The parents of Rancho Dolores’s children are very upset at an American photographer, Matthew Bulla, who they say has posted pictures of their children on his website since March, 2010, claiming, among other things, that the children were “hungry.”
The pictures have been offered for sale, with Bulla claiming that the proceeds of these sales would go toward a feeding program for them.
The parents of these children are upset because they feel that Bulla has been misleading the wider world by portraying their children as impoverished and needy.
Amandala saw the website on which Bulla posted the children’s photographs. He described his collage of photographs as available for a “photo raffle”.
In describing the purpose of the pictures, he was asking viewers to purchase the photographs, and the proceeds of these purchases would go toward a “feeding program” for the Rancho Dolores children.
The method by which Bulla was able to take the photographs for his website has also concerned the parents. Bulla took the photographs of the children while they were in classes at Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic School, and posted them on his website without the permission of their parents, or school.
The school has recently been amalgamated, since the beginning of this school year (September 2011), with primary educational institutions in the Belize River Valley. It is now known as the Belize Rural Primary School, and has a fully functional feeding program which officials at the Ministry of Education have set up.
Bulla, who is a volunteer at the Spanish Creek Rainforest Reserve, explains on his webpage that he and other functionaries of the reserve heard that the primary school was being given a donation of 8 computers by a North American NGO, United Federation for the Future of Kids.
He said he showed up and realized that neither the NGO nor the faculty of the primary school could photograph the event. So he offered his services, and took pictures of everyone present, and very soon after, the photographs ended up on his webpage.
Amandala spoke to Tircia Pook, who was the principal at the time of the donation. She told us that Bulla did not ask her permission to post these photographs, and she explained the order of events which “lined up” with Bulla’s account.
She told us that she is upset about it because she now has to try to diffuse a situation that has compromised the privacy of the children. She categorically stated that she had no knowledge of any intention to post these photographs on the internet.
We spoke to several parents whose children were being advertised. Rancho Dolores residents, Coleen Joseph and Edlene Smith, told us that they attended a community meeting this Sunday where it was discussed what Bulla had done. That’s when they discovered that their children were on the internet, and that the photographs were taken without their (the parents) consent.
These parents are now demanding that the Ministry of Education gets involved, and that Bulla and others who assisted him, be arrested and charged by police.
They are concerned that there may have been child predators who bought the photographs of the children, and that these people may come and kidnap those children that they have an interest in.
This entire situation would have gone unnoticed if it were not for the concern of Angie Smith. She told us that her son came home and told her that some people came and took pictures of him. When she investigated, she found out that the faculty was not sure that someone had taken photographs of her child without her consent.
She said that she then pursued the matter and discovered that the children were posted on the web, which prompted community action.
The parents say that they are upset that the principal had not called a parent/teacher meeting to discuss this matter.
Officials at the Ministry of Education have been unavailable for comments to us at this time. One official, the Belize District Education Officer, Jahmoor Lopez, has spoken to another section of the media. He has pledged that the Ministry is carefully looking into this matter, and it will be treated with grave importance.
We spoke to Arlette Gomez, the Information Officer for the Ministry of Education, who was able to provide us with the information that the Ministry has gathered. She said that all indications to the Ministry are that Bulla was soliciting funds on behalf of the children and teachers.
She told us he had not received the proper authorization to do so, however, and that the information that he has presented to the world was grossly misleading.
Gomez said that there are no clear indications that Bulla had provided any substantial donations with the funds that he had received from those photographs.
Gomez said that the Ministry is cooperating with the police in determining if Bulla was engaged in any criminal activity.
We have since contacted police authorities about the present state of the investigations into this matter. They say that preliminary investigations have revealed that Bulla and his associates have made sizeable donations to the school, which is contrary to what the Ministry’s investigation has shown.
It is too early to for the police to say definitively, but they have not found any evidence that there was any malicious intent, or that there was “hustling” taking place.
Police say that nevertheless, they will still continue their investigation until they have all the facts. If there has been any criminal activity with these photographs, Bulla will be charged, but at this point he remains in the clear.
Since the airing of the story by the Belizean media, all websites promoting Bulla’s photograph sales have since been taken down.