HAITI
ABC News
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Sep 5, 2014
By DANICA COTO Associated Press
A U.S. man who founded a boys’ orphanage in Haiti nearly two decades ago was arrested Friday following abuse allegations, authorities said.
Michael Karl Geilenfeld, 62, was detained at the orphanage on suspicion of charges of indecent assault and criminal conspiracy, Port-au-Prince General Prosecutor Charles Kerson told The Associated Press.
Geilenfeld was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police pickup truck and taken to a police station in the Petionville district of Port-au-Prince. He declined comment to an AP journalist before he was taken away, as did a manager of the orphanage who rode with Geilenfeld to the station.
Kerson said Geilenfeld did not resist arrest or say anything to police as they entered the St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in the Delmas neighborhood on Friday afternoon.
“Many people have brought complaints about this place,” Kerson said, adding that police will interrogate him. …
In June 2011, the board of directors of St. Joseph’s Home sent out a letter denying allegations of sex abuse publicized by Paul Kendrick, a co-founder of the Maine chapter of the Catholic lay reform group Voice of the Faithful who is an advocate for child abuse victims.
In February 2013, Geilenfeld and Hearts with Haiti, a North Carolina-based organization that raises money for the St. Joseph’s Home, filed a defamation suit in federal court in Maine against Kendrick, alleging that the activist “has published false and heinous allegations of plaintiffs’ involvement in child abuse” and “bullied” donors into withdrawing support for the organization.
The suit is scheduled to go to trial later this year.
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