The New Life Children's Refuge Case | Laura Silsby
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Part 1: The Earthquake On Tuesday, January 12, 2010, just before 5:00 PM, the Earth began to rumble with an unforgiving intensity in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The strongest earthquake in the region in over 200 years tore through the country, wreaking havoc on the landscape, buildings, and citizens.

The tremors were so strong that faraway countries like Cuba and Venezuela could feel them. Dozens of aftershocks followed the beastly earthquake, significantly damaging the country. The Third World country lacked the necessary funds to prepare sufficiently, so the earthquake and its many aftershocks left Port-au-Prince in shambles.

1.5 million Haitians became homeless because the earthquake destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings and houses. People would get trapped and buried under these collapsing structures. One reporter said: "Everything started shaking. People were screaming. Houses started collapsing. It was total chaos. I saw people under the rubble and people killed. People were screaming, 'Jesus! Jesus!' and running in all directions.

It was nearly impossible to determine the exact death count, but it was estimated that roughly 220,000 were killed and over 300,000 were injured. All the nearby hospitals and medical facilities were severely damaged or destroyed, making it challenging to provide urgently needed medical help.

Haitians could not leave the area to go somewhere safer because the roads were essentially impassable, and the airport and seaport were inoperable. Likewise, it was extremely difficult to get into Haiti to provide support. Nonetheless, many individuals, organizations, and countries, including the United States, quickly lined up to help.

Former President Bill Clinton was officially designated as the United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti, meaning he oversaw and managed the reconstruction and aid the UN provided. He sent his thoughts and prayers to the people of Haiti and promised his office would do whatever it could to help the nation recover and rebuild. Ultimately, Haiti was not alone in its quest to rebuild. Part 2: New Life Children's Refuge

One United States nonprofit organization providing aid to Haiti was on Bill and Hillary Clinton's radars even before the earthquake. It was called the New Life Children's Refuge. This group was founded in November 2009 by Laura Silsby with the help of her 24-year-old live-in nanny, Carissa Coulter.

Laura Silsby claimed her organization was dedicated to rescuing, loving, and caring for orphaned, abandoned, and impoverished Haitian and Dominican children, demonstrating God's love and helping each child find healing, hope, joy, and new life in Christ.

Silsby and Coulter made trips to the Dominican Republic and Haiti to begin planning and laying the groundwork for the foundation. The pair soon announced that they'd sent in applications to start the process of opening an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. When the earthquake hit Haiti, Silsby and Coulter were more than happy to provide aid, so they gathered a group of volunteers to travel to Haiti with them.

Subsequently, New Life Children's Refuge posted a document laying out their plan for the trip. The document revealed that the nonprofit organization would rent a 45-room hotel in the Dominican Republic, where they would house Haitian children while constructing a permanent orphanage facility. Next, they intended to travel to Haiti,

gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages, and take them back to the rented hotel in the Dominican Republic. Eventually, when the construction was complete, they would move the children out of the hotel and into the orphanage. On January 22nd, 10 days after the earthquake, the New Life Children's Refuge group hopped on a flight to the Dominican Republic.

From the Dominican, they took a bus to Haiti, intending to return with rescued orphans. However, their plans went to foul when the founder of the New Life Children's Refuge and her group were arrested at the Haitian border with a bus full of 33 children. Part 3: The Puppet Master Laura Silsby, a 40-year-old woman from Idaho, had a questionable history littered with legal issues.

Despite a series of seemingly unwise decisions, Silsby had a strong academic career. After graduating high school early, she studied business administration and accounting at Washington State University. Silsby graduated from university with honors and went on to work in financing and internet marketing positions at Hewlett-Packard. While working there, Silsby met a man named James Hammonds.

Together, the two co-workers came up with a method for creating and operating a personalized internet store, which they ultimately patented. The future founder of New Life Children's Refuge set her sights on using this patent to start an online business that provided customers with a personalized shopping experience.

In 2003, following these dreams, Silsby founded her own company, Avenue Me and Design. To kick off her new business venture, Laura Silsby hired Wirestone, a multimedia marketing company, to build her website. It wasn't long before the marketing company stopped receiving payments and things started going awry.

Every time Wirestone pressed Silsby for their money, she would assure them that she had committed investors, providing funds, and that the money was being wired. Wirestone continued working until Silsby fell tens of thousands of dollars behind. At that point, the multimedia marketing company filed a lawsuit against Silsby for their payment.

Judges ruled in favor of Wirestone and seized computers and office furniture from Avenue Me to settle the debt. The lawsuit against Firestone was one of many lawsuits Silsby would face. In 2002, she ran into another legal issue when The Avenue, a large department store, accused Avenue Me of trademark infringement.

As a result of this dispute, Silsby changed her business name to Personal Shopper. And in the years following, Personal Shopper became quite successful. By 2006, Laura Silsby business had grown significantly and she was named the International Femme Tour Businesswoman of the Year by E! Women Network. Silsby bought a brand new five bedroom house in 2008 to celebrate her company's success.

But unfortunately, she celebrated too soon. Shortly after her large purchase, the lawsuits came rolling back in as several of her personal shopper employees filed claims for unpaid wages. One former personal shopper employee was hired for $110,000 a year and sued after Silsby fell five paychecks behind.

The employee's attorney disclosed that Silsby claimed multiple times that she had potential investors such as NBC, a private equity firm, and a high-powered public relations expert that had agreed to fund the company. Like the fiasco with Wirestone, those promised investors never showed, nor did the cash for the unpaid wages. The slippery, award-winning business owner wrote in court documents that

For many employees who chose to work for startup companies, getting an immediate paycheck can, and often does, take a backseat to other priorities such as seeing the company succeed, getting in on the ground floor, getting paid more later in the form of stock options and bonuses, to name just a few. However, these employees were no longer working for a startup business when they filed lawsuits.

They were working for an award-winning company with over 50 employees and an annual revenue of over $1 million at its peak. Another former personal shopper employee described Silsby as a snake oil salesman who used ignorance as a professional fallback. In response to her old boss's Haiti incarceration, the former employee explained that Silsby has a willingness to break laws and not follow proper procedures.

It is common for her, as is her feigned ignorance when she's caught. I think this Haiti arrest is outside her scope of people she can fool. Before her arrest in Haiti, Laura Silsby had accumulated eight civil lawsuits, 14 unpaid wage claims, and at least nine traffic citations, four of which were for failing to provide insurance or register annually.

In November 2009, with multiple employees suing her for fraud, wrongful termination, and unpaid wages, the drowning business owner founded the New Life Children's Refuge. Part 4: The Truth Unfolds In July 2009, before the New Life Children's Refuge was officially registered as a non-profit corporation, Laura Silsby took a preliminary month-long trip to the Dominican Republic.

While there, she met with a real estate agent to ask about available properties for an orphanage, a clinic, and two schools in Gaspar Hernandez, an area that is allegedly known for pedophilia. Silsby and Carissa Coulter made several trips to Haiti and the Dominican Republic before the earthquake, in which they were allegedly laying the groundwork for opening an orphanage.

Silsby wrote online that she was in the process of buying land and building an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, but there was no record of New Life Children's Refuge committing to or purchasing any property. Additionally, when Silsby was questioned about her December trip to Haiti with Coulter, she stated that she met with Pastor Daniel at an orphanage in Wanamint to distribute gifts to the children. However,

The pair was actually visiting orphanages and contacting Haitian families that may have been interested in giving away their children for a better life in the New Life Children's Refuge Orphanage, which did not even yet exist. Once again, Silsby's words and actions did not line up. Silsby and Coulter had recently returned home from their December trip when the earthquake hit Haiti. The destruction of the natural disaster fueled Silsby to take action.

So she started making calls around the country to gather a group to go to Haiti and rescue orphaned children from the wreckage. She called the real estate agent she'd met with to ask if he could find a building for her to house orphans.

the agent consulted with Roman Catholic Church officials who agreed to rent out 45 rooms in a hotel for $7,400 a month for up to six months. In Silsby's efforts to gather a group, she found Richard and Melinda, a couple from Kentucky that had been in the process of adopting three siblings from Haiti. Silsby offered to get the children out of the country for them.

But the suspicious couple declined and specifically instructed Silsby not to interfere with their plans by moving the kids. Nonetheless, the persistent founder of the New Life Children's Refuge continued calling the couple. Each time, Richard and Melinda firmly told Silsby to stay away from the adopted children in Haiti. 10 days after the earthquake hit, the New Life Children's Refuge group boarded the plane to the Dominican Republic.

The following day, they took a bus into Haiti. When they arrived, Silsby and her group rode to an orphanage known as the Friends of the Orphans of Haiti, where the staff gave them 40 children to load onto their bus and take to the Dominican Republic. However, a concerned citizen saw them and reported the group to a police officer. As they loaded the children onto the bus, the officer approached the group and ordered them to stop.

When Silsby explained the group's intentions, the officer told her their plan was illegal because they lacked the proper paperwork. He directed Silsby to the Dominican embassy, where she had to meet with Carlos Castillo, the Dominican Republic Consul General. During their meeting, Castillo told the New Life Children's Refuge group leader that he could authenticate any Haitian documents for her.

Silsby didn't have any Haitian documents, but assured the Consul General that she had applied to Dominican authorities for a permit to cross the border. When Castillo checked and found no application, he warned her not to go through with her plan because she would be arrested for trafficking children if she lacked proper documentation. Silsby thanked the Consul General and left with his business card.

Despite Castillo's warnings, the group pressed on and started looking for new children to take to the Dominican Republic. With their first plan soiled, they met with Adrian Isaac at the Port-au-Prince Christian School and asked if he knew of people who suffered in the earthquake and needed help. Thinking of his desperate community, Adrian took the group of Americans on an hour-plus drive to Calabasas.

Although Silsby claimed she was saving orphans from the destruction of the earthquake, it turned out that most of the children on Silsby's bus did have families. Even though the New Life Children's Refuge founder initially feigned ignorance on the issue, her mother disclosed in an interview that Laura was fully aware that the children she tried to take weren't orphans.

The investigations revealed that while in Calbes, Silsby would approach desperate Haitian families that had lost everything and make promises about housing their children, feeding them, educating them, and giving them a better life. She would assure the families that they would not put the kids up for adoption and that they could see the children whenever they wanted.

Some family members reported being promised that their children would be educated in a home in the Dominican Republic and eventually returned to Haiti. These parents, who hoped for better lives for their kids, were completely unaware that they were being lied to as they loaded their children onto Silsby's bus and tearfully said goodbye. The New Life Children's Refuge didn't have an orphanage or a means of educating and caring for a large group of children.

Additionally, the mission statement written by Laura Silsby explicitly stated that she fully intended for the kids to be adopted, not educated and returned to their families. The New Life Children's Refuge founder also showed up at several orphanages attempting to get more children, including the Compassion for All Orphanage where Melinda and Richard, the couple from Kentucky, adopted the three siblings.

After being explicitly told not to go near their adopted children, Slippery Silsby told the orphanage that she was close friends with Melinda and Richard, and falsely claimed that they'd requested she pick up the three siblings on their behalf. When the Compassion for All orphanage told Silsby that the children had changed locations, she asked if they had any other kids she could take.

The orphanage declined to hand over any children to the random woman going around trying to collect kids. So Silsby paid a worker to take her to other orphanages in the region and translate for her. In an interview with Richard and Melinda, they disclosed that Silsby would cry when the orphanages refused to hand over the children to her. "Why would you cry after you see these kids are being taken care of?" Richard wondered.

Ultimately, with multiple warnings against her actions and plans, Silsby and her group loaded 33 Haitian children onto their bus and headed back to the Dominican Republic. When authorities refused to let the group cross the Haitian border with the children due to a lack of paperwork, Laura Silsby confidently showed the border authorities the business card from Carlos Castillo, the Consul General in Port-au-Prince.

She explained that Castillo had personally authorized her to cross the border with the children. The authorities called the Consul General to verify these claims, and Castillo vehemently denied authorizing Laura Silsby to transport her collection of kids across the border. Shortly after the phone call ended, the authorities arrested the Americans for attempting to kidnap and traffic children out of Haiti. Part Five: Jail, Judges, and the Note.

The ten missionaries from the New Life Children's Refuge group were split up and taken to established prisons in Haiti, while an investigation of their crimes was underway. Each group member was questioned individually by the investigating judge, Bernard Sainville. The group's lawyer, Edwin Cock, submitted a request for the ten Americans to be released, but the judge wanted to continue the investigation before deciding their fate.

It was not uncommon for malicious traffickers to take advantage of disasters by preying on vulnerable families and children. So Haiti's government cracked down on its adoption procedures when the earthquake hit. Even still, officials already had an increase in reports of trafficking of minors as well as trafficking of human organs.

As a result, Silsby and her group faced severe repercussions, especially considering they were warned against their plans multiple times due to a lack of proper documents. They were charged with and investigated for child abduction and criminal association.

Later, a charge of organization of irregular travel was tacked on when a police officer testified that he'd stopped the group with a bus full of 40 children several days before their arrest. While the investigators were underway, a producer for NBC News was handed a note from one of the prisoners. The note was from the American detainees who wrote that they feared for their lives and feared for the leader of the group, Laura Silsby. It read, in part,

Laura wants control. We believe lying. We fear for our lives here in Haiti. There is corruption, extortion. Please, you must listen. We have no way to call. Court will not let us have a say about truth for us. We only came as volunteers. We have nothing to do with any documents. We have been lied to.

eight of the imprisoned American missionaries had signed the note, which lacked only the signatures of Laura Silsby and Carissa Coulter. A few weeks after their arrest, the eight American missionaries that signed the note were granted bail without bond. As such, they were released from the Haiti prison and sent home. However, Judge Bernard Saint-Ville wanted to continue investigating the motives of Silsby and Coulter before he released them.

Early in the investigations, Silsby was caught in multiple lies. Most significantly, she claimed that she was unaware that her actions were illegal or that she lacked proper documentation. Both pleas of ignorance were completely false. She also unsuccessfully argued that she was unaware that the children she tried to take across the border had families. As a result, when Colter was released several weeks later,

Laura Silsby remained in prison in Haiti under investigation. The New Life Children's Refuge founder sat in prison for four months before being released. Despite multiple red flags indicating child trafficking, Laura Silsby was ultimately charged with attempting to arrange irregular travel and sentenced to time already served in jail. So, after gathering her belongings from her prison cell, she flew back to Idaho

where several lawsuits from old employees were eagerly awaiting her return. Between Silsby's blatant lies, suspicious behavior, feigned ignorance, and the fearful and desperate note written by the members of her group, it was unclear why her charges were reduced. Even Hal Nungester, the director of his home for children, an orphanage in Haiti that Silsby contacted, expressed his suspicions in an interview stating,

They were looking for 100 orphans to take to the Dominican Republic. They had no paperwork. They had no authorization from the US government, from the Haitian government, or from anyone involved. They were just taking kids. That fits right in with what I would classify as child trafficking. The lack of repercussions became more suspicious when Silsby, the suspected child trafficker, was later employed at Alert Sense.

AlertSense is a software company that works with the federal government on FEMA's integrated public alert and warning system. As a result, the company deals with issuing Amber Alerts to notify the public when a child has been abducted. The undeniably questionable outcome of Silsby's arrest and her employment at AlertSense created a lot of skepticism and fueled the discovery of some interesting connections. Part six, connecting the dots.

During the early stages of the investigation and legal battles, a Haitian lawyer named Edwin Kock represented the Americans. However, Kock quickly dropped out of the picture and was replaced by a man named Jorge Puello. Puello, who claimed to be an attorney based in the Dominican Republic, stated that he had hired Kock to represent the group and subsequently fired him for bribery.

He noted that the Haitian attorney had asked the detainees' families for $60,000 to bribe Haitian authorities into releasing the group. Confusion arose when Edwin Koch came forward and said he was hired by the husband of one of the detainees, not by Jorge Puello. He further disclosed that he had not been fired either, but had stepped down due to a dispute regarding legal fees.

Regardless, Jorge Puello stepped up to the plate to represent the Americans. It wasn't long before things grew even more muddled when an international search warrant was issued for Jorge Puello's arrest. The man who claimed to be an attorney in the Dominican Republic was not even licensed to practice law.

Jorge Puello, whose real name was Jorge Torres Orellano, was a wanted criminal in El Salvador and Costa Rica for crimes against children, trafficking of women and underage children for prostitution, people smuggling, and illegal immigration. He was ultimately suspected of running an international sex trafficking ring that lured women and girls into prostitution by advertising modeling jobs.

Due to the suspicion surrounding Jorge Puello, Judge St. Ville decided to delay the group's release until he knew more about the man representing the Americans. It was unclear how Puello ended up involved in the legal battles of Silsby and her group, and different people had different stories. Some claimed Bill Clinton appointed him, some said the Americans' relatives retained him, and others believed that he had a prior tie to Silsby.

Another lawyer on the case, Louis Lessad, was frustrated with the delay. He said, "My client never chose Mr. Puejo. In fact, I don't even know whether anyone chose Mr. Puejo to represent the group." Several months later, Jorge Puejo was arrested in connection with the sex trafficking ring. Despite the trouble with their fraudulent lawyer, the attempted child traffickers had people much more influential on their side, the Clintons.

The infamous Clinton's unusual involvement, however, raised even more questions due to the couple's questionable history. Bill Clinton, who set up the Amber Alert system during his time as President of the United States, was caught lying about an affair with a 21-year-old unpaid intern, Monica Lewinsky. He was impeached for this on 11 grounds, including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and abuse of power.

Bill Clinton was also closely associated with convicted sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and US State Secretary, has also been the subject of various investigations, including an intense FBI investigation into her emails for violations involving classified information. The Clintons' interest in Laura Silsby seemed to begin before her arrest, potentially indicating a prior connection to or interest in the founder of the New Life Children's Refuge.

This discovery was made when Hillary Clinton's emails were leaked, revealing email exchanges from before the Haiti earthquake between the US State Secretary at the time and her advisor about Laura Silsby and her non-profit organization. There were also emails from Silsby herself requesting donations. Additionally, the advisor Hillary Clinton was emailing was a woman named Homa Abedin.

the ex-wife of Anthony Weiner, the former New York Congressman who was investigated for child abuse and sex crimes and convicted for illicit contact with minors. Hillary Clinton's leaked emails revealed her unusual desire to help the imprisoned Americans suspected of attempting to traffic children out of Haiti.

There were even emails in which the U.S. Secretary of State contacted lawyers, including Counselor Cheryl Mills, to determine the U.S. government's options in helping the arrested Americans to discuss media coverage. This effort to assist the missionaries was unusual for many reasons, most notably:

During her time as the First Lady, Hillary Clinton was very active in issues relating to children and families, including improving the adoption and foster care systems. Why would someone so intent on helping children advocate for a seemingly random group of potential child traffickers?

Hillary Clinton's husband, Bill Clinton, also stepped in to help the group by going to Haiti to negotiate a solution with the Haitian government for the release of the Americans. According to a piece in the Harvard Law School Human Rights Journal, one of the first things Bill Clinton did as the United Nations Special Envoy was to put out the fire of a child abduction scandal involving American citizens.

Considering Haiti's vigilance in protecting against potential child traffickers during the earthquake, the intervention of the Clintons was considered the most likely reason for the early release of the missionaries and for Silsby's inexplicably reduced charge, which went from conspiracy and child abduction to arranging irregular travel.

under State Department policy. It is a severe and illegal violation of protocol for the U.S. to do anything more than offer lists of local, English-speaking attorneys to Americans arrested or detained abroad. The Clintons went so far in helping the American missionaries that they were suspected of violating U.S. Department policies. In addition to the Clintons' unusual interest in Laura Silsby and her group,

the orphanage they got the initial group of 40 children from. Friends of the Orphans of Haiti pointed to even darker intentions for the Haiti trip. Friends of the Orphans of Haiti is a branch of an international orphanage network called Nuestros Hermanos Pequeños.

Several influential individuals involved with these organizations, including the Clintons, were heavily tied to allegations involving a large child sex trafficking ring run in the basement of a famous DC pizzeria known as Comet Ping Pong. Bill Clinton is linked to friends of the orphans of Haiti and would occasionally visit the branch of the orphanage in the United States.

In 2012, he awarded the WJC Award to the Friends of the Orphans Orphanage Manager, Gina Heredy, and organized a $10 million fundraiser for her. Max and Michael Maccabee were two men with even more direct connections to these organizations. Both were involved in the Comet Ping Pong allegations. Max Maccabee was on the board of directors for Friends of the Orphans and is a strong advocate for their cause.

His father, Michael Maccabee, was on the board of directors at Nuestros Hermanos Pequeños and later became their official leadership consultant. Both Maccabee men are prominent advocates for Comet Ping Pong and have close ties with the owner, James Alefantes. Max Maccabee stood up and threatened a DC official in a neighborhood meeting to determine whether Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria could operate after midnight.

He told the official that he would seek to remove anyone who opposed Comet. In addition, the loyal Comet ping pong fan represented James Alephantis and his boyfriend at the time, David Brock, in a lawsuit against Brock's ex-lover, William Gray. David Brock accused William Gray of blackmail, stating that Gray sent him emails threatening to release specific derogatory information about Brock and his organization to the press and donors.

It is unknown what Gray was going to expose about Brock, but Brock paid his ex-lover almost $1 million to keep him from releasing the information. In addition to having dated James Elephantis, David Brock also has shady ties to the Clintons. Brock started his career as an investigative journalist and was a well-known critic of the Clintons. One of his articles against the Clintons won an award from Joseph Farah's Western Journalism Center.

As a result, Brock was hired to write an investigative book exposing Hillary Clinton. However, the former Clinton critic seemed to have a sudden change of heart and instead wrote a story that defended Hillary Clinton, portraying her as well-intentioned but misunderstood. David Brock's book was so unsuccessful that the publisher lost a lot of money from it, and Brock subsequently lost his job.

Afterward, he started writing articles and books to publicly apologize for his previous investigative pieces on the Clintons. Eventually, when Brock created his company, Media Matters, the Clintons personally helped him raise $2 million for his new company and played a pivotal role in helping Media Matters grow.

These powerful individuals are all associated with serious allegations involving child sex trafficking and pedophilia, and are heavily involved with various branches of Friends of the Orphans of Haiti.

the same orphanage that let Laura Silsby freely take 40 children and made no statement on the matter to clear their name when the local officer stopped Silsby. In addition, they are all connected to each other and to the Clintons who went out of their way to help Laura Silsby and her group after their arrest in Haiti for attempted child trafficking.

Most suspicious of all was a discovery that potentially linked Laura Silsby to Comet ping pong owner James Alephantis. In an investigation into the White House visitor log, Laura Silsby was recorded as a visitor at least five times after her release from the Haitian prison in 2010. Each time Silsby's name appeared, the visitor log revealed that James Alephantis always visited just hours later.

Although this does not provide evidence of a direct connection between Silsby and Elephantus, the consistent repetition of this occurrence is undeniably suspicious. The overarching connection between these facts is unknown, however. Fitting the pieces together reveals a grim picture of the intentions for the New Life children refuge's trip to Haiti and the whereabouts of the Clintons and Laura Silsby.

especially considering Bill and Hillary Clinton's checkered history of scandal and crime. Ultimately, the plethora of unusual connections and circumstances reveal that the complete story of Laura Silsby and the New Life children's refuge may be much darker than we know.