Nine of the American Baptist missionaries facing kidnapping charges in Haiti were naive and unaware they were breaking the law, according to their lawyer who says the group's leader is to blame.
The 10 members of the group are being held in Haiti pending trial, and have all been charged with kidnapping and criminal association.
Upon conviction, kidnapping comes with a five to 15-year sentence, while criminal association is punishable by three to nine years in jail.
The group is accused of trying to take 33 children out of Haiti without proper paperwork. According to reports many of the children had parents.
Lawyer Edwin Coq said the group's leader Laura Silsby knew they couldn't take the children without proper documentation, but said the other members of the group didn't realize they were breaking the law.
"I'm going to do everything I can to get the nine out," Coq said Thursday after a magistrate charged the 10 at a closed hearing.
"They were naive. They had no idea what was going on and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border. But Silsby did."
George Willeit of SOS Children's Village, the orphanage that has been caring for the children since the Americans were turned back at the border of the Dominican Republic, said many of the youngsters require intense care.
"We are trying to stabilize their situation and we are trying to give them attention and take care of their needs. Some of them also need psychological treatment because they realize they have been taken away from their parents," Willeit told CTV's Canada AM on Friday.
About two-thirds of the children have parents, according to reports. However, many of them gave up their kids willingly on the promise that they would be given a better life than they would have in the quake-ravaged nation.
"To go into these families, to tell these parents their situation is too worse, your circumstances are so terrible, and to promise them I will bring your child to another country...and somehow promise paradise -- this is an absolute misuse of these bad circumstances the parents are living in at the moment," Willeit said.
Willeit said none of the children have been reunited with their parents, and no decisions will be made on that front until Haitian authorities have fully investigated the situation.
Family members of the Americans released a statement late Thursday saying they were concerned about their relatives.
"Obviously, we do not know details about what happened and didn't happen on this mission," the statement said. "However, we are absolutely convinced that those who were recruited to join this mission traveled to Haiti to help, not hurt, these children."
Most members of the Baptist group are from two Idaho churches, They had said they were rescuing abandoned children and orphans from a nation that UNICEF says had 380,000 youngsters in that plight even before the quake
Last summer, Silsby had begun planning to establish an orphanage in Dominican Republic that would care for Haitian children.
She stepped up her efforts after the devastating quake hit the nation on Jan. 12, recruiting nine volunteers to travel to Haiti with her.
The group spent a week gathering children for the orphanage project, the majority coming from the village of Callebas.
The Associated Press reported that people in the village said they handed over their kids because they couldn't care for them in the aftermath of the quake. They said the missionaries promised to educate the children and let relatives visit.
Silsby had said the children came from collapsed orphanages or were handed over by distant relatives.
With files from The Associated Press
