Editor's Comment: Cyrus Silbert*, Haitian investigative journalist exposed the crimes of Douglas Perlitz in 2007. Questions: Why has it taken 3 years to bring him to the bar? Moreover, why has Perlitz been remanded to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' medical facility in Devens, Mass to receive special treatment rather than being sent off to do hard time with others of his ilk?

- Les Blough, Editor

Members of the local Haitian community arrive at the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse in downtown New Haven, Conn. to attend the sentencing hearing for Doug Perlitz on Tuesday December 21, 2010. Photo: Christian Abraham, CT Post

NEW HAVEN -- It's a story filled with chapters on hope, dark desires, courage and persistence.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton wrote another one -- on justice -- sentencing Douglas Perlitz, the humanitarian-turned-sex predator, to 19 years and seven months in federal prison for his systematic and prolonged abuse of at least 16 homeless boys in a program he created to shelter, feed and educate them in Haiti.

"Our country places a high value on defending citizens' individual dignity and protecting every child," Arterton told Perlitz, 40, Fairfield University's 2002 commencement speaker. "This was a horrific crime ... In a country that's very hard to live in, he took away the childhood they were never able to have. ..."

But Arterton didn't stop there. She looked directly at Perlitz and told him: "Survivors of sexual abuse have unique, long-lasting, permanent injuries -- for these boys, that's on top of being poor, hungry and homeless in Haiti. Now, they have fingers pointed at them in derision."

Arterton set a March 7 hearing on the restitution that Perlitz must provide to his victims.

Judge Janet Bond Arterton called Douglas Perlitz a serial rapist and molester as she imposed the sentence in New Haven federal court on Tuesday. She said she believed he would commit the same crimes again if he were in a similar position. In a telephone call Perlitz also threatened to kill a prosecutor saying his brother would take revenge.

She feared he might again "injure and abuse" children, so she placed him on 10 years of U.S. Probation Department supervision following his release from prison and banned him from associating with children under 18. She ordered him to enter a sexual abuse counseling program during his confinement, which she recommended take place in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' medical facility in Devens, Mass.

"This is a vindication of those victimized by this atrocity as well as those who are not yet known," said Joseph M. Champagne, the mayor of South Toms River, N.J., and a member of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, several of whom attended the sentencing. "Now, everyone knows that if you rape and sodomize someone in some other country, you will be brought to the bar of justice."

Before pronouncing Perlitz's sentence, Arterton listened for nearly seven hours to the story of Project Pierre Toussaint.

It was a program of hope for Haitian street boys. It started in a parking lot in Cap-Haitien, the country's second-largest city, whose streets are filled with at least 10,000 abandoned children begging daily for food, clothing and medicine and money and sleeping in courtyards, on roofs or in woods. It grew into an intake center, an enclosed residential school on 10 acres of land and group homes for promising high school students. It was funded with millions of dollars raised by wealthy Fairfield and Westchester county Catholics.

The program began crumbling in 2007 when students went public with accounts of being abused by Perlitz. When funding dried up, the program shut down in the summer of 2009.

On Tuesday, six former students, all victims of Perlitz's abuse, wrote the chapter on courage by describing their years of sexual abuse to the judge. The boys, speaking in their native Creole, which was translated to the judge, related how they would be invited to Perlitz's home, sometimes on their birthday or just before a holiday, sometimes after school on Friday afternoons and sometime when they became disruptive in school.

There, the nightmarish acts would occur. Some would awaken to his abuse, others would be asked to perform sex with him, and some would consent to demands for fondling and for being fondled. To resist could mean expulsion from the program, they said.

Just how many were abused is unknown. The prosecution said they could document 16 cases, but believe there were more.

One boy told how he and others would hear Perlitz's footsteps in their dormitory room and feign sleeping or look for a hiding place "so he wouldn't sleep with us."

"He never made love to us, he made hate," the boy said.

That boy's descriptive story of being sexually abused over five years, struck an emotional chord with Cyrus Sibert, the Haitian journalist who was the first to report on the scandal in 2007.

Source: CT Post

Cyrus Sibert is a street-smart investigative reporter, who blogs, broadcasts and otherwise publishes news about Haiti. Sibert, a 38-year old member of the Society of Professional Journalist and Investigative Reporters and Editors Association, was approached by an acquaintance who told him an American helping street kids also was abusing them. He then began talking to employees, who were disgusted at what was happening. They confirmed the stories.“People did not report this because they were afraid of losing their jobs,”. Sibert was photographed at the radio station Radio Kontak Inter, in downtown Cap-Haitien on Dec. 16, 2009. Sibert's investigative work on the abuse of street children led to the arrest of US citizen Douglas Perlitz, who operated a school in the city. Photo: Christian Abraham /CP