Haiti’s street kids given a lift
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Haiti’s street kids given a lift
How the efforts of a few have changed the lives of many Haitians.
By Melanie Stetson Freeman | Staff photographer
 A home for street kids in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti |
CAP-HAÏTIEN, HAITI - They are derisively called "sangine," which in Creole means "one without soul." Sleeping in alleys and living in the shadows, the street children of Haiti spend their days skipping school, hustling to get enough food to survive, often running afoul of the law, and getting high on paint thinner to try to forget their lot. Their communities and families, if they have them, are too poor to help.
The children are among the most visible signs of Haiti’s poverty, even more apparent than the nation’s 65 percent unemployment rate. Foreigners visiting the nation are often overwhelmed by the sight of them. But not American Douglas Perlitz.
About 10 years ago, Mr. Perlitz visited Cap-Haïtien – Haiti’s second-largest city – where he was soon being followed by "a pile of street kids," he says.
Perlitz, a pastoral minister and volunteer at a nearby hospital, would occasionally come back to town to get to know the kids. Although he didn’t speak the language, Perlitz would play basketball and soccer with them, befriending the friendless. One child, Wilnaud Pierre, only 8 years old, especially touched his heart.
"He was going through the initiation of being a street kid. He was tiny, the littlest one, and the others were mean to him," Perlitz says. "He pulled me aside and said ‘Would you send me to school? I want to learn to read and write.’ For four or five months, he kept at me."
Wilnaud, now about 18 (many street children don’t know their own birth dates), recalls that time. "I asked Douglas because I did not want to stay ignorant … someone who knows nothing," he writes in an e-mail. "School would show me how to live."
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– Doug Perlitz, founder of Project Pierre Toussaint
| A home for street kids in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti |
Perlitz talked to some local priests who offered him space in an old building behind their church to start a school. He told Wilnaud to tell his friends to come on Nov. 3, 1997, and he would teach them. Some 25 to 30 kids, ages 8 to 17, were waiting for him when he arrived.
"I gave them paper and crayons," Perlitz says. "You could hear a pin drop. They drew stuff – trees, boats, houses. Some didn’t even know how to hold crayons. I saw that they had the desire to go to school. They were focused. I knew they could do a lot…. They came regularly, so I got more teachers and started giving them food."
Within a year, the school grew into Project Pierre Toussaint, named after a Haitian slave who cared for the poor in New York City in the early 1800s. Today, the school helps about 120 kids a day at a drop-in center, where they can get three hot meals and schooling.
Children participating in the project aspire to one day enter the Village, a residential program on the outskirts of town with space for 50 kids who have proven themselves responsible and committed to excel. There, children are offered a wide variety of vocational training, including sewing, driving, welding, woodworking, and tailoring.
"This program is evidence of one person making a difference against incredible odds," says Paul Carrier, a chaplain at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Father Carrier encourages Fairfield students – including Perlitz, who first visited Haiti in 1991 – to do community service work in the third world.
Carrier supports Perlitz’s program through visits and constant fundraising. He once brought down 70 pairs of donated shoes – each designated for a specific child.
"I work with a lot of different organizations," says consultant Amber Elizabeth Gray, who has worked in the international human service field for 20 years. "Doug’s program is consistently the program that I can say is honest, true, community-based, meaningful, humanitarian work. It has managed to avoid the usual bureaucratic snares and tangles. The program grows in direct response to the kids."
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| A home for street kids in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti |
In addition to helping street children, the project provides jobs for 35 Haitian men and women, who have been taught to be role models, teachers, counselors, cooks, drivers, social workers. They learn to avoid violence when disciplining.
"Everyone in Haiti has witnessed violence on a large scale," says Perlitz. "Those over 25 have woken up four different times to a coup, surrounded by violence. People internalize that, and it becomes an accepted way of life. All the schools here use the whip – not ours."
Some staff members, like Francillien Jean Charles, went through the program themselves. Francillien was one of the boys who came to Perlitz’s original school. Although learning disabled, he got his primary school certificate.
"He is one of our best staff because of his ability to understand the kids and what they’re dealing with," says Perlitz.
"You have to have realistic goals," says Perlitz. "They live in a country with high unemployment. I can’t pretend they’ll all get jobs. We hope the time they spend with us will make them better fathers and neighbors. We hope they become good citizens of Haiti with solid ideas of right and wrong."
Wilnaud can now read and write, and he hopes to become a mechanic.
"I lived on the street," Wilnaud remembers, "like someone who walks but does not know where he is going … [but then] I started to see my life change. After two or three years, people forgot the old me…. I became a new Wilnaud."
• For more info visit:www.haitippt.com
Man who founded school for Haitian kids accused of sex abuse
By Howard Pankratz
The Denver Post
Posted: 09/17/2009 12:18:31 PM MDT
Updated: 09/17/2009 01:57:51 PM MDT
A 39-year-old man who founded and directed Project Pierre Toussaint, a boys school in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, has been indicted on charges he sexually assaulted poor Haitian children.
Douglas Perlitz was charged with seven counts of traveling outside the United States with intent to engage in sexual conduct with children and three counts of engaging in sexual conduct in foreign places with children.
On Wednesday, Perlitz was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at his home in Eagle. Following his arrest, he appeared before U.S. Magistrate Boyd N. Boland in Denver and has been detained pending a detention hearing tomorrow.
Before moving to Colorado in July, Perlitz lived in Fairfield County, Conn.
“This defendant is alleged to have used his position of power to manipulate and sexually abuse vulnerable boys for nearly a decade,” said Nora Dannehy, U.S. Attorney for Connecticut.
The indictment alleged that about 1997, Perlitz obtained funding from the Order of Malta to found Project Pierre Toussaint in Cap-Haitien, on the north coast of Haiti.
The program provided services to children of all ages, most of them street children as young as six. The services included meals, sports activities, classroom instruction and access to running water for baths.
The program expanded, and in 1999 a residential facility called the Village Pierre Toussaint was added.
In 2007, the 14th Street facility, a residential program for high school-age children, was established.
Perlitz individually chose all of the children who resided at the 14th Street facility, according to investigators. The children were given tutors, special cooking arrangements, high-end electronics and other amenities.
The indictment alleged that over the years, Perlitz had illicit sexual contact with nine boys.
In order to entice them to engage in sex acts, he promised them food, shelter, money and other benefits including cell phones, electronics, shoes, clothes, and other items.
The victims were not identified by name.
But the grand jury said that, for example, he used cash to entice a boy identified as D.C. to engage in sex. He also allegedly told D.C. he could remain at the boy’s school even if he failed his classes.
In another case, a boy identified as F.J. was enticed to engage in sex acts because Perlitz gave him and his family money and other gifts.
“As part of his grooming process, Perlitz would take a minor to a restaurant where he would provide the minor with food and alcohol and then encourage the minor to spend the night in his (Perlitz’s) bedrooom…so that he could sexually abuse him,” said the indictment.
If the minors refused to engage in sex acts, Perlitz would at times withhold benefits or threaten to expel them from the program.
The investigation into Perlitz is on-going, according to federal officials.
If convicted, Perlitz faces a maximum term of imprisonment of 30 years and a fine of up to $250,000 on each count of the indictment.
The matter was investigated ICE offices in New Haven, Grand Junction, ICE International Affairs in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. State Department.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
Comment by Herb Allison — September 17, 2009 @ 2:24 pm