MIAMI HERALD / Miami jury finds American founder of Haiti orphanage guilty on federal criminal charges of sexually abusing boys there.-
[Allegations of sexual abuse have followed Geilenfeld for more than a decade. After a children’s rights advocate, Paul Kendrick of Freeport, Maine, and Haitian journalist Cyrus Sibert launched a campaign to have him arrested. Geilenfeld and a Raleigh, North Carolina, nonprofit group that supported his St. Joseph’s orphanage sued for defamation in federal court.] BY JAY WEAVER FEBRUARY 20, 2025 A Miami federal jury found Michael Karl Geilenfeld, 73, guilty of sexually abusing six boys at an orphanage he owned in Haiti. At 73, Michael Geilenfeld could have cut a plea deal to reduce his potentially long prison sentence on federal charges of sexually abusing numerous boys in Haiti. But the American founder of a Port-au-Prince orphanage gambled on a jury trial in Miami federal court — and lost. The 12-person jury found Geilenfeld guilty, after deliberating for only five hours on Thursday, of six counts of engaging in illicit sexual contact with minors in a foreign place and one count of tra...
