The global fellowship Baptist World Alliance (BWA) issued a statement “to assure its member bodies, the media and the public” that neither the team of missionaries nor their churches were affiliated with BWA or with any of its member bodies.
Similarly, the American Baptist Churches USA stated that the 10 American Baptists arrested by Haitian authorities over concern about child trafficking are not members of churches affiliated with the denomination.
“While the people involved are Baptists from the United States, they are not members of the denomination known as ABCUSA,” the denomination stated.
Most of the team members were from two Idaho churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Haitian officials arrested the Americans while they were trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border to the Dominican Republic. The Baptist team said they were taking the children to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic to receive medical care and education.
They did not, however, have government permission to take the children out of the country. Moreover, many of the children they took had at least one living parent.
After nearly a week in jail, the Baptists were charged with abduction and criminal association. The charges carry prison terms of up to 15 years. The case has been sent to an investigative judge.
The US Government, meanwhile, is attempting to show respect for the Haitian government.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently that the case of the missionaries “is a matter for the Haitian judicial system.”
Haiti’s Prime Minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, told CNN that the Haitian government was open to the idea of transferring the case to a US court, but no such request had been made by the United States.