How to buy a child in ten hours

You try legally "adopting" one and it will take thousands plus bribes to cut through the "red tape".My heart is breaking. I would bet that reporter's was too.
=========================
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/...5326508&page=1

There's video at the link.


How to Buy a Child in 10 Hours
One Reporter's Journey Reveals An Epidemic of Child Slavery in Haiti

This deeply unsettling experiment starts on a typical Monday morning on Manhattan's leafy Upper West Side, where commuters stroll by Starbucks and Central Park.

At 7:10 a.m., I'm off to see how long it takes to buy a child slave.

It's 45 minutes to Kennedy Airport and an hour or so wait in the terminal, then a 3½-hour flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

A band greets the flight.

By the time my team and I have collected our luggage, gone through immigration and customs, and are loaded into our vehicles, it's about 3:15 p.m.

As we leave the airport, two things become immediately apparent: Port-au-Prince is an amazing, vivid place, and it's also extremely poor. The U.S. State Department warns Americans against visiting here. United Nations peacekeepers patrol the roads while we drive with our own security team: two armed Haitian men in SUVs.

'I Would Like to Get a Child'
By 4:45 p.m., I'm poolside at one of the city's few upscale hotels. I'm wearing a hidden camera built into the strap of a bike messenger-style bag that's around my neck. There's another hidden camera in a leather satchel on the table, right next to the fruit plate and Evian water. My colleagues are manning cameras in hotel rooms overlooking the pool.

Our security guards are sitting discretely nearby.

That's when the man with whom I've arranged a meeting shows up.

He says he's a former member of parliament and that he has connections. In broad daylight, with hotel waiters walking by, he doesn't even flinch when I make a horrific request.

"If I would like to get a child to live with me and take care of me," I ask. "Could you do that?"

"Yes," he says. "I can."

He's speaking in Creole, the most prevalent Haitian language. The man doing the translation, who has set up the meeting, works for us (unbeknownst to the slave trafficker).

The trafficker assures me he's done this sort of transaction many times before.

"A girl or a boy?" he asks.

"A girl probably," I say.

"How old?"

"Maybe 10 or 11."

"Not a problem."

He says he can get me an 11-year-old girl, although he suggests that a 15-year-old might be better, because she'd be more "developed."

I'm thinking: I can't believe I'm having this conversation.

"And this is OK?" I ask. "I won't have any trouble from their parents or anything like that?"

"No, you won't have any problems with their parents."

"Why not?"

"When I give you the child, I will train it for you."

I'm not exactly sure what that means.

A Successful Negotiation
"I'm a little nervous." I say. "I just want to make sure that this is OK, that I'm not going to get in trouble, that this will be smooth, that you've done this before."

"I guarantee my service," says the trafficker, grinning. "I can get you your girl as early as tomorrow."

And now, the negotiation begins.

"So how much will it cost me to get a child?" I ask.

"The last one I gave was $300."

Trying to test the value of human life, I push a little.

"I have a friend who got one for $50."

"No," he says.

"What about $100?"

"$150," he offers.

I accept.

And there it is. It's about 5 p.m. Roughly 10 hours after leaving my office in New York City, I have successfully negotiated to buy another human being -- an 11-year-old girl, whose value is set at just $150.

As we conclude our meeting, I want to make sure the trafficker does not act on my request. I ask him to wait a day before doing anything. I assure him I'll call him tomorrow with my final answer. He agrees.

Offering Fake Papers and a 'Pretty' Child
And then, to show that this grotesque sort of deal-making is not a fluke, I have a second meeting, with another trafficker -- a beefy guy with the air of a street .

This second trafficker is asking a much steeper price for an 11-year-old girl: $10,000.

"It's something definitive," explains our translator. "After the sale, he doesn't mind what happens to the kid."

"So for $10,000, I can have the child and do anything I want to do is what he's saying?" I ask.

"Yeah, definitely."

As further enticement, the trafficker says he can even get me fake papers that would allow me to take this child back to the U.S. with me. Both traffickers say they have experience providing children to Americans. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, officials have no idea how often this sort of transaction transpires. As the slightly menacing slave trafficker describes this girl he's promising to provide, I hear him use the French word "belle." French, along with Creole, is one of Haiti's official languages.

"Did he use the word 'belle'? Like, pretty girl?" I ask the translator.

"Yeah."

"So he's saying this would be a pretty child?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think he's hinting that the child would be a partner of some sort?"

"Yeah, it's up to you because that kid is yours."

Once again, I can't believe I'm having this conversation -- sitting in the sunshine so casually transacting such diabolical business. Just to make sure I fully understand the offer on the table, I ask, "If I pay $10,000 I essentially own this child?"

"Yeah, it's yours. You do whatever you want."

I've heard enough. I conclude the meeting, once again making sure the trafficker doesn't actually act on my request.

But now comes the craziest part of this wildly disturbing day.

Two waiters sitting nearby call me over. They say they've heard my conversations. At first I think they're going to yell at me or something. I'm bracing for shame. Instead, the waiters offer to sell me a child.

"So you're saying if I want to get a child to live with me, you can help me?" I ask. "Yes," says one of the waiters. "I give you my telephone also."

"About what age?" asks the other watier.

"Maybe 10, 11 years old."

"10 or 11?"

"Yeah," I say. "A girl."

"Ok," says the first waiter, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Ok. I'll help you."

The rest of the story is at the link

OMG thats very very disturbing and yes you are right, very heartbreaking too.
Thankyou for posting that story. More people should be aware of this kind of stuff. I dont even know what the solution is to this kind of thing.

It makes one wonder if this sort of exchange is happening in the US to other countries. Maybe some of our missing are alive in other countries belonging to some sick freak.

Sadly, this happens all the time.
I have a sick feeling that some of our missing children are roaming around out there slaves to some freak.

The poorer the nation the less valuable their women and children are to them.

Oh my dear God. I had as much difficulty reading that as I did reading a case about a horrific murder. I thought this was just going to be another "trying to sell my kid on eBay" story, but that is so much worse. Very disturbing.

the thing is now the pervs know where to go to buy a kid!

This is what I have always been concerned about for our missing children. i wouldnt doubt that many of them are indeed alive and living a horrible life and it saddens me.

wildTrose said:

the thing is now the pervs know where to go to buy a kid!

Click to expand...

You know, I thought the same thing!

When I hear about single men traveling to Thailand or other places like that I automatically think "PERV!".

Yeah, it is unfair but they can thank the men that have travelled there to rape little boys.

You know our governement has to be aware of those men (sexist, sorry) who continue to travel to countries that are well known pedophile tourist destinations. I hope they monitor them.

I never thought of Haiti as being one but now we know. If there is a sharp increase of American men flying over there, ya know why.

This is a very common happening in Haiti. The term for this is restavek. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restavek

The parents are so happy to get their child out of Haiti. Haiti is in deplorable shape. They don't have food, they don't have schooling, they don't have a home. Didn't you see the earlier stories this year that Haitians had resorted to eating dirt??


I have to say that I personally am glad that the Haitians are not allowed to stay in the U. S. if they make the boat trip. If they were allowed, South Florida would have about 2 million Haitians hauling *advertiser censored** on boats immediately.

Of course, I don't want the Cubans getting on any more boats and coming over here, too. They as much as say they come here for economic reasons, not political. And they should not be allowed the wet foot/dry foot policy any longer. I hear that many Cuban men in the U. S. travel to Cuba a few times a year and they "keep" a teen girl there as a girlfriend. Sometimes they get the money together to bring the girl over, but usually they just send them $20-30 monthly and go over there and bang them whenever they can. Remember, the monthly salary for most state Cuban jobs is roughly $10 month so these girls are really scoring well.

I have also heard that Costa Rica has a lot of teenage prostitutes. I don't know if they are willing. Just heard that the gambling is the excuse, but the girls are the real draw.

Well, thinking about this will keep me awake tonight.

When my son was little untill he was over 16 I would tell him be aware of your surroundings. If something doesn't feel right get out of the situation. Of course the older he got the more detailed I could be. When he was about 12 he called me to pick him up. He was at my x SIL his aunt's.. she had 2 boys about the same age 9-13 well she had people over & the kids were playing video games in their room when one of the adult men came in asked he could play play games too & sat next to my son. He never got the chance to harm a hair on any of those boys cause I flew over there. I knew something was WRONG because he would never call me to pick him up from his cousins if not..u know kids. The rest of the story is too much to post lets just he was never near a child again.. but as I was saying I use to tell him there are so many thing bad bad things that can happen to you worst than death. When he got older he came to me & said you know mom I could have been a statistic thanks for knowing me so well & taking care of me.