I previously debunked a claim about Laura Silsby.
https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/2122876
Now I will show that Pizzagate connection of James Alefantis to Laura Silsby is highly dubious.
From the Executive Summary
Laura Silsby was got off the hook by Jorge Puello, who was later convicted of sex trafficking, and was wanted on charges of sex trafficking in four countries. Izette Folger, a close friend of James Alefantis,... is the daughter of Michael Maccoby, who coaches leaders of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, or NPH, a large organization that runs orphanages all over the world. His son, Max Maccoby, is on the Boards of Directors of an NPH orphanage called Friends of the Orphans, which ... happens to be the orphanage from which Silsby was caught trafficking children.
This begins with a falsehood as Silsby was not got off the hook. She was convicted of a lesser charge and served time. And Jorge Puello certainly didn't do it. He was not even her lawyer at trial. He was already exposed as a con man and a fraud months before her trial even started.
Feb 15 Puello facing charges
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/15/haiti.legal.adviser.charges/index.html
May 13 Silsby's trial starts
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/haiti-prosecutors-seek-months-prison-woman-tried-remove-kids-quake-1947670658.html
I plan to prove this statement is false and demonstrate there is no connection between Silsby and Alefantis.
Max Maccoby, is on the Boards of Directors of an NPH orphanage called Friends of the Orphans, which ... happens to be the orphanage from which Silsby was caught trafficking children.
So Silsby got her kids from an orphanage that Max Maccoby helps run? The summary links to
this interview
https://archive.fo/ox7Fa#selection-523.0-533.198
VAN SUSTEREN: Where did they find these 33 children? How did they get these children?
PUELLO: There was an orphanage that collapsed in Haiti. It was called friends of the orphans of Haiti. And there was somebody over there that told them that the orphans had no place, no room to place them.
So here's the issues with this.
A. Puello is the only source of this. If Puello is telling the truth, we would be able to find evidence of an evidence called Friends of the Orphans that collapsed.
B. Puello is not exactly a reliable source. We know he is a liar and a con man and anything he says needs to be backed up from other sources.
C. Where did the children come from? The AP severely undermines Puello's claim because they tracked where Silsby got everyone of the 33 children.
D. There is no orphanage called Friends of the Orphans in Haiti. It's a US based organization.
Let's take a look at each of these.
Puello's claim and reputation. (A + B)
If you do a Google search for the first 6 months of 2010, for silsby and the exact phrase "friends of the orphans" you get no results for the exact phrase.
https://www.google.com/search?q=silsby+%22friends+of+the+orphans%22&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS746US747&biw=1280&bih=591&tbas=0&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F2010%2Ccd_max%3A6%2F1%2F2010&tbm=
So Puello's claim looks dubious. This is not surprising as Puello was revealed to be a conman and not a licensed lawyer. Several warrants were out for his arrest included for sex trafficking and in 2011 he was sentenced to three years in prison
http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-man-who-conned-the-missionaries
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/fugitive-who-posed-lawyer-following-haitian-earthquake-sentenced-3-years-federal
So nothing can stand on Jorge Puello's word alone.
Do we know where the 33 children did come from? (C)
We do. The AP went and found out exactly where all 33 children came from
Although a U.S. Baptist group said it was trying to rescue 33 "orphans" by taking them out of earthquake-ravaged Haiti, all the children have close family still alive, The Associated Press has found.
A reporter's visit Saturday to the rubble-strewn Citron slum, where 13 of the children lived, led to their parents, all of whom said they turned their youngsters over to the missionary group voluntarily in hopes of getting them to safety.
Similar explanations were given by parents in the mountain town of Callabas, outside Port-au-Prince, who told the AP on Feb. 3 that desperation and blind faith led them to hand over 20 children to the Baptist group.
We know who the people who helped her were. The AP says she was helped by an American nondemennational pastor associated with the Haiti Sharing Jesus Ministry, not "Friends of the Orphans" not "Nuestros Pequeno Hermanos."
She was led to Citron by Pastor Jean Sainvil, an Atlanta, Georgia-based Haitian minister who recruited the 13 children in the slum. ....Sainvil, a former orphan who says his nondenominational Haiti Sharing Jesus Ministry has 25 churches in the countryside,
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-ap-finds-all-baptist-groups-orphans-had-parents-2010feb21-story.html
She was also helped by an orphanage worker in Haiti
The Haitian parents told The Associated Press they surrendered their children on Jan. 28, two days after a local orphanage worker acting on behalf of the Baptists convened nearly the entire village of about 500 people on a dirt soccer pitch to present the Americans' offer.
The orphanage worker, Issac Adrien, The orphanage worker, Issac Adrien, said he told the villagers their children would be educated at a home in the Dominican Republic so that they might eventually return to take care of their families.
What orphanage did he work at?
http://www.theledger.com/news/20100205/lake-wales-missionary-wrongly-linked-to-haiti-orphan-drama
The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the Baptist Americans, led by Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, met Isaac Adrien in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 26. Adrien was raised in the House of Blessings orphanage and now is coordinator for a program called Children of Promise, Murphy said. Silsby said her group wanted to take orphaned and homeless children to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
Adrien took Silsby’s group to House of Blessings, which houses about 20 children, but the director, Joana Jean Marie Desir, turned them away, Murphy said.
None of the 33 children came from "Friends of the Orphans" or "Nuestro Pequenos Hermanos."
There is no orphanage called Friends of the Orphans in Haiti. (D)
Max Maccoby, is NOT on the Boards of Directors of "an orphanage." Friends of Orphans is a US based group that raises funds. They DO NOT RUN orphanages in Haiti or any place else. They are affiliated with Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos that does run orphanages, but they are a legally distinct organization. They don't have a say over how NPH runs it orphanages.
For proof that Friends of Orphans is legally distinct from NPH, you can check their tax forms.
When you check their 990 form, you see that they have no expenses in Haiti or any foreign country.
https://www.nphusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2012_Form-990.pdf
The distinction that Friends of the Orphans from NPH is listed on page 2 of the 2012 990. They spell out how they achieve their mission "THROUGH SUPPORT OF NUESTROS PEQUENOS HERMANOS." You can also see on page 2 that almost all of their revenue is giving out in grants meaning, they are not paying for maintaining and staffing an orphanage and housing and clothing orphans. They simply don't do that. .
If you go to the Schedule I of the 990, you can see what they do do. Friends of the Orphans provided cash grants of $8.5 million and noncash grants of $5.5 million to NPH. If you go the next page, in section IV, you can see what exactly the relationship was. They had an affiliation agreement and the CFO of Friends of the Orphans sits on the NPH Finance Committee to review how grant monies are spent. Otherwise they have separate boards. An affiliation agreement is used in the nonprofit world to spell out how independent organi
The point of all this is Friends of the Orphans is a US based organization fundraising organization. They have no buildings in Haiti. They raised funds for Nuestro Pequeno Hermanos, which runs orphanages and of course, Nuestro Pequeno Hermanos DOES NOT translate to Friends of the Orphans. The local chapter of NPH is Haiti is known by their French Name, Nos Petits Frères et Sœurs which also does not translate to Friends of the Orphans.
To confuse matters Friends of the Orphans changed its name to NPH-USA. (They explain the reason for the change here https://www.nphusa.org/timeline/))
2013 Friends of the Orphans changes name to NPH USA in order to create a global brand with consistency to our donors, to more closely align the brand with our mission and the children we serve, and to expand the focus to both the children and programs that we support.) NOTE: If you look at the recent 990 tax forms it's clear that they are still a separate legal entity.
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RweSure ago
Wait, what about the first attempt to get kids? Silsby was in Haiti days before she was arrested
An early thread on Voat makes these claims https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1591337
https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1601255
These are some definitive claims do they stand up? No. They do not stand up and the evidence reads as if it is presented in support of a premade conclusion.
1 "Friends of the Orphans"
The link for this just goes back to Jorge Puello's TV interview. The one I just showed is not reliable.
2 The exchange took place in Petionville, near the collapsed Fr. Wasson Center of Friends of the Orphans
(Again, the Fr. Wasson Center is an Nuestro Pequeno Hermanos/Nos Petits Frères et Sœurs building, not a Friends of the Orphans building because Friends of the Orphans have no buildings in Haiti.) Put that aside. Did NPH/NPFS have a building that collapsed in Petionville, Haiti?
Yes.
2010: Father Wasson Center collapsed in the 7.0 magnitude earthquake https://www.nph.org/ws/homes/home.php?org=11&lang=de https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XOUIFsCZag
So NPH did have a collapsed orphanage in Haiti?
No. Evidence below.
First let's look at the claim that "the exchange took place in Petitionville. " Here's the link given for support https://archive.is/lMmHp#selection-1093.0-1093.168
However, this link does not says Silsby was given children from FOHO or NPH/NPFS. In fact, it says nothing about an exchange at all. It says they were on the bus with children. It doesn't say anything about where the children got on the bus.
Obviously, when they were driving around through different parts of Haiti, the children were still on the bus with them. It's about a two hour drive to the Domincan border. So this tells us nothing about where the children got on the bus.
This is circumstantial evidence, but it is being stretched to support a conclusion that it cannot. Why not?
NPH/NPFS did NOT have an orphanage collapse in Haiti.
We can say this definitively. NPH/NPFS DID NOT have an orphange collapse in Haiti. In fact, their orphanage did not sustain damage.
To understand this and to clear up confusion, you have to understand where NPH/NFPS was located and how they operated at the time of the Earthquake. You can't simply look on their website now because since the earthquake they have expanded and opened more sites. To figure out what buildings they had in Jan 2010. I went to their annual reports https://issuu.com/nphi/docs/nph-haiti-country-report-2008 https://www.nph.org/intranet/reports/docs/6/2009%20NPHI%20Annual%20Report.pdf
"NPFS has three distinct locations with numerous programs. Kenscoff, Tabarre in Port Au Prince and Petitionville. Within these three locations, they had multiple programs."
People on VOAT were wondering how an orphanage could collapse and no orphanges be killed. It's because they building that collapsed was NOT an orphanage. It was an office building. The school Kay Elaine was a day school and the children/adults went back to their families.
Again the NPH/NPFS orphanage did not suffer Earthquake damage. They are also a large and well funded organization. There would be no need to send orphans to another place. If any orphans were displaced at the Father Wasson Center, they could have simply moved them to St. Helene's their main orphanage.
3 The orphans were housed in a FOTO building called St. Helene in Kenscoff, where 100 children disappeared after the earthquake
We can now see this is ludicrous. The claim is that a building with no orphans collapsed in Petitionville, so Silsby was given 100 orphans (!!!!) from a different building in a different town that suffered no damage at all. This makes no sense whatsoever. At no point did anyone claim Silsbys group had 100 children with them. (Their bus would not have accomodated them.)
100 kids disappeared? Wow. What's the support of that. That would have been pretty big news.
Post-earthquake update only reports 350 children "safe and sound", which means it was under-reported by 100 children http://i.imgur.com/9m8oWlZ.png
The support for this last one comes from here. https://archive.is/IDSbM#selection-1343.0-1349.243
Reading this, it's clear the point of the article is about how the orphanage is doing, not a full count of the children. Rather than assuming 100 children disappeared, what about other less shocking assumptions? Something as simple, as the reporter meant to type 450 or misheard what they were told or that Jennifer Rayno misspoke. Unless, you're claiming this woman is part of the conspiracy, she is clearly saying all orphans are OK. This is why I say, this evidence is presented to support a premade conclusion. Also note, the reporter talking to people in the US. The dateline of the article is in Chicago. Friends of the Orphans is a US based organization. They are not on the ground in Haiti.
More evidence of the premade conclusion is the fact whoever ever posted this had EVIDENCE the Fr. Wasson Center WAS NOT AN ORPHANAGE. It's literally in the paragraph before their screenshot.
A couple of other points regarding the numbers. A. They are not static. You can't cite a 2011 report to support the numbers that were there pre Earthquake. As the kids get older they go from the St. Helene orphanage to the St. Bosco school where they live with different families. B. Their August 2010 report gives the figures of 400 at St. Helen and 200 at St. Bosco, probably rounded. C. Their Jan 2011 report gives 382 at St. Helene and 255 at Don Bosco. They also opened more facilities after the earthquake.
https://www.nph-haiti.org/ws/news/reports.php?lang=en&yr=all