2011.03.07: March 7, 2011: Ten years after Poirier vanishes, Peace Corps safety concerns linger

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Bolivia: PCOL Exclusive: Missing PCV Walter Poirier III (Bolivia) : Missing Peace Corps Volunteer Walter Poirier III: Newest Stories: 2011.03.07: March 7, 2011: Ten years after Poirier vanishes, Peace Corps safety concerns linger

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Ten years after Poirier vanishes, Peace Corps safety concerns linger

Ten years after Poirier vanishes, Peace Corps safety concerns linger

When Walter Poirier testified before Congress in 2004, he stated that his son was stationed alone in a remote area of a foreign country with the closest availability to a telephone several miles upriver. He said when he asked Smith why the volunteers were not given cell phones, satellite phones or GPS devices, he was told "we've been doing it this way for 40 years." In an interview with a Lowell Sun reporter late last month, Walter Poirier added that his son had no business being placed in the assignment he was given -- to develop strategies to boost eco-tourism in the villages of Bolivia's Zongo Valley. "Wally was a history and government major. What did he know about eco-tourism?" he asks. Skelly, whose assignment was to assist a group of artisan Bolivian women to form a co-op, market and sell their wares, agrees that she was not particularly well trained for the assignment and it had a lot of inherent problems, including a language barrier and the fact that the village she was working in was 13 hours outside of the city of La Paz. She had no radio or telephone and had to walk an hour to a bus stop. "A lot of the Peace Corps is about throwing you into a project and letting you problem solve and run it, but what did I know about coordinating a group of 30 women at the age of 22," Skelly says. After a GAO review of the Peace Corps safety and security programs, the organization "instituted new practices to address key issues such as site selection and preparation, training, information sharing, incident management, emergency preparedness and communication," Peace Corps spokeswoman Allison Price wrote in an e-mail to The Sun. Price added that in the 10 years since Wally Poirier's disappearance, "technology access in the field has improved substantially and we have a much better ability to communicate with volunteers in their host communities. We have also established a whereabouts policy that requires volunteers to notify Peace Corps when they are away from their communities for any reason." Meehan said he would like to think that what happened to Wally Poirier would not happen today, "but the evidence is not conclusive on that. "The attention on this case clearly got the Peace Corps to focus on the safety of those who go into foreign countries, and it would be an appropriate time now, 10 years later, to look at what evidence there is that Americans are safer today."

Ten years after Poirier vanishes, Peace Corps safety concerns linger

Ten years after Poirier vanishes, Peace Corps safety concerns linger

Sentinel & Enterprise

Posted: 03/07/2011 06:37:33 AM EST

Second of two parts

By Jennifer Myers

jmyers@lowellsun.com

LOWELL -- In February 2001, a month before her friend, fellow Peace Corps volunteer 22-year-old Wally Poirier of Lowell, was declared missing in Bolivia, Lupine Skelly was the victim of an armed robbery that left her rattled and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"My (male) cousin was visiting and we went to this area outside of La Paz to go hiking," says Skelly, now a retail analyst in New Mexico. "I noticed a crazy rock in the middle of the road, and we bent down to look at it. When we looked up there were two guys in front of us wearing masks; I assume they had been following us for quite a while."

The men demanded money from the Americans, in what Skelly thinks may have been a Peruvian accent. She told them they had none.

"One of the guys pulled out a gun and they started searching our clothing for secret pockets and looking through our backpacks," she says. "I looked down the barrel of the gun and could see that there were no bullets."

Skelly whispered to her cousin that at worst there was one bullet in the chamber. They should make a move.

"My cousin drop-kicked the guy in the face and they started a skirmish," she says. "The gun went off and the bullet lodged in the rocks along the bank of the road. My cousin went ballistic and beat the crap out of the guy."

Skelly called her Peace Corps supervisor and
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was told to go to the U.S. Embassy. At the embassy, she was told that the location where she was hiking was a very dangerous spot, notorious for violent attacks.

"No one in the Peace Corps ever warned us about that place; the State Department never warmed us," Skelly says. "After the attack I suffered from PTSD. I was scared people would know who I was and seek me out for revenge; my cousin probably broke that guy's jaw."

Skelly was sent to Washington, D.C., for counseling. While she was there her dad called and asked her if she knew Wally Poirier.

"Why, did he call for me?" asked Skelly.

"No," he answered. "He is missing."

That was when Skelly decided that after serving 19 months in the Peace Corps she was done.

"The people who work for the Peace Corps are amazing, caring, loving people who care about keeping volunteers safe, but on the bureaucratic side I do not think they are truthful about the amount of accidents and crime that happen against volunteers," she said.

From 1999 to 2001 the number of reported assaults against Peace Corps volunteers in Bolivia nearly tripled, from four to 11.

Skelly says she does not think any other volunteers were informed of the danger by the Peace Corps following her attack.

"We would hear about other volunteers getting raped or attacked through word of mouth -- never by the Peace Corps," she says.

The disappearance of Poirier and the subsequent media attention unleashed a flurry of criticism against Peace Corps policies, including allowing volunteers to be stationed alone in remote locations with minimal communication equipment; not properly training volunteers for assignments; and not properly supervising volunteers in the field.

More than 200,000 young Americans have volunteered for service with the Peace Corps since its inception in 1961; 279 have died in service.

Wally Poirier is its only volunteer reported missing and never found.

"I personally believe the reason Wally disappeared was due to the improper supervision of the country director (Meredith "Mimi" Smith) and the assistant country director (Ryan Taylor)," says Wally Poirier's dad, Walter Poirier of Lowell. "(Smith) was a Ph.D. in nutrition, a former Peace Corps volunteer and a professor at a university. Being a professor is a wonderful thing, but it does not give you management skills."

In a July 20, 2001, letter to then-U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan, Robert Hast of the Government Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, wrote that Wally Poirier failed to follow certain Peace Corps notification policies. However, Taylor knew that Poirier had not followed policy and took no steps to correct the situation.

"The associate director's failure to adequately monitor Mr. Poirier contributed to the difficulties encountered by the U.S. Embassy in its efforts to locate Mr. Poirier," Hast wrote, adding that there was "no reason to believe" the Peace Corps would have initiated a search for Wally Poirier had his mother, Sheila Poirier not contacted them on March 4, 2001, to report that her son had not been heard from for more than a month.

The GAO report notes that Taylor took Wally Poirier to the village of Camisique on Dec. 22, 2000, to find a place to stay. He never moved into that apartment, and Taylor did not learn until March 6, 2001, that Poirier had rented a room farther up the Zongo Valley.

Taylor later admitted to having lied to investigators when he told them that Poirier had missed a scheduled March 2 meeting with La Paz tourism director Teresa Chavez after she said they did not meet on any set schedule.

The GAO report states that Taylor lied "to deflect blame elsewhere because he felt responsible for not keeping a closer watch on Mr. Poirier."

When Walter Poirier testified before Congress in 2004, he stated that his son was stationed alone in a remote area of a foreign country with the closest availability to a telephone several miles upriver.

He said when he asked Smith why the volunteers were not given cell phones, satellite phones or GPS devices, he was told "we've been doing it this way for 40 years."

In an interview with a Lowell Sun reporter late last month, Walter Poirier added that his son had no business being placed in the assignment he was given -- to develop strategies to boost eco-tourism in the villages of Bolivia's Zongo Valley.

"Wally was a history and government major. What did he know about eco-tourism?" he asks.

Skelly, whose assignment was to assist a group of artisan Bolivian women to form a co-op, market and sell their wares, agrees that she was not particularly well trained for the assignment and it had a lot of inherent problems, including a language barrier and the fact that the village she was working in was 13 hours outside of the city of La Paz. She had no radio or telephone and had to walk an hour to a bus stop.

"A lot of the Peace Corps is about throwing you into a project and letting you problem solve and run it, but what did I know about coordinating a group of 30 women at the age of 22," Skelly says.

Stephen Spaulding was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia at the same time as Wally Poirier. The two became fast friends.

Like Skelly, Spaulding's assignment was based in small-business development. He says the question of whether the Peace Corps was negligent in its attempt to place volunteers in safe locations is complicated.

"Their major mission is to be a development agency, to spread goodwill from America and to bring those cultures back to America," he says. "The places that need the most development are those that are the most remote. Today, with the advances in technology the world is shrinking, but I do not necessarily think the Peace Corps was negligent 10 years ago."

After a GAO review of the Peace Corps safety and security programs, the organization "instituted new practices to address key issues such as site selection and preparation, training, information sharing, incident management, emergency preparedness and communication," Peace Corps spokeswoman Allison Price wrote in an e-mail to The Sun.

Price added that in the 10 years since Wally Poirier's disappearance, "technology access in the field has improved substantially and we have a much better ability to communicate with volunteers in their host communities. We have also established a whereabouts policy that requires volunteers to notify Peace Corps when they are away from their communities for any reason." Meehan said he would like to think that what happened to Wally Poirier would not happen today, "but the evidence is not conclusive on that.

"The attention on this case clearly got the Peace Corps to focus on the safety of those who go into foreign countries, and it would be an appropriate time now, 10 years later, to look at what evidence there is that Americans are safer today."

According to the Peace Corps 2009 report on volunteer safety, the most recent statistics available, rape or attempted rape of Peace Corps volunteers was down 49 percent in 2009 compared to 2000, but major sexual assault incidents that do not rise to the level of rape, including groping or forcible disrobing of a victim, have increased by 75 percent since 2000.

Major physical assaults (aggressive contact that requires the use of substantial force to disengage the offender or results in major bodily injury), of which there were 12 reported in 2009, have increased 28 percent since 2006, while aggravated assaults (attack or threat of an attack with a weapon, or an attack that results in serious injury), have decreased by 51 percent over the same time period. "Other" physical assaults, which result in no or minor injuries, of which 69 incidents were reported in 2009, saw a 65 percent increase from 2006 to 2009.

Incidents of theft, 714 of which were reported in 2009, increased by 51 percent from 2000 to 2009.

"The safety and security of Peace Corps volunteers is our highest priority," Price wrote, adding that the Poirier case remains open and the Peace Corps Inspector General's Office will continue to "follow up on any credible leads as they arise."




Links to Related Topics (Tags):

Headlines: March, 2011; Missing PCV Walter Poirier; Peace Corps Bolivia; Directory of Bolivia RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Bolivia RPCVs; Safety and Security of Volunteers





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Story Source: Sentinel and Enterprise

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