Local non-profit successfully evacuates disabled children from Haiti orphanage

59 disabled Haitian children, many of them in wheelchairs, wait patiently outside of their orphanage on a March evening in silence. They wait for a bus that will take them to a boat that will then take them to Jamaica. While the journey will be long, the children are all excited for new beginnings and are excited to feel safe.

6 p.m., with everyone now packed on board the bus, all seemed to be going according to plan. The only thing left to do was leave – that is until local armed gangs, having been tipped off of the children’s departure, stop them at the gate.

Loud cracks and the smell of gunpowder invade the crisp evening air as the gangs wildly fire their weapons into the sky while surrounding the children in their bus. The men begin shouting, demanding for someone in charge to speak up.

That’s when Aspen-based HaitiChildren Orphanage Director Christo Romain Krabacher bravely begins to stand, knowing this could be the end of a rescue that never had a chance to start.

“Even though they saw we had a lot of children in the car, they didn’t care about that,” he said. “I talked to them several times; they didn’t want to hear anything from me. They slapped me in my face and then shot their guns in the air. I thought they weren’t going to let us pass.”

Nearly three years after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, the violence in Haiti continues to worsen by the day, with hundreds of thousands of people starving and without homes. According to the UN, gangs control 80% of Haiti’s capital city Port-au-Prince, who continue to battle over turf. And as is often the case with war, the children suffer most.

In addition to children being denied access to schools because of rampant gang violence, disabled children are being denied a right to live. That’s why people like Susie Krabacher and the work she does through her non-profit HaitiChildren are so important. She has been running the non-profit with her husband Joe for the last 31 years from their home in the Aspen area. Not only is she the co-founder and CEO of HaitiChildren, she’s also the proud mother of 104 children – adopted, of course. 

One of those children is her 24-year-old son Christo, who along with the help of his mother, recently evacuated 59 disabled orphans and 13 older children (caregivers) from their Haiti orphanage in Arcahaie safely to Jamaica. Like many Haitian cities, Arcahaie, too, has fallen under the control of gang violence.

After a harrowing 14-month ordeal, the group of 72 evacuated will be housed at Mustard Seed Communities, an internationally-renowned Catholic charity in Kingston, with the permission of both Jamaican and Haitian governments, but it wasn’t easy. As Susie explained, she had to start with what would prove to be a nearly impossible task of lobbying Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry to allow her orphaned children with physical disabilities safe travel to Jamaica.

According to Susie, children with disabilities in Haiti languish in government hospitals once a child’s parents become aware of the disability. The children are then either abandoned because the parents don’t have the funds to care for them, or the parents are ostracized from their community because disabled children are considered a curse.

Shortly before the day of the evacuation, three of her disabled children from the orphanage would actually die in the car from health complications on the way to the emergency room while being harassed by gangs. She explained the gangs began shooting guns around the car and laughing at the children by saying, “If you don’t put them out of our misery, we will.”

“I have raised those children from babies, and the children knew what these barbaric gang leaders were shouting at them,” she said. “They died hearing those words as their last.” 

Susie said things have gotten so bad in Haiti that hospital staff, including doctors and nurses, are refusing to return to work due to surgeons, doctors, and nurses being kidnapped from the hospital floor.

The last of her children to die was taken to three different hospitals after paying twenty different checkpoints to gang members for passage to the hospitals. She said the child eventually died because every hospital refused to take them due to staffing shortages.

“We had lost nine of my children, and due to this horrible war, the gangs had blocked off all access to reach emergency care hospitals,” she said. “We had started lobbying the prime minister and the Ministry of Social Affairs in Haiti, saying, ‘Please let these kids go, so that they can get proper medical care because the hospitals are frozen in Haiti.'”

That’s when Susie got a little help from the press.

The Miami Herald was so “appalled” by the situation that they sent a reporter to interview the prime minister and the leader of Social Affairs. Despite the media attention, Prime Minister Henry maintained that the children would not be leaving Haiti, the country where they belonged and who could take care of them best.

In the meantime, two more of Susie’s children would die due to poor health conditions.

The Miami Herald would publish four separate articles, with a third alleging Henry was essentially holding the children hostage. Based on continued pressure from the paper, Henry would eventually sign the necessary paperwork to release the children right before he would flee the country for his own safety.

But it wasn’t just pressure from the press, according to the Miami Herald; they were told off record by Henry that he was “very irritated” with Susie.

“I wrote a letter, saying to the Ministry of Social Affairs, ‘You’ve let nine of my children die,” she said. “I’m burying them in Haiti, but they should have been allowed to safely leave for Jamaica. The prime minister of Jamaica has offered to let us take the most desperate cases of critically-ill children, that’s 59 of them, let them go.'”

Susie then started working with the Sentinel Foundation, an organization focused on preventing child exploitation and a frequent collaborator with Tim Tebow. The Sentinel had informed her that they had put together the money and the plan to get the children safely to Jamaica.

Things were starting to look so positive that Susie began making travel arrangements to meet all of them in Jamaica’s northeastern coast in Port Antonio. As she would put it, “They needed to see their mom.”

6 p.m., with everyone safely packed into the bus, all seemed to be going according to plan … until local armed gangs changed the plans. For the next six hours, the bus would sit motionless while Christo tried desperately to get back on the road again.

Susie was monitoring the events from Jamaica, spending several hours on the phone with Christo, who was left trying to negotiate with violent gang members out for blood or money, whichever came first.

“They hate disabled people,” she said. “They believe that those are children with curses, and they want to kill them. Not so much for the money but for fun; they’re barbaric.”

After several hours and all of the cash on hand, Christo and the children were finally allowed to pass. If that part wasn’t hard enough, now came the really hard part: over 60 people tightly squeezing into a small vessel at sea for three days. Though snug, he said everyone slept on cots or air mattresses as the boat slowly floated through the Caribbean towards safety and a fresh start. 

“I always kept my faith,” he said. “I’d say that whatever happens, I don’t care, even if I die, just so long as they get there, I will be happy with that.”

Susie said that once they finally arrived in Port Antonio, the look on their faces was seasick green from thirty-six hours of sailing in the ocean. She said that from the high level of dehydration, the children couldn’t even eat at first. Jamaica’s Ministry of Health met her at the ship and started rehydrating the children by IV.

The one thing she said she agreed on with the children was that before their feet even stepped on Jamaican soil, they would stand in the water and pray for the nine siblings lost while waiting for permission to evacuate.

“I just couldn’t let go of them, to feel their heartbeat against my chest,” she said. “If I died tomorrow, I would feel like I have accomplished everything. I just love them so much, and they’re safe.”

While it was a victory for some, Christo said his heart and prayers are still with his 34 other brothers and sisters who remain trapped in the midst of gang violence near their orphanage in Haiti. Because the other children are healthy and not disabled, they were not granted permission to leave. Despite the great pain and sorrow he feels from their absence, Christo said he remains hopeful that one day he will be reunited with his family because “Anything is possible with faith and love.”

“I want to ask everyone who is hearing and watching the big miracle of moving the children to Jamaica, I want to ask for everyone to keep praying for us,” he said. “Everyone’s prayers will help us more everyday.”

For more information, visit HaitiChildren.org.

To reach Jonson Kuhn, email him at jkuhn@aspentimes.com.