Click on Detroit
June 25, 2011
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/28345423/detail.html
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A Michigan man who operated a residential facility located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that provided food and shelter to minors, has been charged with offenses involving their sexual abuse.
The charges were announced Friday by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
Matthew Andrew Carter, aka “William Charles Harcourt” and “Bill Carter,” 66, of Brighton, Mich., was charged in a superseding indictment filed yesterday in the Southern District of Florida with four counts of traveling in foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors.
Carter was arrested in Miami.
According to court documents, prior to his arrest, Carter operated and lived at Morning Star Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Morning Star Center, which Carter operated since the mid-1990s, was a residential facility that provided shelter, food and education to Haitian minors.
The minors who lived at the center were orphans or from impoverished families who could not support them.
From the mid-1990s to the present, Carter frequently traveled back and forth between the United States and the center in Haiti, often to raise funds for the continued operation of the center.
According to court documents, Carter allegedly sexually abused several minors in his care and custody at Morning Star Center during this time period. As alleged in court documents, Carter required the child victims to engage in illicit sexual conduct in exchange for gifts or money or in order to remain at the center and continue receiving food, shelter and schooling.
Longtime friend Bertha Wiles said her husband and church community have been faithfully helping further Cater’s mission for more than a decade. She said Carter always had the purest of intentions.
“He was raising those boys as good Christian boys, the best that he could,” Wiles said. “I’ve known this man for 15 years and I would never , ever believe what you said. Somebody definitely framed him, paid the boys to say this is what they did.”
If convicted, Carter faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for one count of child sex tourism and a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison for each of the other three child sex tourism counts.
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