George doesn’t go swimming now. She doesn’t sleep well, either, despite the soft sound of the waves.

“She often falls asleep sad,” a friend says.

Here on the far northern coast of Haiti, in a place residents call O’Boy, George boarded a bus back in January with high hopes for the future. The 46-year-old single mother of three had finally gotten a sponsor to help her get to the United States, and she was going to Port-au-Prince to apply for a passport.

For the trip she chose a white cotton blouse with white lace trim. Her mother and son volunteered to come along.

The earthquake struck the afternoon they arrived in the capital. The three-story house where they were staying collapsed. Nine people died, including George’s mother and son.

Rescuers eventually lifted George out of the hole in a bright orange sled, her bandaged arms folded across her abdomen. Her hair looked lightly dusted; the white blouse she had left home wearing days earlier was still clean.

The long journey back to O’Boy took weeks, including stops at five hospitals. At one, George’s right leg was amputated above the knee.

In recent weeks she has been at the Borgne hospital, a stone’s throw from the beach. Nine families are living in tents under a large open shed built beside the hospital. The ceiling fan isn’t big enough to move the air down around the tents.

“We were planning to get a fan for each tent and something to keep their minds active – like a TV – but we ran out of funding,” said Dr. Thony Michelet Voltaire, the hospital’s medical director.

Doctors ordered a prosthetic leg for George, but weren’t sure when it would arrive.

George thinks about the things she has lost. She thinks about her mother and her son. “It would make me happier if I had something I could listen to during these hard times,” George says, a distant look on her face.

A deeply religious woman, she remembers how she would often sing church songs and strum the guitar. She wasn’t very good, she says, but she liked it.

“For now, I just sing in my heart.”

carolyn.cole@latimes.com

George, seen here in April, spends her days at the hospital in Borgne, on Haiti’s northern coast. At one hospital stop on her journey back to her hometown, her right leg was amputated. “Psychologically what happened to Marise has been very traumatic,” says her doctor, Xavier Ilaman Armond. “She has not only lost her leg, but she’s lost her family members.”

George had recently obtained a sponsor to help her move to the United States and was in Port-au-Prince to apply for a passport when the earthquake hit.

“It would be nice if I could get back to normal. Get a functioning leg and hand, so I could get back to my business and go back to church,” George says. She lost her son and mother in the quake.

George’s right hand was also badly injured when the house collapsed, and she suffers frequent shooting pains.

George, 46, lives in a tent at the Borgne hospital, a stone’s throw from the water where she used to swim. Several families are living in tents under a large open shed built beside the hospital.

The house in Port-au-Prince where George was injured remains a pile of rubble. She was sitting on the front porch when the building collapsed. The building next door is still standing, but not occupied.

Borgne holds memories of swimming and singing for George. “It would make me happier if I had something I could listen to during these hard times,” she says.

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Authorities have found so-called ‘safe houses’ where orphans were being stashed. (KIER GILMOUR / CANWEST NEWS SERVICE ARCHIVES)

OTTAWA — Smugglers have been spiriting Haitian quake orphans out of the country to become sex slaves in the Dominican Republic, authorities say.

A Mountie just back from Haiti says authorities have uncovered so-called “safe houses,” where predators hide children before whisking them over the border. The perpetrators pose as aid workers or even work for legitimate charities, specifically to gain access to children, RCMP Sgt. Lana Prosper told The Canadian Press.

Investigators suspect some of those preying on desperate children in Haiti also peddled child-sex videos found online from Sri Lanka, Thailand and other countries after the 2004 tsunami.

It’s just a matter of time before videos of young Haitian quake victims surface, said Prosper, just home from a month in Haiti with a team from the Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

“Since we’ve been there and since we’ve been back, there have been groups of children found at the border in so-called safe houses,” she said.

“People put children into these homes and then wait till darkness to get them across the border. It’s happening.”

Prosper’s team worked in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, helping the national police force protect children after the Jan. 12 earthquake, which killed 230,000 people and left a million homeless. Several Canadians have recently been convicted of sex crimes involving Haitian children:

– John Duarte, a former priest from Windsor, Ont., who worked with a legitimate charity, was sentenced to 18 months in April after pleading guilty to sexual interference involving three Haitian teenagers. He was arrested last October in the Dominican Republic after an investigation by Ontario Provincial Police and the RCMP.

– Two Quebec aid workers pleaded guilty in November 2008 to multiple counts of sexually abusing teenage boys while working at a Haitian orphanage. Armand Huard, 65, is serving three years and Denis Rochefort, 59, got two. Complaints by a dozen Haitian boys led nowhere until local police officers complained to Canadian cops on a Haitian mission.

– The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 28, 2010 A18

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