28508: (news) Chamberlain: Kidnappers lower ransom on priest with controversial past (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Kidnappers lower ransom demand for Canadian abducted in Haiti


PORT-AU-PRINCE, June 22 (CP) - Kidnappers who seized a Canadian missionary
from his home in Haiti have lowered
their ransom demand some five days after he was abducted, another
missionary said Thursday.

Ed Hughes' captors had threatened to kill him unless a $45,000 US ransom
was paid, but now say they'll free
him for $10,000, said Nelson Ryman, co-director with Hughes of the Tytoo
Gardens orphanage north of Haiti's
capital, Port-au-Prince.

"We have hopes that he will be released before the weekend," Ryman said by
phone from his home in Tampa, Fla.

However, Ryman said it wasn't clear if Hughes, 72, of Hamilton, could raise
the sum his captors are demanding.
Hughes, who lost an arm in a December 2005 kidnapping of another missionary
in the troubled Caribbean country,
is estranged from his family and apparently has meagre personal funds.

"I am not confident we can match that amount. It is highly unlikely that
friends of Mr. Hughes would be able
to come up with that amount," Ryman said.

Hughes was kidnapped Sunday at his home in Cabaret, just north of
Port-au-Prince.

Reports Thursday said the self-styled minister once advocated group sex and
wife-swapping and was once
convicted of keeping a bawdy house near Hamilton.

On July 26, 1981, Hamilton-Wentworth police raided Hughes' trailer
park/swinging club near an abandoned quarry
in Flamborough, Ont. Known as the Ramblewood Swingers Club, it had operated
out of a hangar-like structure in
Burlington for five years until a fire destroyed the building in the winter
of 1981. At that time, Hughes had
a mail-order divinity degree and called himself a bishop with the Universal
Life Church, the Spectator
reported.

When police raided the club, it was operating out of a large circus tent
where police found almost 100 naked
people in various compromising positions. Hughes and his wife Jeanette, who
had been married about 20 years
and had four children, were both charged with keeping a common bawdy house.
The visitors, who came from as far
away as Florida and New Brunswick, all quietly pleaded guilty to charges of
being found-ins in a common bawdy
house.

During a sensational trial in Hamilton, Hughes and his wife both fought the
charges but the judge ruled group
sex was too still salacious for Canadian community standards and found them
both guilty of keeping a bawdy
house. Ontario's appeal court upheld the convictions but quashed the fines
and gave them both absolute
discharges. This spared them a criminal record.

In the mid-1980s, Hughes started building a sailboat in the trailer park. A
talented carpenter, Hughes did
most of the work himself before moving the vessel to Hamilton harbour where
he had the sails installed.

His wife accompanied him during the first few years they were in the
Caribbean. But she became tired of living
on the boat and headed back to dry land. They were divorced in the
mid-1990s and he continued the journey on
his own, the Spectator said.

Hughes had all but severed all ties with Canada when he landed in Haiti in
the late 1990s. He lived on the
boat for a few years while working for the Haitian government. He bought a
piece of land near the ocean and
started building what he described as a night club with the hope of
catering to U.S. tourists. While building
the club, however, hungry homeless children kept begging for food. He
apparently felt sorry for them and
started feeding them.

"He had pretty much finished the building," said Dunnville, Ont., resident
Richard Beldman, who met Hughes
while working with the Mission of Hope in Haiti.

"He felt so guilty he had all this cash. He turned the whole thing into an
orphanage," he told the Spectator.

Beldman said Hughes had a religious conversion and became a committed
Christian missionary after being
confronted by the plight of the children.

"He's a totally, totally changed person," Beldman said.

"The Lord transformed the man. He's an amazing man."

"He just loves those Haitian children."

A surge in kidnappings has raised fears that security in the Western
Hemisphere's poorest country may be
worsening after months of relative calm following the election of President
Rene Preval.

Preval succeeded ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted in a
February 2004 revolt.

Twenty-nine people were kidnapped in the capital last month, up from 15 in
April, according to the UN
peacekeeping mission. The actual number was probably much higher because
victims' families often prefer to
negotiate with kidnappers rather than notify police, who are sometimes
involved in the crimes.

UN authorities and Haitian police have been negotiating with Hughes'
kidnappers through a mediator, Ryman
said.

UN police spokesman Ramon Rost declined comment, saying it could affect the
negotiations.