, which shattered the Haitian capital and left more than one million homeless. But evidence has come to light showing most of the children still had living parents.
The case is diplomatically sensitive as the United States is spearheading a massive international effort to feed and shelter an estimated one million people left homeless by the quake.
The beleaguered Haitian government, trying to cope with the country’s worst natural disaster, has tightened adoption procedures since the quake and warned that unscrupulous traffickers could try to spirit away vulnerable children.
Silsby said she was being treated well in jail and expected the legal process to take several more days.
“God is good. He’s sustaining us,” she said. “We’ve been given great care, so we’re doing fine.”
After another hearing on Tuesday, Judge Bernard Sainvil will hold “confrontations” on Wednesday where witnesses are brought face-to-face to test the veracity of their testimony, the judicial source told Reuters.
