DENVER — An American founder of a Haitian orphanage accused of forcing four boys living at the orphanage to perform sex acts more than a decade ago will remain behind bars for the time being, even though a magistrate judge in Colorado ruled Thursday that he should go to the orphanage had to be sent. live in a terraced house.
Federal prosecutors said they would appeal the decision to a federal judge in Florida, where Michael Geilenfeld was indicted last month and accused of traveling from Miami to Haiti between 2010 and 2016 “for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with another person under the age of 18. .” The charge he faces carries a maximum prison sentence of 30 years.
Judge Scott Varholak said his order releasing the 71-year-old Geilenfeld will not take effect until a Florida judge decides the case.
Geilenfeld, who has faced allegations of abusing boys in the past, has been held in a federal prison in suburban Denver since his arrest on January 20 in Colorado. He previously told Varholak that he was being held in isolation and was only allowed to leave his cell for two hours each morning.
His attorney, Brian Leedy, told Varholak that Geilenfeld had the support of a “great community of individuals” who supported him for 20 years and would help him get back and forth to court hearings in Florida. Leedy did not immediately respond to a telephone message. call and email seeking comment on the allegations against Geilenfeld.
Prosecutors argued that Geilenfeld, who they say abused about two dozen children over decades, might try to intimidate his victims if released and poses a flight risk since a conviction would set him back for the rest of his life given his age could put the bars. .
According to Jessica Urban of the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Division, Geilenfeld has a pattern of bribing and threatening people when he is under investigation. An adult victim involved in a civil suit involving Geilenfeld said Geilenfeld told him that “if he loved his children” he would recant his claim, which he took as a threat, she said.
Varholak called the allegations against Geilenfeld “extremely troubling,” but said the government had not provided enough details to show that he had actually threatened anyone or been abusive since the time mentioned in the indictment more than a decade ago . Under his order, Geilenfeld would be placed under house arrest at the halfway house and fitted with a GPS monitor.
Haitian authorities arrested Geilenfeld in September 2014 on allegations made by Paul Kendrick, a child advocate in Maine. Kendrick accused him of being a serial pedophile after speaking to young men who said they were abused by Geilenfeld as boys in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, 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.
He and a charity affiliated with the orphanage, Hearts for Haiti, sued Kendrick in federal court in Maine, accusing Kendrick of Geilenfeld’s imprisonment, damage to his reputation and the loss of millions of dollars in donations.
Kendrick’s insurance companies settled the lawsuit in 2019 by paying $3 million to Hearts with Haiti, but nothing to Geilenfeld.