Irish missionary among nine kidnappeds from the Haiti orphanage

Nine people, including an Irish missionary and a three-year-old child, were kidnapped by an orphanage near the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince on Sunday, officials said.

Gena Heraty, the director of the establishment, was one of those taken from the private orphanage in Sainte-Hélène in Kenscoff during the early hours of the morning, according to Mayor Massillon Jean.

Seven employees and a child were also taken from the orphanage, which takes care of more than 240 children, some disabled.

The attackers burst into the orphanage around 3.30 p.m. local time (07:30 GMT) “without opening fire,” said Jean, describing him as a “planned act”.

The attackers had blocked a wall to get into the property, said Jean, before heading for the building where Ms. Heraty remained.

It is believed that gang members are responsible for the attack, reported the Nouvelliste.

Ms. Heraty, who has lived in Haiti since 1993, called the organization that runs the orphanage – our little brothers and sisters – early on Sunday to confirm that she was one of these kidnapped, a source told the AFP news agency.

No ransom requests or requests have been made, said the source.

Ireland’s foreign department said it was aware of the case and provided consular assistance.

Gena Heraty, born in Liscarney, in Mayo County, has received numerous awards for her humanitarian work, including the Ouireachtas Human Dignity Award.

She previously declared to Irish Times that she did not intend to leave Haiti, despite increasing violence of gangs and threats to her own security.

“Children are the reason why I am still there. We are together,” she told the newspaper in 2022.

Since the beginning of 2025, the municipality of Kenscoff, on the southern outskirts of Port-au-Prince, has been one of the districts of the city suffering from constant incursions and raids of the criminal gangs of Haiti, which already control most of the capital and large expanses of the interior of the country.

The Haiti police, as well as his Kenyan police allies and his foreign entrepreneurs using armed drones, have repeatedly sought to dislodge the gangs from their positions and their bases, but have failed to repel them.

Gang violence and kidnappings are also common in other regions in Port-au-Prince, where the UN says that armed groups control around 85% of the city.

On July 7, six UNICEF employees were kidnapped during an authorized mission in an area controlled by armed groups in Port-au-Prince. Although an employee was released the next day, five others were selected in captivity by a gang for three additional weeks.

In the first half of 2025, UN figures show that nearly 350 people were kidnapped in Haiti. At least 3,141 people were also killed during the same period, said the United Nations Human Rights Office.

The UN Human Rights Head, Volker Türk warned that an increase in gang violence threatened to destabilize the nation more, with a record of 1.3 million people displaced by trouble in June.

The UN said that families have “struggling to survive makeshift shelters while facing health and protection risks”.