HAITI
Daily Reporter
By DAVID McFADDEN Associated Press
First Posted: May 18, 2015
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haitian justice authorities are making plans for a new criminal trial against a U.S. citizen who has been accused of physically and sexually abusing boys in an orphanage that he has run for decades in the impoverished Caribbean country, a top government official and lawyers said Monday.
Michael Geilenfeld, an Iowa native and former brother with Mother Teresa’s Brothers of Charity, opened the St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in the Haitian capital in 1985. He was arrested in September, but freed last month when a Haitian judge dismissed the case following a brief trial that was not attended by the five accusers, now adults.
Justice Minister Pierre-Richard Casimir told The Associated Press that an appeal filed by lawyers for the alleged victims, allowing the case to be re-examined, has been granted. Without disclosing specifics, he said Monday the prosecutor “didn’t do the case correctly” and has since been sanctioned.
“There should be another trial in this case,” Casimir said in a phone interview.
Manuel Jeanty, a lawyer for the accusers, said he and his clients were not notified about the recent trial beforehand, but hope they “will see justice” in Haiti now that an appeal has been granted.
Defense lawyer Alain Lemithe said he and other attorneys are prepared to “go back to court to defend Mr. Geilenfeld’s interests.” He alleged that the government’s decision to grant the appeal was made “under pressure,” adding that “what they are doing is not illegal but it’s very unusual.”
Geilenfeld’s lawyers blame an email and blog campaign by U.S. activist Paul Kendrick of Freeport, Maine for their client’s arrest, and for the granting of the appeal.
Kendrick, co-founder of the Maine chapter of a Catholic lay reform group, launched a campaign against Geilenfeld in 2011 after learning of the abuse allegations.
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