DENVER — An American founder of a Haitian orphanage forced four boys living at the orphanage to perform sex acts more than a decade ago, a prosecutor said Friday.
Michael Geilenfeld, 71, is a “dangerous, manipulative and devious child molester” who preyed on poor children for decades while working as a missionary abroad, Jessica Urban, a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Division, said during a detention hearing in Denver federal court.
Her statements marked the first time authorities made public details of the investigation that led to Geilenfeld’s Jan. 18 indictment in Florida on charges of child sexual abuse. Urban offered the evidence via a video feed to support her argument that Geilenfeld should not be released on bail as his case progresses. She said authorities fear he or his supporters will try to intimidate the victims to prevent them from testifying against him.
Judge Scott Varholak deferred a decision, saying he needed more information about Geilenfeld’s living arrangements in Colorado, where he was arrested last weekend.
Geilenfeld’s lawyer, Robert Oberkoetter, who also appeared via video on Friday, told the court that his client had a full-time job to care for his landlady and her severely disabled child. When Varholak expressed concern that there might be a minor in the house, Geilenfeld, alone at the defense table, responded: “That person is 33 years old.” Oberkoetter would not comment on the allegations against Geilenfeld.
The Florida indictment accuses Geilenfeld of traveling from Miami to Haiti “for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with another person under the age of 18.”
According to the indictment, the abuse occurred between November 2006 and December 2010, a period when Geilenfeld operated the St. Joseph’s Home for Boys orphanage. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.
Varholak said he was concerned that it had taken the government so long to prosecute Geilenfeld, and he wondered how much of a danger he now posed after being free for so long. He also noted that a federal grand jury in North Carolina that investigated Geilenfeld in 2012 did not issue an indictment, which he said was a rare occurrence.
In a lawsuit Thursday, Oberkoetter accused prosecutors of “forum shopping,” a practice in which attorneys try to have cases tried in a jurisdiction where they think they will have more success.
Authorities in Haiti have long investigated sexual abuse allegations against Geilenfeld and arrested him in September 2014 based on allegations made against him by a child advocate in Maine, Paul Kendrick. Kendrick accused Geilenfeld of being a serial pedophile after speaking to young men who claimed they were abused by Geilenfeld when they were boys in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital where he founded the orphanage in 1985.
Geilenfeld called the claims “cruel, vile lies” and his case was dismissed in 2015 after he spent 237 days in jail in Haiti. At one point, Geilenfeld and a charity associated with the orphanage, Hearts for Haiti, sued Kendrick in federal court in Maine. The lawsuit held Kendrick responsible for Geilenfeld’s capture, the damage to his reputation and the loss of millions of dollars in donations.
Kendrick’s insurance companies ended the lawsuit in 2019 by paying $3 million to Hearts with Haiti, but nothing to Geilenfeld.