Irish missionary among nine abducted by the Haiti orphanage

Nine people, including an Irish missionary and a three-year-old child, were abducted by an orphanage near the capital of Haiti, Port-O-Prem on Sunday, staff said.

Gena Herata, director of the facility, was among those taken from the private orphanage of Saint-Helen in Kencof in the early hours of the morning, according to Mayor Masilo Jean.

Seven employees and a child were also taken from the orphanage, which cares for more than 240 children, some with disabilities.

The attackers invaded the orphanage around 3:30 pm local time (07:30 GMT) “without opening fire,” Jean said, describing it as a “planned act”.

The attackers had broken through a wall to enter the property, Jean said before heading to the building where he was staying.

Members are believed to be responsible for the attack, the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste said.

Da -Herati, who has lived in Haiti since 1993, called the organization that manages the orphanage – our little brothers and sisters – early on Sunday to confirm that he is among the abducted, a source told the AFP agency.

No requests or demands for ransom were made, the source said.

The Foreign Affairs Department in Ireland said he was familiar with the case and provides consular assistance.

Gena Herates, who was born in Liskari, Mayo County, has received numerous awards for her humanitarian work, including the Oireachtas Human Dignity Award.

Previously, she told Irish times that she did not intend to leave Haiti, despite the gang’s increasing violence and threats to her own safety.

“The kids are why I’m still here. We’re in this together,” she told the newspaper in 2022.

Since the beginning of 2025, the Kenscoff Commune, in the southern suburbs of Port-O-Pronance, has been one of the city areas suffering from constant invasions and attacks by Haiti’s criminal gangs, which already control most of the capital and large parts of the interior of the country.

Haiti’s police, along with his Kenyan police allies and foreign performers using weapons drones, have repeatedly sought to reject gangs from their positions and bases, but failed to push them back.

The gang’s violence and abductions are also common in other areas in and around Port-Pre-Prince, where the UN says armed groups control about 85% of the city.

On July 7, six UNICEF employees were abducted during an authorized mission in an area controlled by armed groups in Port-Prem. Although one employee was released the next day, five others were held captive by a band for three more weeks.

In the first half of 2025, the UN figures show that almost 350 people were abducted in Haiti. At least 3141 people were also killed during the same period, the UN Human Rights Service reported.

The head of the UN Human Rights, Volker Turk, warned that the jump in the gang’s violence threatened the nation’s more destabilization, with a record 1.3 million people displaced by the June disorder.

The UN said families “struggle to survive improvised shelters while facing increasing health and protection risks.”