By Joseph Guyler C. Delva From HCNN

Haiti police detain US citizen on orphan abuse charges

Michael Karl Geilenfeld was arrested on Friday and taken to custody

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (HCNN) — Haitian police, under the authority of the capital’s top prosecutor, arrested and detained on Friday a US citizen accused of abusing children, housed in an orphanage he founded years ago, in the Caribbean country, officials say.

Michael Karl Geilenfeld, 62, was handcuffed at the Saint-Joseph orphanage in the Delmas district and taken to police custody on Friday behind a police pickup truck along with one of his aides, Lamarre Williams, who had been working for Geilenfeld for about six years, now.

The Port-au-Prince’s top prosecutor, Kerson Charles Darius, said Geilenfeld, who had been the object of numerous complaints for child abuses and other criminal activities, will be interrogated and prosecuted on crimes on minors and criminal conspiracy charges.

“Several people have filed complaints about Mr. Geilenfeld and about what is going on in this place,” Darius told the Haitian-Caribbean News Network (HCNN) on Friday as he left the orphanage where Geilenfeld was arrested.

“We will proceed with the case according to the provisions of the law and all the rights of Mr. Geilenfeld and others involved will be respected,” said Darius.

Police officers from the Child protection Unit, accompanied with UN peacekeepers, tried in vain, earlier this year, to close the orphanage and place the boys under the direct authority of the government-run Social Welfare and Research Institute, known as IBSR, following a decision by relevant authorities.

Geilenfeld’s lawyer, Alain Lemithe, called his client’s arrest and detention illegal, as he challenged allegations of wrongdoing on the part of the US orphanage founder.

Geilenfeld will be first interrogated by the prosecutor or his auxiliaries who will gather preliminary information, before transferring the case to an investigating judge for further inquiry. And the process may take months.

For more on this story go to: http://hcnn.ht/en/2014_09/politics/367/Haiti-police-detain-US-citizen-on-orphan-abuse-charges-US-orphanage-Michael-Geilenfeld-Haiti-police-judge-prosecutor.htm

IMAGE: U.S. citizen Michael Karl Geilenfeld waits in handcuffs as the manager of his orphanage sits with him in the back of a police truck outside the St. Joseph’s Home For Boys after police closed it down in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Friday, Sept. 5, 2014. Geilenfeld, who founded the boy’s orphanage in 1985, was taken into custody on charges including indecent assault, according to authorities. The children had been previously removed from the orphanage, according to Port-au-Prince General Prosecutor Charles Kerson. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)The Associated Press – see: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/09/05/haiti-police-detain-us-orphanage-founder-on-abuse-allegations/