A U.S. man who founded an orphanage in Haiti was charged Monday with traveling from Miami to the Caribbean country to have sex with children after spending over a decade dodging accusations that he abused minors in his care.
Michael Karl Geilenfeld, 71, who was arrested Saturday in Denver, had even won a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit in a Maine federal court against an advocate who accused him of sexually abusing boys at his orphanage in Haiti. Geilenfeld had also been arrested in Haiti on the very same allegations that landed him in a Port-au-Prince jail amid the defamation battle — only to have the case dismissed by a judge when some of his alleged victims were a no-show in court.
Geilenfeld is expected to have a detention hearing in federal court in Denver on Thursday, and will later be flown to Miami. A federal grand jury has indicted him on a charge of traveling to Haiti from Miami International Airport “for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person under 18.” Geilenfeld is accused of traveling to the country between November 2006 and December 2010, when he was operating the St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince. He founded the orphanage in 1985.
The alleged sex-tourism offense, investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI, carries a possible sentence of up to 30 years in prison.
Paul Kendrick, a Maine resident who had accused Geilenfeld of being a serial pedophile and led a campaign demanding justice...
; ; ; agreed to pay $17.07 million to settle federal allegations of illegal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices on Friday, marking the Justice Department's first resolution unde...