Open Threads

Silsby finished high school at 15, had her first child at 20 (during a marriage later annulled), moved through a couple of state universities to obtain a degree in business administration. She worked for Hewlett Packard for several years, amassing the skills and contacts that would lead her to found the Internet venture consecutively titled “eFunz.com Inc., which later became AvenueMe Inc. and then Personal Shopper Inc.” (In a novel, those names would be rejected as overly satirical.) But despite “an all-star team of technology folks culled from businesses across the Treasure Valley” putting in 12-hour days, Silsby’s promises of immanent investment funding (including some from Oxygen Media – Oprah’s own network!) never quite covered the bills; she has been trailed by “at least 16 claims for unpaid wages”, including one case which has been rescheduled to June as a result of her current inability to return to Idaho. Her personal life wasn’t doing any better than her company — her second marriage fell apart in 2004, she’s fighting her husband for custody of her two younger children, the house she bought in 2008 (as the foundation of the New Life Children’s Refuge) has been foreclosed, and she’s got collection agencies after her for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But Silsby wasn’t about to let mere worldly concerns deter her missionary visions:

Fellow church members dropped everything on short notice to help her rescue orphans in Haiti, where the group of 10 was intercepted Jan. 29 at the Dominican Republic border and taken to jail…
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[Silsby’s sister]Barton is listed as one of the three initial members of the board of directors for New Life Children’s Refuge, a nonprofit registered with the state by Silsby in November. Silsby and her nanny, Charisa Coulter, are listed as the other directors.
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The charitable organization’s stated purpose is “to provide a loving Christian environment for abandoned and unwanted children.” Its listed plans included “orphanages, schools, medical clinics, and villas for adopting parents.”…
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Her dogged determination — regardless of the rules laid out before her — has been clear in accounts of her Haiti rescue attempt.
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A Dominican Republic official said he told her she needed the right documents to get the children out, and she persisted. A Kentucky couple told her not to try to gather their waiting adoptees, but she arrived at the orphanage anyway.
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And just Saturday, Dixie Bickel, director of God’s Littlest Children orphanage in Thomasin, Haiti, told the Miami Herald that Silsby disregarded her warnings about trying to swoop in after the earthquake.
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Bickel described their 10-minute phone call: “She said, ‘We came in a bus we rented in the Dominican Republic and we’re going to take 100 children back to the Dominican Republic.’ I said, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t do that without contacting (Haitian Social Services).’”
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“Well, I don’t see why not?” she said Silby told her.
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“I said, ‘UNICEF and (Haitian Social Services) are waiting to crucify somebody like you, taking children out of Haiti.’”

At which point, perhaps, our prospective Great American Novelist moves from Dreiser territory to that of Graham Greene, or Burdick & Lederer. People on the ground in Haiti, like Anne-Christine d’Adesky, tried and failed to warn Silsby and her companions:

These were Haitian children, and they required Haitian official permission, and paperwork that adheres to the protocol for tranferring Undocumented Refugee Children across national borders. I told them that, but they were convinced they might overcome this ‘red tape’.
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At the time, I thought they were trying to be legit, but were misguided – though my suspicions were raised. We discussed Haitian concerns about trafficking, which she knew all about… Silsby informed me that her group was going to find ‘native’ orphanages – or centers – that had ‘children others wouldn’t want to adopt.’ I thought she meant perhaps ‘special needs’ children, but didn’t quite understand.
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(Later, I learned that her group had targeted a community she had already visited in the past, and she had worked with a local pastor who asked parents to turn over their children for a ‘better life’ in the Dominican Republic.) She repeatedly told me her group would not be putting the children up for adoption, which is why. she inferred, some Dominican had helped her with paperwork to transfer them ‘to safety.’
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She told me they were on a mission from God and if God wanted them to succeed, they would.

And that’s before we get to the ill-fated bus trip, the group’s incarceration, the flurry of American media attention, and the American-born, Dominican-raised legal advisor who may be linked to international sex trafficking of children… whose life seems to be a whole different trope of modern American tragedy.